In case you missed your chance several months ago, voice actress Janet Waldo (Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop, etc.) and animation writer Earl Kress will return to the internet radio program Stu’s Show today for a live return appearance. Ms. Waldo will be on live at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific talking about her voiceover career post-Jetsons, and they’ll open the phone lines up around 4:30 for listener calls. Listen here!

And, of course, I’ll be back on the Stu’s Show Wednesday June 4th - but I’ll tell you more about that when we get closer to that date.

Forces of Good is a fun blog that I would plug even if its writer Stefan Blitz didn’t just post an interview with me.

Blitz has also interviewed many others including cartoonists Mark Newgarden and Fred Hembeck, screenwriters Larry Doyle and John August, and he blogs about other creative aspects of popular culture. Worth a look.

Recently I became curious to find out what is the most viewed original piece of animation on YouTube. The answer turned out to be a bit of a surprise: Charlie the Unicorn. The original posting of the short has nearly 23 million views, while another copy of the short is approaching 9 million views. There are dozens of other copies of the film floating around YouTube, so it’s safe to say that Charlie the Unicorn now has well over 32 million views on the video sharing site.

Anyway the reason I mention all this is that the creator, Jason Steele, recently unveiled the long-awaited followup Charlie the Unicorn 2 (posted below). In less than a month, the video has garnered nearly 1.5 million views on YouTube. Jason also has a website Filmcow.com that offers hi-res QuickTimes of the shorts and an online store selling Charlie merchandise.

The two Charlie the Unicorn shorts are firmly rooted in the contemporary strain of nonsensical non sequitur humor. Sometimes this type of humor works (Pen Ward’s Adventure Time) and most of the time it doesn’t (Family Guy, almost everything on “Adult Swim”). In the case of Charlie the Unicorn, I have to concede that the humor works nicely, and the clumsy animation only heightens the effect. I wasn’t expecting this short to be the most viewed original animation on YouTube, but looking at the success of Charlie can perhaps offer some clues about the type of cartoons that resonate with today’s online animation audiences.

The new edition of Flip would be worth reading if only for the excellent article on the portrayal of smoking in animation by Dr. Barry Hummel. But it’s got so much more! Here it is!

A disturbing new creation by Pixeloo who gave us Mario a few days ago…

Mike Nguyen is one of the best traditional character animators I know. Fiercely independent, Mike’s working on his own feature film essentially by himself, and has been blogging about it, and his random thoughts about animating — with video clips, sketches and sculpture online — every week on rainplace.net. Check it out. To paraphrase the motto of the old Gotham Book Mart: “Wise animators fish here”.

Volume 2 (2007) of the Society for Animation Studies‘ peer-reviewed on-line journal is now available for download (as a PDF or html file) on the Animation Studies website.

The Animation Studies journal consists of academic papers written mainly by scholars and historians, making for a somewhat dry reading experience. However, the topics are interesting - and intelligent discourse on animation is always a good thing. The online publication is available free of charge, and the articles are licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Contents of Vol. 2 include: Animated Appeal: A Survey of Production Methods in Children’s Software by Tom Klein; (The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix by Alan Cholodenko; The Two Golden Ages of Animated Music Video by Gunnar Strom.

And last but not least, Amy Ratelle’s article Half-breed Dog, Half-breed Film: Balto as Animelodrama (which opens Volume 3) sums up the kind of article this journal specializes in. If this is your thing, click here.

There is a reason I plug Steve Moore’s online FLIP magazine every month: It’s damn good! The latest edition, now up, features the amazing DEAN YEAGLE discussing Zander’s Animation Parlour - with clips of several classic Jack Zander commercials (Freakies cereal, Good n’ Plenty candy, Crest Cavity Creeps, etc.); features on artist SUE BLANCHARD, illustrator RICHARD MORGAN and an interview with toy collector/creator/Pixar character designer JEFF PIDGEON. Go here and flip out!