Le Building is a 2005 French animated short film directed by a team of final year students at Gobelins, l'École de l'image.

Le Building's team of five directors is composed of Pierre Perifel and Olivier Staphylas, both of whom went on to become Annie Award-recognized animators at DreamWorks, Xavier Ramonède and Annie award-nominated Marco Nguyen, who have continued their careers with animation credits on various high-profile French productions, and Rémi Zaarour, who has since become a comic book artist, published under the pseudonym Pozla.

Inside a crooked, brick apartment complex, a burly man, with a Russian military uniform hanging on his wall, showers, while belting out a song in his native tongue.

Crashing up the stairs, his vehicle comes to a sudden halt on the second floor, sending a small pizza through the mail slot of a closed door.

During their final year, members of the animation program at this prestigious Parisian university form six groups in which to create their thesis films.

[1][2] Le Building was created for the 2005 festival by Marco Nguyen, Pierre Perifel, Xavier Ramonède, Olivier Staphylas, and Rémi Zaarour.

[3] It was in 2005 that computer animation first became a required course of study at Gobelins, and Le Building holds the distinction of being among the first openers at Annecy to use this technique.

[4][5] Wanting their film to suit its placement as a festival opener, the team of students behind Le Building felt compelled to take it in a humorous and "punchy" direction.

[9] Including this early brainstorming process, Le Building's production schedule lasted four-and-a-half months, spanning December 2004 through April 2005.

[11][12][13] A previous collaboration between these three classmates had been exhibited at Annecy one year earlier, in the form of a thirty-second bumper, called Festival Qualité.

[7][16][17] Nguyen distributed his efforts between both disciplines, assisting Staphylas with some of the CG work, while also at times playing the role of traditional animator.

[21] By late June, Le Building had been made available to view online,[22][a] and in October it won the Audience Award at the 2004–2005 Webcuts Internet Film Festival.

[25] Earlier that year, on September 17, the film had an American screening in Wilmington, North Carolina's non-competitive Port City Animation Festival.

[31] In the final months of 2005, the film was distributed through issues of the DVD magazines Stash (#15)[8][32][33] and XFUNS (#21),[33][34][35] as well as through Channel Frederator's fifth video podcast.

[47][48] By the time Le Building won in the Undergraduate category at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in September, Eric Homan of Frederator Studios commented in response, "I feel everyone and his mom has seen this short by now.

"[49] Le Building went on to win Best Foreign Film at Frederator's own awards ceremony in early 2007[50][51] and was subsequently re-released by the studio in an Awards-edition of its video podcast (episode 2).

[57] Shortly after Le Building's premiere at Annecy, Amid Amidi ran a glowing profile of the film on Cartoon Brew.

[58] Multiple times over the following years, Amidi would call back on Le Buildilng as exemplary of the work being produced at Gobelins.

[59][60][61] In conjunction with the 2006 Siggraph conference, Animation Magazine ran an article by Ramin Zahed, noting that Le Buildilng – which was screening at that year's event – had "already generated good word of mouth".

[62] Terrence Masson, then serving as Siggraph's Computer Animation Festival Chair, commented that the films of Gobelins were among the best submitted to him that year.

Eric Riewer, who once served as the head of Gobelins' animation department, wrote in 2010 that he "continue[d] to admire this film for its hybrid form".

He explained, " If everything's moving crazy fast, it's harder to tell if a shape was hand-drawn or not...When the cat lands on the biker in Le Building, the 3D kicks in, and it all feels appropriately wobbly and unstable.

"[69] Stash DVD magazine called Le Building "a manic and charming tale" and predicted that the film would be sure to open up myriad opportunities for its directors.

[70] The Ottawa festival's jury also made a comparison to Goldberg's work,[71] and in 3D World magazine, Le Building's style was likened to that of Chuck Jones.

3D World called Le Building "a gleefully madcap short" and named it one of the ten best student animated films of the year.

[72] The multi-national, Spanish-language publication Blog de Cine also praised the film, writing that it "lasts just long enough" to have a joyous effect on viewers.

[81][82][83] Looking back on their university's "end-of-year jury day", Staphylas said, "I was stressed because I knew that a lot of industry professionals would be there...I was in the corridor waiting for the announcement of my results and I see Shelley Page, the European representative of Dreamworks Animation.

[107] A student project created by Doug Woods at Vancouver Film School in 2008 pairs Le Building with a newly recorded audio track.