Be sure and visit Google’s front page today for an animated Valentine’s Day short with music by Tony Bennett. For a Google Doodle, it’s an impressively long piece. I hope they’ll be doing more of these long-form animated pieces in the future. The designer and writer of the piece was Willie Real and the animator was Michael Lipman (aka Lippy). Also, kudos to Google for not being afraid to slip in a nod to gay marriage.

Video hosting website Vimeo will be presenting their second-annual Vimeo Awards this June in New York City. The deadline to submit films is next Monday, February 20. The awards have an animation category, as well as other categories that may apply to readers of the Brew, like music video, experimental, advertising, remix and motion graphics. The winner in each category receives $5,000 and there’s also a $25,000 grand prize. Entry fees are $20 per film, or $5 for Vimeo Plus/Pro subscribers. Submission details and official rules are available on their website.

I’m a big fan of the service that Vimeo provides to the filmmaking community. They get everything right from their high-quality video player to elegant site design and respectful community standards. That’s why I’m delighted that they invited me to be one of the judges in their Animation category, along with DreamWorks’s Marcy Page and Eran Hilleli, whose short Between Bears won the animation prize at the first Vimeo Awards. Make our jobs hard and submit lots of great animated films!

Yesterday, the BAFTAs—the British equivalent of the Academy Awards—were handed out, and the winners of the Animated Feature and Shorts categories were Gore Verbinski’s Rango and Grant Orchard’s A Morning Stroll. The production design nod went to Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo for their work on Hugo, and “special visual effects” was awarded to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (Tim Burke, John Richardson, Greg Butler and David Vickery).

Both Rango and A Morning Stroll are Oscar nominees as well, but it’s difficult to judge what a BAFTA win means for their Oscar chances. That’s because besides these two films, the BAFTA nominees in both categories were completely different from the Oscar nominees. Interestingly, the other nominees in the BAFTA animated feature category were The Adventures of Tintin and Arthur Christmas, two films that many said should have also received Oscar nods.

Think Brilliance by Diego De la Rocha (Canada): “This is my animation final project from Vancouver Film School. Shot #1 (Head Title Sequence—Stop Motion / Cloth, strings, cardboards & maple leaves); Shot #2 (CG Lightbulb—Maya 2011/ Zbrush/ Photoshop/ Nuke/ Premiere Pro)”

Futile Devices—Kickers by Nicolas Ménard (Canada): “A series of 6 five seconds kickers made in Denis Dulude’s class at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal)”

God and Money by Philip Vose (US): “Finished in just under five days for my church as an intro to a short series topic of God and money.”

Embroidered Dog Animation—Front and Back by Aubrey Longley-Cook (US)

(NSFW) Twenty Four Hour Woman by Scott Lenhardt (US): “Celebrating the women who make the world go around.”

PHONO – a Sound Creature by Lucas Zanotto (Italy/Germany): “Sound creatures are imaginary beings, a collection started and maintained by composer & sound designer David Kamp in the name of science.”

(Futile Devices via Drawn)

“I don’t know and I would like to correct that,” was John Lasseter’s response when asked by the Wall Street Journal why Studio Ghibli films don’t perform well in the United States. “I ask that same question all the time…They’re beautiful on the big screen.” Next week, Lasseter and Disney will make their most ambitious attempt to popularize Ghibli’s films stateside when they open the English-language version of The Secret World of Arrietty on 1,200 screens.

The WSJ Journal article about the film, which can be read here (but might be behind a paywall), describes Disney’s challenge of building buzz for the film without any merchandising rights. They are hoping that Arrietty finds a broader audience than the typical Ghibli film since it’s based on Mary Norton’s children’s classic The Borrowers. It’ll be interesting to watch how the film performs in the US. This is a relatively wide release for an indie/foreign animated film, and when Disney feels that they can make money from a more diverse palate of animated films, other film distributors will likely follow suit.

Tonight at 6:30, the Society of Illustrators (128 East 63rd Street, between Park and Lexington Ave.) presents a special screening of Bill Plymptons’s colorized and voice-enhanced version of Winsor McCay’s The Flying House. Bill will be on hand afterward for a cocktail reception, as will the film’s voice actors Matthew Modine and Patricia Clarkson. Tickets are $10 (students), $15 (Society of Illustration members) and $20 (general public). Purchase them at the Society of Illustrators website.