A nice little Halloween short about a Corn Kernel who has a crush on a cute piece of Candy Corn. This nicely done G-rated cartoon is from L.A. based boutique studio Oddbot Inc., who specializes in doing pre-school animation series. Crystal Stromer directed.

Drips of humanoid wax worship the fire that gave them life, and then risk everything to investigate a mysterious object that lands beyond the next horizon. This is a 40 second trailer for Mike Dacko’s 5-minute short, Lightheaded, currently playing festivals around the country (though sadly not in Ottawa this week). Dacko is an animator at Disney’s ImageMovers Digital Studio (A Christmas Carol).

Donato Sansone makes bizarre little test films, mostly live action. Enrico Ascoli, his sound designer, posts them online. This is one of his best and its animated:

Arthur Metcalf let me know that his first film, the festival-fave Fantaisie in Bubblewrap (2007), is finally online at YouTube’s Screening Room. The film’s premise is simple and the animation is even simpler, but Metcalf makes us empathize with bubblewrap, which is something of an accomplishment.

Three years in the making, and it looks damn good. Yellow Cake by Nick Cross - read his production blog and watch it here:

Kurt Vonnegut’s eight rules for writing short stories. With a few modifications, they also serve as a nice set of rules for makers of animated shorts. In particular, a lot of people would benefit from following his first one:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

(via Kottke)

Another cartoon Dennis and his Dad won’t be seeing on TV. From Cartoon Network’s aborted Cartoonstitute program, created and directed by Chris Riccardi.

Two separate independent projects, with little in common outside of both being made essentially by one person, each with a lot of dedication. First up, Matthew Reis’ Kid With a Rocket Launcher:

Reis’ film is quite an ambitious project. Toon Boom just did an article on how it got made, and Reis has posted an extensive production blog.

Danny Ochoa, an indie animator residing in San Francisco, was commissioned to direct and animate a music video by local Bay Area band The Greening. I think it captures the proper underground comix feel:

Danny tells us:

Yes, I made the entire cartoon by myself… Written, directed and animated. The cartoon took me a year to complete because I had to work nights on it and had a day job at the time. It was rendered entirely in Flash and I tried to keep the look of the cartoon as traditionally hand drawn as possible, as almost every frame was meticulously hand drawn with a wacom tablet.

I love underground comics and cartoons from the golden age of animation so I tried to combine those two looks to the cartoon. The characters in the video are actually from a comic I have been self publishing for years called Molly & Jo. I hope to someday pitch “Molly & Jo” as an animated series and hope that the video is the first step in that direction.