Sep 29, 2020

Chart: Most Viewed Indie Animated Short Films on Youtube

This project began with a simple question: what are the most viewed independently produced animated shorts on Youtube? So I decided to do it myself. After spending some time researching, I compiled the following graph. (I will soon link to the site's navigation bar for easy access, and will update it regularly.)

This chart includes only independently produced animated shorts that have been viewed more than 60 million times on Youtube. Thirty-eight films met the criteria for inclusion in the list.

The chart does not include music videos, studio shorts, or episodic shorts that are part of a larger series. On the latter point, we made our best efforts to separate stand-alone shorts from episodic content, as it is often difficult to distinguish what is a series and what is not. For example, Alan Becker's "Animation vs. Minecraft Short Story" series is not included because it is labeled as an episode that is clearly part of a series, but Becker's short story "Animator vs. Animation IV" is a sequel to an earlier short story and is clearly included because it was not considered an episode of a larger series.

In putting this together, I noticed a few things:

Again, here is a link to the chart. Take a look and if you see something missing, please contact me via email here.