In “Partly Cloudy,” the clouds create babies for storks to deliver. The babies include human children as well as animals such as kittens, puppies, crocodiles, and porcupines.
The 2009 Pixar short imagines the sky as a baby-production center. Cheerful white clouds form cute, cuddly creatures and pass them to storks, which carry them to expectant parents. Gus, a lonely gray cloud, has a more difficult assignment: he creates animals that are dangerous or painful for his stork partner, Peck, to transport.
The story’s premise grew from director Peter Sohn’s childhood reaction to “Dumbo,” in which a stork delivers the title character. Sohn wondered where the birds got their babies, leading to the film’s whimsical cloud-based explanation. The other choices—lightning, snow, and rain—are weather phenomena in the real world, but they are not what the clouds manufacture for delivery in the short.
“Partly Cloudy” was written and directed by Sohn and produced by Kevin Reher. It played in theaters before “Up,” and its emotional core is the friendship between Gus and Peck, who ultimately returns rather than abandoning his cloud partner.