Just in case Frozen 2 on Disney Plus isn’t enough to keep kids entertained while they’re stuck at home, Disney animator Hyrum Osmond and actor Josh Gad have teamed up to produce a new series of shorts available on YouTube.
At Home with Olaf follows Gad’s beloved character from the Frozen movies as he gets into a series of hijinks around Arendelle. The first episode is written and voiced by Gad, who plays the snowman in both movies, and animated by Osmond, who oversees animation on Olaf projects. It’s pretty simple: Olaf is lobbing snowballs into the Arendelle forests and accidentally sends a miniature snowman — known as a snowgie — flying through the air. He realizes what happens, the snowgie returns, and life continues on!
It’s not exactly exciting, but it is super charming and adorable. Plus, it’s impressive. Even if Osmond is working off existing character models and backgrounds, the fact that an entire 50-second short was made while both Osmond and Gad were at home is an accomplishment in its own right.
This isn’t the first project that Gad has taken on since being stuck at home. The actor also used Twitter and Instagram’s live tools to read children’s books to kids around the world, giving their parents a quick reprieve. Lending his voice to Olaf for a few quick shorts that might make someone’s day a little better feels like a very Josh Gad thing to do. Plus, Olaf’s short little adventures are nowhere near as exasperating as Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, the short film that played before Coco in 2017 and aggravated theatergoers everywhere.
It’s unclear how often Disney Animation will be publishing the shorts, but a tweet from the company refers to At Home with Olaf as a new digital series, so expect more episodes in the days to come.
