Former Animato and Animation Planet editor G. Michael Dobbs has collected his writings, interviews and reviews from those publications into a new book from BearManor Media, ESCAPE: How Animation Broke Into the Mainstream in the 1990s.

Dobbs’ book contains several interviews with the key players during that last decade, including Parker and Stone, Klasky and Csupo, along with voice actors and various executive personnel at Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. For more info on this book, check the BearManor website.

I’m not sure how long this has been posted, but I just found out that Cracked Magazine.com has listed what they believe are the 9 most racist Disney characters of all time. It’s quite a list.

Aardman Animation is using their incredible talents to create a series of TV spots to highlight the problems faced by people with disabilities. Creature Discomforts is part of a campaign to try and change the way most people view the disabled. The spots will begin airing in the UK next month, but the website, now live, posts all them and a behind the scenes piece.

Ottawa-based animator/director dynamo Nick Cross talks to Chris Robinson about his career in this article in Guerilla magazine. He explains why he chooses to work from home instead of animation studios (”Every time you go into a studio, it just feels like, ugh.”), and why he jumps back and forth between industry gigs and creating his own independent films (”I just have to do something of my own. I get more satisfaction just doing short films… Maybe it’s really arrogant, something like that, ’cause I just like doing my own things and having my control of things. I just do it to please myself, you know.”)

Nick’s latest film, Waif of Perspephone, which has the distinction of being labeled “an interminable twelve and a half minutes of pseudo-Kricfalusi ugliness” by Michael Barrier, can be purchased on dvd here.

Check out the Christmas issue of Flip. This month features stuff to buy from FLIP artists, and articles by Nancy Beiman, Signe Baumane, Tina Price, Dave Pruiksma, Sarah and Carolyn Bates, and special feature: a rare video, and behind the scenes story, of the annual live Disney staff Christmas “special” (performed in the windows and on the roof of Disney’s animation building in 1982), The Eddie Show!

Bill Stewart of Frantic Films posted a precious family heirloom on flickr: Treasure Chest’s Hobby Craft - Points on Cartooning and How To Draw Funny Pictures by George Carlson (Jingle Jangle Comics).

(Thanks, Bill Stewart)