Pixilation by Yuval & Merav Nathan, for musician Oren Lavie.

Animator Elliot Cowan recently posted the following animation on YouTube featuring his characters Boxhead and Roundhead. The short uses an unlicensed piece of music by They Might Be Giants:

So how did the band respond to this? They called up Elliot, while he was taking a dump no less, to tell him they liked the animation and that he should change the credit at the end of the video from “Used Without Permission” to “Used With Permission.”

There are so many video sharing website contests and the like which encourage you to submit your work because you’ll get some “exposure.” If Elliot’s story proves anything, exposure is available to everybody, it’s free, and it doesn’t require silly contests. The key is to simply get your work out there. If it’s good, people will discover it and who knows what can come out of that.

Well made retro-cartoons are always welcome here. Steve Loter (Kim Possible, Ren & Stimpy) directed this sweet video off Tally Hall’s album Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum:

Following up on the piece about the 3D papercraft/cut-out trend, here are two new works that are more-or-less from that school of thought.

I’ve received three emails about this first project in the past day so I figure it’s what all the young kids are talking about this week. It’s a music video for the song “Bubblicious” by music producer Jake Williams, aka Rex the Dog. It was directed by Geoffroy de Crecy at Partizan Lab. The DIY stop-mo aesthetic is fun to watch, but it began to feel repetitive once I realized that that was the video’s entire gimmick and it wasn’t building towards anything more substantial. It’s a great ‘making-of’ video; it’s too bad they weren’t actually making anything.

More successful as a finished piece—yet flawed in an entirely different way—is “Unboxed”, a stop-motion and traditional hand-drawn commercial for Audi co-directed by Aaron Duffy at 1st Ave Machine and Russell Brooke of Passion Pictures. There’s an interview with Aaron Duffy about the commerical at Motionographer. I like the piece, but it’s uncomfortably derivative of cartoonist Saul Steinberg, both conceptually and design-wise. It would have been a classier move if they’d been straight up and acknowledged they were using Steinberg’s work as inspiration instead of pretending like they have no idea who he is and saying in their interview that they “did dozens of designs” for the ad agency. I’m sure they did dozens of character designs, but I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the character is handled in such a Steinberg-esque manner.

One-man creative powerhouse Dax Norman, whose short film The Last Temptation of Crust we featured in episode 4 of Cartoon Brew TV, recently completed a fan music video for the Rafter song “Juicy.” The video employs a style he calls “double-image animation” in which he fits dozens of different characters into the shapes of the primary characters. The result is trippy and one you’ll have to watch at least a few times to catch all the craziness.

I also have to share a non-animation art piece that Dax recently posted on his blog: it’s called Super Mario Coke Head. Recycling has never been this much fun:

Songwriters Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson released an animated video for their holiday single Winter Song. The animation was designed and directed by UK’s Crush Design and Art Direction, a small company of artists with some really amazing graphics and hand drawn typography under their belt. A higher rez version of the video is posted here.

(Thanks Jackie C.)

I have a feeling that 2009 is going to be an awesome year. The new year is only three days old and already amazing opportunities are popping up in my email. Just this morning, musician Nigel emailed me about his cartoon character Surf Rat and he wants ME to animate him! I’m a little busy at the moment so I’m going to make one of our readers’ dream come true by passing along this once-in-a-lifetime deal. Act now before somebody else scoops up this hot item. Here are the details:

whats up my name is nigel i just finished my debut album “Planet earth” you can check out some songs on MySpace. im promoting myself as a hip pop surfer and am having a drawing put together of a surf rat. my debut video is going to be called space beach. i have an amazing concept and marketers who are ready to take this to a huge level if i can create a video of this. i need a cgi or cartoon animator who can turn my surfrat into a music video its only for half of a the video. email me as soon as you get this i would love to see your work. puresource1@hotmail.com thanks a lot, nigel

This is a preview of the song you’ll get to animate:

This Russian music video dates back to 1994. It’s infectious energy makes it the perfect post-holiday pick-me-up. Directed by Slava Ushakov, it brings to life the nonsensical lyrics of the song “Haru Mamburu” by the Russian rock band Nogu Svelo. There’s an AWN article that offers some details about the director Ushakov. Also, an MP3 of the song can be downloaded from the band’s website.

(Thanks, Craig Clark)