I just came across this year's nominations for Best Animated Short which is an interesting list. Notable by its absense this year is any of the shorts from the usual suspects, like Pixar's or Sony Imageworks. Here's the list clockwise from the top left:

Madame Tutli-Putli

Directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski of the National Film Board, Madame Tutli-Putli is probably my personal favorite, and I specifically like their use of live-action eyes which were painstakingly integrated with the animated puppets.

Madame Tutli-Putli boards the night train, weighed down with all her earthly possessions and the ghosts of her past. She travels alone, facing both the kindness and menace of strangers. As day descends into dark, she finds herself caught up in a desperate metaphysical adventure. Adrift between real and imagined worlds, Madame Tutli-Putli confronts her demons and is drawn into an undertow of mystery and suspense.

I Met The Walrus

Directed by Josh Raskin, I Met The Walrus takes an interview by John Lennon, and turns it into a fabulously multi-layered animated short.

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview. This was in the midst of Lennon's "bed-in" phase, during which John and Yoko were staying in hotel beds in an effort to promote peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries traditional pen sketches by James Braithwaite with digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.

Même Les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go To Heaven)

Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse directed the only CG animated short to be nominated this year. Even Pigeons Go To Heaven is an amusing story of a priest hawking the afterlife created by French visual effects company BUF.

Moya Lyubov (My Love)

Alexander Petrov who created the beautiful short The Old Man and The Sea returns with his signature oil painting on glass animation technique. Moya Lyubov tells the story of a Russian teenage boy searching for love with two very different woman.

Peter And The Wolf

Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman also got a nomination for their interpretation of Prokofiev's Peter And The Wolf.

On the edge of the vast forests of Russia, where wolves still roam, lies a little cottage surrounded by a big, high fence. This is where Peter lives with his grumpy Grandfather. Grandfather will not let Peter go out into the forest. "What if a wolf comes? What then?"

You can seen excerpts from each of the nominated shorts after the break.

Madame Tutli-Putli

I Met The Walrus

Même Les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis

Moya Lyubov

Peter And The Wolf