Electropolis is “the product of roughly 7 months of work from 13 students in the 3rd year of the BAA Animation program at Sheridan College.” It’s interesting to note the rise of student films made in groups at North American animation schools. No doubt the success of group student films from French animation schools like Gobelins and Supinfocom have played a role in encouraging this trend.

For a limited time during the holidays, Rodrigo Blaas has made his spooky CG short Alma available for viewing online. Blaas is an animator at Pixar who took time off from the studio and returned to his native Spain to make this independent film. His brother, Alfonso Blaas, served as the film’s art director. The film’s official website is AlmaShortFilm.com.

According to this BBC report, Fede Alvarez uploaded his short film Ataque de Panico! (Panic Attack!) to YouTube last month, on November 3rd, and now has a $30 million dollar contract to make a feature length Hollywood film — to be produced by Sam Raimi!

Alverez’s four and a half minute film (embed below) was made for $300.

Lit mag Electric Literature has been commissioning indie animators to create short animated pieces based on single sentences from short stories published in their magazine. The pieces, like the one below created by Jonathan Ashley, can be seen on the Electric Literature website.

(Thanks, Donna K.)

Nick Cross finally put his 2007 short, The Waif of Persephone, online. We highly recommend supporting the filmmaker by purchasing the DVD directly from the animator off his website. It contains extras that you can’t get anywhere else, all for a low low price of $13.99.

Tonight on ABC Family, a two-hour presentation of almost all of the Pixar shorts produced to date. It’s the first time that most of the shorts have appeared on TV. The program runs from 7-9PM ET/PT (and again from 9:00PM-11:00PM ET/PT). Two encore presentations will air on the network on Friday, December 18 at 10PM ET/PT and Saturday, December 19 at 6PM ET/PT. The shorts stretch back to the pre-Pixar short Adventures of Andre & Wally B all the way through Presto. A complete list of shorts being aired can be found in this press release. Of course, I can’t let this opportunity slip by without suggesting that you pick up my book The Art of Pixar Short Films, which was created to serve as a companion to the dvd Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 1.

A sweet little piece from Laurent Clermont

Here’s a couple of odds and ends I didn’t around to posting this past week. First up, Chris Jones spent six years making The Passenger and has a blog detailing everything about it.

Next, this short below by Christophe Lopez-Huici is Not Safe for Work (but that’s okay since most of us have the day off). I don’t know why I like it, but the combination of the music and crude stop-motion sorta works for me. More by this animator here.

And finally, this controversial commercial from the UK, created by Mother, for airline pollution activists, Plane Stupid: