One of the challenges most filmmakers will face when releasing new work, is finding an audience to watch it. However, for Short of the Week Alum FX Goby (En Tus Brazos & —The Elaborate End of Robert Ebb) this certainly wasn’t a problem for his latest animated short The Story of an Idea. Created for Google’s annual I/O developers’ conference in San Francisco, where it played to an audience of around 7000 and was live-streamed to millions worldwide, the 3-min film has now been released on the Google Developers YouTube channel, where it has clocked up over 100k views (and counting).

Starting as a simple hand-drawn, black and white animation before cleverly transitioning to vivid, detailed CG around the 1-minute mark, Goby’s film follows the story of ‘Aye’ – an inhabitant of a fantasy world who protects and nurtures an idea until it reaches its full potential. It’s a fun film with a simple concept and impressive production, but most importantly it shows how organisations are more and more turning to the short film format to deliver their message. As Engadget reporter, Nick Summers puts it – “Every press conference should start with adorable animation like this”.

Alongside the The Story of an Idea, Goby also has another short film currently entertaining audiences worldwide, with To Build a Fire playing some of the biggest film festivals out there – from Rio de Janeiro to Amsterdam. Created to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Jack London’s death, Goby’s animation adapts the American novelist’s acclaimed short story of the same name and tells ‘the terrible and tragic tale of a trapper and his dog trying to survive in the overwhelmingly freezing and hostile nature of the Yukon Territory’.

It looks like another impressive, stylish piece. One we hope to see online in the not-too-distant future