Tiny Inventions, a Brooklyn-based animation studio run by husband-and-wife team Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata, recently created a fun and charming music video for Playhouse Disney called “Davy Crockett in Outer Space.” The song is by They Might Be Giants, and they co-directed the piece with designer/illustrator David Cowles. Max and Ru have also created a detailed “making of” blog post that shows all the hand-crafted effort that went into the production.

There was a funny story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (link to article on another site) about how companies that provide costumed characters for birthday parties are finding creative ways of bypassing trademark laws and creating new characters that look almost like their famous counterparts. So SpongeBob is now “SquishyGuy” and Elmo is “Big Red Tickle Monster.” According to the article, the results aren’t always entirely successful:

Miriam Sorkin, an office manager in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., threw a fourth-birthday party for her daughter in May and arranged for a costumed impersonator of Dora the Explorer. Though the walk-about “Dora” had the expected pageboy haircut and backpack, her expression was blank and her legs appeared out of proportion to the rest of her body. “When Dora came out,” Mrs. Sorkin says, “none of the kids would go to Dora, including my daughter, and a few of the kids started crying.”

Jamie Hewlett’s new BBC promo for the Olympics is damn impressive. Watch it on the BBC website. Also, there’s a new interview with Hewlett in the Guardian in which he talks a bit about working on this Olympics piece:

‘It looks wonderful and I’m really thrilled by it,’ says Hewlett. ‘It’s gone through so many changes because there are so many departments at the BBC, and the Olympics is their biggest gig of the year. Damon [Albarn] and I are used to having the luxury of doing exactly what we want, and we understand that this whole idea of using animated ancient Chinese characters is quite a wild-card for them. But somebody at the BBC had seen the Monkey opera and they put our name into the mix. And I think we’ve managed to keep the BBC happy, to tick every box, without ruining the original idea. I mean, the characters aren’t wearing running vests!’

(Thanks, Will Kane)

Pixar storyboard artist and Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher co-creator Bill Presing will debut his new “cute cartoon girl” book Bookplate Betties at the Red Window booth (#4800). A preview of the book can be found on Bill’s blog. He’ll be sharing the booth with a couple other talented artists down from Emeryville: Scott Morse and Jeff Pidgeon. Click Pidgeon’s link to find a crazily detailed diary of his San Diego experience. If Jeff figures out how to add some funky-smelling odors to his blog, it’d be just like the real thing.

JJ Villard, who set the animation world ablaze a few years back with his amazing student films and then somehow ended up working at DreamWorks for a while, will be offering his wares for the first time in San Diego. At booth A-04, Villard will debut a full-color book of his artwork titled “Someones Getn Fucked Tonight” as well as a DVD (that I highly recommend) of seven of his animated shorts including Son of Satan and Chestnuts Icelolly.

His work is also included in Scrambled Ink, a promising comic anthology put together by DreamWorks story artists. Scambled Ink, premiering in San Diego, is published by Dark Horse, and all of the artists (including JJ) will be doing a signing at the Dark Horse booth on Friday, July 25 from 1-2pm. Also, keep an eye out for JJVillard.com which will be launching soon.

The Art of Andy is a 120-page book of artwork by longtime character designer Andy Suriano (Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls and Star Wars: Clone Wars). He describes it on his blog as a “hardcover, full color smorgasbord of designs and sketches ranging from development ideas, Samurai Jack models and Clone Wars layouts…to comic book pages and paintings, many never before seen!” The book is $25 and debuts in San Diego this week at the Art of Fiction Booth (#523). More details about where Andy will be signing the book in San Diego, as well as where to get the book if you’re not attending the Con, can be found on Suriano’s blog.

It looks like Katzenberg’s mania for 3-D is rubbing off on his artists. DreamWorks animator Donnachada Daly has created a new art book called Depth Charge: 3D Illusions in which all of his lovely line drawings are presented in stereoscopic 3D. It will debut in San Diego at table B-8. For additional details, as well as instructions on how to view the 3D images without glasses, head over to Donnachada’s blog.

Zurich29 is a Paris-based motion graphics studio founded in 2005 by Philippe Constantinesco and Dorian Gourg. They caught my attention with their latest piece, a visually striking three-minute spot for Amnesty International that encourages people to make their voices heard by signing petitions. The highest quality version of the commercial, titled “Ink”, can be found on Zurich29’s blog (be patient, it takes a moment to load). They’ve also been doing a lot of animated visual identity work for MTV France. The work can be viewed on their site Zurich29.com. It’s standard contemporary-looking mo-graph work, but tasteful and well done. There’s also an interview with the studio founders on Partfaliaz.