Welcome to Cartoon Brew’s series of spotlights focusing on the animated shorts that have qualified for the 2026 Oscars. The films in this series have qualified through one of multiple routes: by winning an Oscar-qualifying award at a film festival, by exhibiting theatrically, or by winning a Student Academy Award.
Today’s short is Wednesdays with Gramps from writer-director brothers Chris and Justin Copeland and made at DreamWorks Animation. The short has won awards at Palm Springs, Siggraph, Detroit Black Film Festival, and Harlem International Film Festival, and earned its Oscar qualification through exhibition.
The stylized CG short follows a teenage boy who would rather do just about anything than spend an afternoon with his grandfather, who lives in a boring assisted living center. That is, until he finds out that Gramps is a joystick jockey with high scores on some classic game cabinets at the local arcade. A vibrant palette, upbeat music, and flashy, game-inspired VFX make for an entertaining watch as two generations find common ground and weekly visits turn into something to anticipate rather than dread.
Cartoon Brew: What was it about this story or concept that connected with you and compelled you to direct the film?
Chris and Justin Copeland
Chris and Justin Copeland: We always look for the emotional hook of the story first and foremost. For this piece, we thought that it would be cool if a grandpa were really good at old school video games, and that this was a connection point between him and his reclusive grandson. Once we found the emotional hook, it was all about finding the coolest path possible. We were born in the ’80s and were around when all of the cool stuff began to come on the scene, which influences a lot of what we create on a daily basis. This is a love letter to those things!
What did you learn through the experience of making this film, either production-wise, filmmaking-wise, creatively, or about the subject matter?
We learned a lot about the power of freeing a really talented team of artists to just create within the confines of a good story and watch as they bring a world to life. So many filmmakers lead with fear, like their vision will be lost if so many people add their ideas to yours. We found that the opposite is true.
Can you describe how you developed your visual approach to the film? Why did you settle on this style/technique?
Chris had the idea of creating a look that paid homage to video games through history, from 1-bit squares to photorealistic visuals. However, the 7-minute time constraint made this impossible. So our production designer, Fred Stewart, had an idea to use old-school video game graphics as a foundation, purposely adding jagged pixels and textures that mirrored some of the earliest games. This was scary at first because we wanted the film to stand out with colorful, high-fidelity images that our studio is known for. Fred, however, was steadfast in his belief that the true essence of the look was down this path, and he was right!
I imagine that two brothers making a short about the inter-generational connection between a grandson and his grandfather have a lot of common material to draw from. How much of yourselves and your own family made it into this short?
We actually never knew our grandparents. They passed away at an early age. This film is our “wish fulfillment” dream of what we feel like our grandpa could have been. A cool dude who owned all the high scores at the arcade. However, we put a lot of our kids into the lead character Deshaun, who, like them, just wants to be home playing video games all day! However, we wanted to tell the story of how much we have in common when we take the time to discover people for who they really are!