Anyone at Walt Disney Animation Studios could submit a blind pitch for a 2-3 minute short. The result: the first 14 films in Disney’s new Short Circuit collection. Originally meant to be kept inside the studio, all will now be available to watch on Disney+ starting January 24th.

Terry Moews, a layout artist on such Disney Animation hits as Chicken Little, Tangled and Zootopia, is the director of The Race. It’s a comedy about a cyclist who tries to stay alive while The Grim Reaper is literally chasing him down. That doesn’t sound like normal Disney fare, but that didn’t stop execs from approving the concept.

“My short happens to deal with the character of Death, which is not exactly a topic that Disney would tackle,” Moews said. “But they didn’t blink. They didn’t hesitate. In fact, they helped me improve upon it. There’s no risk, which was great, because it really allowed me to have fun with the idea.”

Moews is a fan of dark humor and says that The Race is infused with Wile E. Coyote/Road Runner blood. “I had a ton of material that I had to winnow down to just a little bit.” But Moews hopes that he could expand the character of Grim through future shorts. “Grim is a great character. Even though he’s Death, he’s like us… he’s got a job he has to do, and that could spawn this incredibly fun journey across all kinds of different things. I’d love to see it as a series. It’d be very fun to do.”

Cycles is based on director Jeff Gipson’s experience moving his grandmother out of her home and into assisted living. “I can remember being in the house and hearing conversations with my mom and my uncle about moving her,” Gipson said. “And then moving her out and seeing the house empty… and just knowing that that house held so much of my family’s story. Houses and spaces tell a story. They’re a character, almost as much as you and I are.”

There’s a distinct timeline structure to Cycles. Gipson had a couple different versions of the film before settling on one that quickly takes us into the past and back to the present. “There was always time lapse. The backwards sensibility came midway through the project. It was initially forward, but I had a couple challenges with that. And I thought it was a really unique way of telling the story. We know how it ends. That journey to where we end is that much more special.”

Gipson is the head honcho of VR right now at Disney Animation. Besides Cycles (the regular, 2D version will be on Disney+), he recently completed the new VR Frozen spinoff short Myth: A Frozen Tale. “We start in a cabin with a family being told a bedtime story, and it feels like you’re in Frozen. It looks so much like that. But then, this world starts to grow around you, and you’re transported into this world of Myth. And to be with characters – the knock, the giants towering above you, the salamander scurrying by you – I’m excited for the world to see that as well.”

Back to “Short Circuit” with Kendra Vander Vliet’s Downtown. It’s a fast-paced short inspired by the art scene of Los Angeles. “Living in downtown, I was kind of taken aback by ‘Wow – there’s so much art here,'” Vliet said. “You don’t expect downtown Los Angeles to have so much art hidden. But once you walk the streets a little bit, there are street murals everywhere. So I got a lot of inspiration doing that – and trying to get the cool feeling I got when looking at that big, massive art – and putting that kind of energy into my short using the camerawork.”

90 people worked on “Downtown”, which has a runtime of just 97 seconds. According to Vliet, ‘We had a lot of artists come in, leave the project and come back to the project – based on the needs of Frozen II and when we could grab artists. It was a lot of people.”

All the directors, including Moews, are thrilled that these Short Circuit entries will be available to the estimated 40 million Disney+ subscribers. “I think all of us, as we started the projects, we didn’t realize… how good that they were going to be. We all entertained the hope and dream that people would see them beyond these walls. Now it’s gonna be very exciting.”

And Vliet has her fingers crossed that new “SC” volumes emerge over the next several years. “Hopefully it’s still going and there will be Season 50 in the future, because Disney+ is gonna be around a long time. If you look at our movies, part of the magic is each artist, individually, has their own stories to tell. And you can get a sense of that looking at Short Circuit. It’s a really cool way to highlight why Disney is the way it is and all the magic that everyone brings to the studio.”