15 Obscure but Brilliant Animated Films Streaming Right Now
Introduction: My Winters Were Animated
Where I grew up, the snow piled high enough to bury cars, and the cold was so sharp it rang in your ears. My world was white and still, but in the flicker of an old TV, entire universes came alive. Animation wasn't just escape—it was electricity. It was proof that a pencil and some paper could spin wonder out of nothing.
I carried that love into a career in the industry. The big studios were dazzling, but they also burned me out. What kept me alive was the quieter stuff: the independent shorts, the projects that wore their brushstrokes proudly, the risks that didn't always pay off at the box office but changed the way I saw art.
That's why I hunt for these films. They aren't always polished, but they carry fingerprints. They remind me of what animation is at its core: movement as magic, drawn breath. And on streaming today, tucked between juggernauts, are 15 obscure gems that prove it.
Let's count down—#15 up to #1—each a reminder of why I'll always be a kid in front of a glowing screen.
15. The Dam Keeper (2014, Tonko House)
Born from two Pixar veterans (Robert Kondo and Dice Tsutsumi) who walked away from the big machine, this short is a masterclass in painterly digital craft. The film was animated in TVPaint, but each frame was finished like a canvas—soft, blended brushwork that feels more like oil pastel than pixels. The textures are layered in such a way that you see the human hand inside the digital frame.
I love this one because it shows restraint. No fancy rigs, no bombastic effects—just light, shadow, and the sense of a brush still wet. It's the kind of project you make when you've tasted the industry grind and crave something handmade again.
14. Loving Vincent (2017, various services)
If you ever doubted animation as fine art, here's the answer: 65,000 frames hand-painted in oil by over 125 artists, each in Van Gogh's style. That means every second of the film is essentially a new Van Gogh painting. The animators filmed live-action reference, then painted over it—an impossible process that took six years.
The brilliance isn't just in the gimmick. It's in how the impasto strokes shimmer and breathe. Shadows vibrate, skies swirl, and characters seem to pulse with the same nervous energy that haunted Van Gogh himself. Watching it, I felt like I was inside the brushstrokes, as if the medium itself had a heartbeat.
13. Wolfwalkers (2020, Apple TV+)
Cartoon Saloon has become the world's standard-bearer for hand-drawn animation, and Wolfwalkers might be their most intoxicating piece. The linework intentionally changes depending on perspective—rougher and more scratchy when told from the wolves' view, tighter when framed by humans. Backgrounds are layered like woodcuts, inspired by Celtic engraving, while character animation flows like sketches still in motion.
It's that looseness I admire: an animator's pencil never fully "cleaned up," letting energy stay alive on the page. It's a rejection of sterile perfection, a reminder that the wobble in a line can carry more spirit than the smoothest CGI curve.
12. Sita Sings the Blues (2008, indie/free streaming)
Nina Paley made this practically alone. That's insane, because it blends multiple styles into a seamless quilt: 1920s jazz-inspired cartoon flourishes, Indian shadow puppetry, Flash-based caricatures, and expressive hand-drawn vignettes.
Each style carries meaning—the myth retelling in puppets, the emotional beats in loose sketchy linework, the musical interludes in zany vintage cartoon style. It's witty and deeply personal, and you can feel the exhaustion and joy of one artist who refused to let limits stop her. I admire it because it feels like animation in its purest indie form: the tool is secondary, the imagination leads.
11. Waking Life (2001, rental/arthouse)
Richard Linklater shot this as live-action and then handed it to a crew of animators who rotoscoped it using custom software (Flat Black Films' "Rotoshop"). The result? A constantly shifting dreamscape where outlines wiggle, faces morph mid-sentence, and the very air seems to ripple with thought.
What's genius is how the unstable line mirrors the instability of dreams and ideas. Conversations drift from philosophy to existential dread, and the animation makes you feel the slipperiness of memory itself. For me, this was a revelation: animation doesn't have to be about spectacle. It can make the intangible—thought, dream, mood—visible.
10. The Boy and the World (2013, Brazilian, select services)
Alê Abreu paints with a child's hand and a master's eye. Crayon scrawls, gouache splashes, and collaged textures make up a world that feels both innocent and fractured. The lack of dialogue forces the animation itself to sing, and it does—through vibrant abstraction, shifting perspectives, and rhythmic editing that feels like a drumbeat.
There's an honesty here: the messiness of the lines becomes part of the story. When I first saw it, I thought about how many young animators would be told to "clean up" their drawings—when in fact the raw scrawl is the magic.
9. Song of the Sea (2014, many services)
Another Cartoon Saloon triumph. Watercolor washes, geometric spirals, and swaying linework create a tapestry of Irish myth. Notice how the palette shifts between sea blues and warm hearth tones, anchoring myth in emotion.
What I love most: the way every visual choice has symbolic roots in Celtic art. Spirals echo in waves, cloaks, even hair curls. It's not just beautiful—it's a reminder that animation can be an act of cultural preservation.
