It's a lot funnier than any of Pixar's short films had been for a long time, but it's also utterly heartwarming. Piper follows a young sandpiper taking her first tentative steps out onto the beach ...

Barillaro wanted to push the animation technology at Pixar as far as he could. The short uses the new render software that Stanton also used in "Finding Dory," and to get the sandpiper feathers ...