We can never get enough of beautiful animated shorts and, thankfully, artsy folks and up-and-coming animators never seem to stop creating beautiful new videos. We’ve organized the latest slate of exciting animated shorts we can’t help but share with you, rather loosely, around the topic of heroism. All of our 7 Skillful Animated Short Films feature heroes or protagonists of sorts.

“The Cat Piano” by Eddie White & Ari Gibson of the People’s Republic of Animation and narrated by Nick Cave

A beautiful mix of Gothic and detective fiction conventions with trademark voice-over from our feline protagonist.

“Videogioco” by Donato Sansone with music by Enrico Ascoli

Alright, so not exactly heroic, but where there’s an antagonist (the guy in the blue shirt) there must be a protagonist (the guy in the green shirt), so this amazing flip-book experiment fits the theme.

“Jesus 2000″ by Gobelins students Rémi Bastie, Jean-Baptiste Cumont, Clément Desnos, Jonathan Djob Nkondo and Nicolas Pegon

They don’t get much more heroic than Jesus, especially refashioned as a hipster superstar.

“Bave Circus” by Supinfocom students Philippe Desfretier, Nicolas Dufresne, Sylvain Kauffmann and Martin Laugero

Who’s the hero here, the boy or the snails? Or is this a team effort?

“Defenders of Something: Training” by Wujoco Animation

The first in what’s going to be a series of animated webisodes about more or less competent superheroes. We can’t wait for the next installment.

“Trichrome Blue” by Lois van Baarle, sound and music by Marcel Janssen

A subtler kind of heroism, more akin to exploration, but perhaps all the more valid for not being predicated on violence or domination.

“The Bronson Maneuver - An Octocore Short” by Ryan Sluman, Joon Kim, Danny Dahlquist and Mike McCain

Sometimes heroism doesn’t work out, what can we say.