8. Secret of Kells (2009, streaming)
Before Song of the Sea, Saloon gave us this illuminated manuscript come to life. The design rejects perspective depth in favor of medieval flatness: figures and forests curl into geometric patterns, borders ornament every shot, and the Book itself becomes animation's guiding metaphor.
It's ambitious and unapologetically stylized. As an animator, I can tell you: drawing this way is harder than realism. It demands discipline to keep every frame within the ornamental logic. That's what makes it hypnotic—you feel like you're watching an illustrated text breathe.
7. Fantastic Planet (1973, Criterion/various)
French surrealism at its boldest. René Laloux and Roland Topor used cut-out animation—meticulous paper puppets moved by hand, frame by frame—to conjure alien life. The result is eerie: characters move with unnatural fluidity, creatures morph unsettlingly, and the whole thing has the tactile charm of a collage.
It's unsettling, yes, but that's the point. The handmade quality amplifies the strangeness—you can sense the scissors and glue. Every odd motion reminds you that animation doesn't have to mimic life; it can create something wholly "other."
6. Mad God (2021, Shudder)
Phil Tippett spent 30 years building this fever dream in stop-motion, returning to it between Hollywood gigs. The sets are labyrinths of rust, bone, and flesh—miniatures crafted with grotesque detail. Characters jerk and lurch with uncanny physicality, their movements deliberately raw, never smoothed.
It's almost overwhelming to watch. For me, it's a reminder of the obsessive nature of animators: the willingness to pour years into inches of progress, because the image in your head demands it. Tippett didn't make this to please anyone; he made it because he had to. That's art in its purest, most frightening form.
5. The Illusionist (2010, Sylvain Chomet)
From the director of The Triplets of Belleville, this is a hand-drawn elegy. Characters are sketched with delicate, elongated lines, their movements restrained, their silences louder than dialogue. Watercolor backgrounds breathe like faded postcards.
It was based on a script by Jacques Tati, and you can see it: the way space is used, the rhythm of small gestures, the quiet melancholy. As an animator, I marveled at how subtlety could be animated—how a barely-there sigh could hold as much power as a chase scene.
4. Birdboy: The Forgotten Children (2015, Spain)
This is folk horror in ink and gouache. Directors Alberto Vázquez and Pedro Rivero crafted characters with simple, almost cute designs, then dropped them into nightmarish landscapes. The tension between softness and brutality is the point: innocence sketched against apocalypse.
The linework often feels shaky, unfinished—intentionally. Like doodles that grew dark in the margins of a notebook. It's unsettling, but it's also honest: sometimes the scariest images are the ones that still look like drawings.
3. Ernest & Celestine (2012, France)
Benjamin Renner fought hard to preserve the loose, watercolor style of Gabrielle Vincent's books. Instead of inking over every sketch, the animators left pencil marks, smudges, and "imperfections" in. The result is animation that breathes—like a child's storybook alive on screen.
Crowd scenes were painted as swirls rather than literal figures, a painterly trick that keeps the focus on the intimacy of Ernest and Celestine themselves. For me, this is a case study in restraint: sometimes the fewer lines you use, the stronger the connection.
2. My Life as a Zucchini (2016, Switzerland)
Stop-motion animated with clay figures, this film finds its strength in minimalism. The faces are simple, the expressions limited—but that's what makes the small gestures thunder. A blink, a tilt of the head, a trembling hand becomes monumental.
The puppets themselves were built with replaceable faces, each expression carved by hand. The lighting was soft, almost naturalistic, making the figures feel fragile and alive. This is what I tell young animators: you don't need complexity to move someone. You just need truth in the movement.
1. I Lost My Body (2019, Netflix)
My #1 pick because it blends everything I love: innovation, craft, and soul. Director Jérémy Clapin used Blender for the 3D scaffolding, then layered 2D Grease Pencil drawings over it to achieve that uncanny realism-meets-poetry look. The hand character—yes, a severed hand—was animated to feel human without anthropomorphizing it. Subtle finger twitches, weight shifts, and framing tricks turned it into a protagonist.
But the genius is in the atmosphere. The linework is sketchy but deliberate, the color palette muted, the music by Dan Levy threading it all into a dreamlike trance. It's not just a story—it's animation showing us what only animation can: empathy for the impossible.
When I saw it, I thought: this is why I stayed in love with the medium. It's a reminder that even after the burnout, the deadlines, the industry churn… animation can still feel like that first snowfall outside my childhood window: quiet, magical, infinite.
Closing Thoughts: Drawing Breath
What links these films isn't budget, or even perfection—it's courage. The courage to draw differently, to paint every frame, to leave lines unpolished, to spend thirty years sculpting nightmares, to trust that audiences will follow.
That's the electricity I first felt as a kid, and still feel at fifty-something. Animation isn't about polish—it's about soul. And soul, frame by frame, is what these 15 obscure treasures deliver.
— Luca Bellandi