Drawing inspiration from the overtly flat, linear animation style of 1960s Disney shorts — not unlike Fantasia 2000’s Rhapsody in Blue sequence and Pixar’s own “Day & Night” short — Soul whips up a friendly world overseen by cheery, ontologically ambiguous counselors who are all called “Jerry” (voices include Alice Braga, Richard Ayoade and Wes Studi) whose look is part Picasso and part UPA short.
That delineation features some of Pixar’s most interesting visuals since the 2010 short Day & Night , which combined 2-D and 3-D animation.