Luxo Jr. (1986)

Luxo Jr. is a two second animation created by John Lasseter, which is about how an older lamp called Luxo Sr. watches over while Luxo Jr. messes about with a ball, which he accidentally pops.

This animation was created for an annual computer animation exhibition called SIGGRAPH, and to show off how he used the shadow maps within the rendering software, and to show the 12 principles of animation even though the characters are made of metal/plastic like squash and stretch, secondary motion and character appeal.

This animation was so good that it lead on to be the logo for pixar and appears in every movie at the beginning.