Partly Cloudy is a Pixar

Pixar

Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...

 CGI animated short film

Short subject

A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...

 directed by Peter Sohn

Peter Sohn

Peter Sohn is an American animator, voice actor and storyboard artist at Pixar Animation Studios.,Sohn started his career with Pixar in the art and story departments for Finding Nemo. He also worked on The Incredibles, Ratatouille and WALL-E. Sohn also performed the voice of Emile in Ratatouille...

 and produced by Kevin Reher. It was shown in theaters before Pixar's feature film Up

Up (2009 film)

Up is a 2009 American computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and presented in Disney Digital 3-D. The film premiered on May 29, 2009 in North America and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film...

and is a special feature on its DVD and Blu-ray release. It was included in the Animation Show of Shows

Animation show of shows

The Animation Show of Shows is a traveling selection of the year's best animated short films, curated and presented by Acme Filmworks founder, Ron Diamond. It began in 1998 with the aim of showing the most original, funny, intelligent short animated films from all over the world and presenting them...

 in 2009. In a CGSociety article, Sohn says his idea for the film came from watching Dumbo

Dumbo

Dumbo is a 1941 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released on October 23, 1941, by RKO Radio Pictures.The fourth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, Dumbo is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl for the prototype of a...

as a child. In the movie, a stork delivers Dumbo. This made him wonder where the bird gets the babies from. He decided the babies came from clouds and so that is why birds have to deliver them.

Plot

All day long, cheerful cloud people in the sky make cute and cuddly babies, such as human boys and girls, kittens, puppies, and other creatures, and give them to stork

Stork

Storks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long, stout bills. They belong to the family Ciconiidae. They are the only family in the biological order Ciconiiformes, which was once much larger and held a number of families....

s for delivery to the expectant parents. However, one lonely gray cloud named Gus has the task of creating animals who are cute, but not so cuddly. His delivery stork named Peck gets the worst of it, being bitten by a crocodile

Crocodile

A crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae . The term can also be used more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia: i.e...

, butted by a Bighorn Sheep

Bighorn Sheep

The bighorn sheep is a species of sheep in North America named for its large horns. These horns can weigh up to , while the sheep themselves weigh up to . Recent genetic testing indicates that there are three distinct subspecies of Ovis canadensis, one of which is endangered: Ovis canadensis sierrae...

, and pricked by a porcupine

Porcupine

Porcupines are rodents with a coat of sharp spines, or quills, that defend or camouflage them from predators. They are indigenous to the Americas, southern Asia, and Africa. Porcupines are the third largest of the rodents, behind the capybara and the beaver. Most porcupines are about long, with...

. When Peck sees that his next delivery is to be a baby shark

Shark

Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....

, he grows more than a little fearful, and flies away. Feeling rejected, despondent, and angry, Gus unleashes a brief thunderstorm

Thunderstorm

A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm, a lightning storm, thundershower or simply a storm is a form of weather characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere known as thunder. The meteorologically assigned cloud type associated with the...

, then begins to cry with rain pouring from below him. Peck soon returns with a football helmet

Football helmet

A football helmet is a protective device used primarily in American football and Canadian football. It consists of a hard plastic top with thick padding on the inside, a face mask made of one or more plastic bars, and a chinstrap. Some players add polycarbonate visors to their helmets, which are...

 and shoulder pads

Shoulder pads

Shoulder pads are a piece of protective equipment used in many contact sports such as American football, Canadian football, lacrosse and hockey. Most modern shoulder pads consist of a shock absorbing foam material with a hard plastic outer covering. The pieces are usually secured by rivets or...

, created for him by another cloud to keep him safe, proving that he was never going to abandon the gray cloud. Gus instantly cheers up and gives Peck an electric eel

Electric eel

The electric eel , is an electric fish, and the only species of the genus Electrophorus. It is capable of generating powerful electric shocks, of up to six hundred volts, which it uses for both hunting and self-defense. It is an apex predator in its South American range...

to deliver, which shocks him despite the protective equipment; this time, though, Peck remains in good (but slightly frazzled) spirits.

External links

• Official Pixar page