Hayley Morris is a director and animator at Curious Pictures in NYC. Her short stop-motion animation Undone won best animated short at Slamdance 2009. Hayley joined Curious in June 2008 after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. Undone, her senior film project, is a tribute to her grandfather who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease.

ComingSoon.net posted this publicity image from Teddy Newton’s Day & Night, the Pixar short that will screen in front of Toy Story 3. Teddy has been in the industry for quite a while—I did a profile on him back in 2002 for Animation Blast #8—and it’s exciting to see him finally get the spotlight with a short that’ll be seen by many people. Don Shank, who worked on the film, wrote on his blog earlier today that Day & Night is “unlike anything Pixar has produced before” and that working on the film was “one of the best times I’ve ever had working on anything, which is saying a lot because I’ve worked on some really great projects (uh… hello… like the academy award winning UP!).”

(Thanks, Tony Wisneske)

When In The Country is a stylish British public safety film from 1963. Please share if you know the studio or director responsible for this. I found out about the short thanks to Lost Continent which is a commendable blog dedicated to exploring the artwork and history of British animation.

Maybe is a sweet little, 2-minute, “Eco-piece” by Sam Chou of Toronto’s Style5 animation boutique. Chou says the work was inspired by a frustrating conversation he’d had with a friend. The film asks fundamental questions about human nature and our relationship to the environment, and uses a combination of techniques: from the traditional, hand-drawn animation, rotoscoping, to full on digital painting and compositing.

Now online: Runaway, a popular short from last year by Cordell Barker (The Cat Came Back). And kudos to the NFB for making so much of their animation library, past and present, readily accessible online.

(Thanks, Warren Leonhardt)

It’s not often that I plug an animated short that isn’t finished yet, but I can’t resist this time. Slim Pickings Fat Chances is an almost-finished short by David de Rooij and Jelle Brunt from the Netherlands. The film makes no pretensions about being anything other than a funny cartoon (dialogue-less to boot), and it reminds me of a 1950s Tex Avery short in the best way possible. The timing is sharp and spot-on, the animation is funny, the characters are appealingly drawn, and the backgrounds have a delightful Paul Julian vibe. Usually, whenever artists try to capture the animation style of a bygone era, they fall short in some area or another and the effect is ruined. It’s rare when all the cogs are in place like this cartoon. It reaffirms my belief that there are superbly talented young artists working in animation today, and even when the mainstream industry doesn’t provide them opportunities, they create their own. The filmmakers have a production blog with concept art, animation tests, character designs and more. Keep an eye out for Slim Pickings Fat Chances when it hits the festival circuit later this year.

(PS: I found out about this short when David de Rooij won the caricature contest on the Brew a few weeks ago and told me about his film. A silver lining in a difficult situation.)

Writer, director, designer and modeler Heiko van der Scherm took three years to produce his CG short film Descendants. Whoopi Goldberg lent her voice to the project, which has been playing film festivals and winning awards all over the world.

That’s a clip from Joe Murray’s Frog in a Suit, a new short film that doubles as a pilot. Here’s the set-up:

Peete Moss has just moved to Croakville ( a town full of toads) with his family. Croakville is a town on the fast track, with Industrialist Harvey Croak running everyone crazy. Peete Moss tries to fit in, sports a suit, and tries to “run with the bulls”. In this clip, he has a run in with a local coffee shop, and offends the love of his life, Lilly Patt, who is the local school teacher.

Murray, who is the creator of Rocko’s Modern Life and Camp Lazlo, has a book (with a really long title) coming out later this year: Creating Animated Cartoons with Character: A Guide to Developing and Producing Your Own Series for TV, the Web, and Short Film. He also writes an online journal.

(Thanks, David Essman)