Lui Lui in Amelica is a thesis film project by Chinese-born Vera Wing Lui, who graduated this year from University of the Arts in Philadelphia. According to the filmmaker, “Because of her cultural background and the cultural differences she has experienced in America, she created her most recent short films…Since this is a mirror and metaphor to her life, the whole film is all based on true stories.”

Lui worked with Signe Baumane on her “Teat Beat of Sex” series, and like Signe’s films, the Lui Lui cartoons are short, self-contained episodes narrated by the filmmaker. Above is the second episode called “Tattoo.” The first episode is called “Crush Me.” They’re gentle and cute, but with just enough bite to make me want to see more. I don’t know if Vera is continuing production on the series, but Lui Lui does have a blog.

(Thanks, Fran Krause)

For several hours over the weekend, 14 Cartoonstitute shorts were posted on You Tube. Monday morning they were all gone. However, one of them - Derek Drymon’s Danger Planet - has escaped and I’m pleased to post it below. Watch it while you can:

Leah Shore just graduated from RISD. This is her thesis film. This is either genius or nonsense. I’ll let you decide. It’s NSFW.

I’d like to applaud Channel Frederator for finally seeing the light after nearly four years of operation, and announcing that they’re going to begin doing what Cartoon Brew TV has been doing since day one: paying filmmakers for their content.

They even made a video to commemorate this momentous occasion:

Let’s get one thing straight: Paying artists is always a positive thing. But the manner in which the guys at Channel Frederator are doing it continues to reflect their lack of regard and respect for the filmmaking community upon which they’ve built their brand. Seriously, in what universe is $50 considered an acceptable fee for anything nowadays? Have they been misinformed that filmmakers can time travel back to 1964 to make all their purchases?

Here’s a reality check—the last time I went out to lunch with Channel Frederator founder Fred Seibert, our lunch bill ended up being over fifty smackers. In other words, this paltry amount isn’t even enough to fill up Fred’s tummy for one afternoon, yet somehow it’s supposed to represent a filmmaker’s reward for months of blood, sweat and tears. They’ve also announced that every month they’ll pay the filmmaker of the most viewed film a whopping $200. Guess what? That’s still less than what we pay every single filmmaker on Cartoon Brew TV.

Cartoon Brew TV doesn’t claim to be the standard bearer for online film distribution. Our company is two guys, Jerry and myself, and we’ve never received tens of millions of dollars in funding like Channel Frederator’s parent company, Next New Networks. But at the end of the day, I sleep well knowing that I do my best within our limited means to give something back to the community. I don’t make self-congratulatory videos and blog posts when I decide to do the right thing that I should have been doing all along. I put my money where my mouth is instead of making grandiose outward shows of being artist-friendly and supportive of creators. And most importantly, I don’t insult filmmakers by paying them fifty bucks. 

I truly believe that there needs to exist an alternative to the hucksters who have been exploiting the animation talent pool for years. This is what drives me to continue building Cartoon Brew TV into the premier destination for animated shorts online. We all know that the possibilities for filmmakers to earn money on the Internet are greater than ever. And while I don’t have a lot of money, I have more than $50, and I’m more than happy to dole it out when I put your film on the site. Who knows, maybe this idea of paying animators a respectable fee for showing their work online will someday become an industry-wide practice. It’s only fair, right?

Chances are you’ve seen this film on every other site this week, but Combo, the latest work by Blu (Muto) and David Ellis is an epic mindtrip. Created in just under a week at the Fame festival in Italy.

Pasta for War is a “1930s war propaganda film made to seduce naive rigatoni to join the fight against being eaten”. Dirtected by Zach Schläppi.

(Thanks, Dan Fiebiger)

Chainsaw Maid has gotten a fair share of play this year, but I thought it deserved a bigger shout out here on Cartoon Brew. The idea to match up colorful plasticine with the zombie genre was a revelation for me—a perfect match. Show me a better use, or at least one that’s more fun, for plasticine.

The film is very well edited and shows a lot of directorial promise. The director, Takena Nagao, takes the zombie genre and replicates its idiosyncrasies flawlessly. The music is delightfully creepy, and works like a charm.  The candy-colored world is almost edible and had me wondering what purple brain blood tastes like. From a storytelling perspective, Chainsaw Maid mixes reaction shots, wide angles and close-ups better than some of the feature films I’ve seen recently.

Perhaps most impressive of all is Takena’s use of the moving camera: the quick zooms, the subtle pans and tilts, the lens recalibrating during a shot to find the action (e.g. 2:53-3:02). It takes confidence to move a camera like this, and even more confidence when you’re doing it in-camera without the aid of rigs/motion control. Takena uses it to add tension, believability, and dynamism to the film at just the right points—in other words, not just for the sake of moving a camera, as so many directors (amateur and professional alike) tend to do.

All in all, I find it super-refreshing to see a talented young filmmaker having so much fun and I can’t wait to see his future work.

PS. This is a link to Takena Nagao’s YouTube channel. And if you like Chainsaw Maid, check out Takena’s latest film, Pussycat.

Pa-NO-Rama is a delightful example of how a film can communicate a meaningful and funny message in one minute flat and leave the viewer wanting more. It’s by Italian animator Diego Zucchi.