British animation artist Edd Gould passed away on Sunday, March 25 from leukemia. He was the creator of the popular online animation series Eddsworld, which achieved a devoted following on numerous video platforms including Newgrounds and YouTube. On YouTube alone, his shorts have been viewed over 80 million times. The Eddsworld universe also included comics and Flash games. Gould animated all the shorts, co-wrote them, and provided some of the voices. It is not clear at this point whether the series will continue without his participation, but the rest of the Eddsworld crew has promised fans that they will finish the two-part episode that Gould was working on at the time of his death.

(Thanks, David OReilly)

SVA grad Ross Bollinger has been steadily building his Pencilmation cartoon brand over the past few years, and his YouTube channel now counts over 4,000 subscribers and 2.6 million views. He recently started a new series of Pencilmation shorts that offer a tongue-in-cheek history of the world. It begins with cavemen:

A second episode about ancient Egypt is already online, and he’s also doing commentaries for each episode. Watch all of Ross’s Pencilmation shorts on YouTube.

Be sure and visit Google’s front page today for an animated Valentine’s Day short with music by Tony Bennett. For a Google Doodle, it’s an impressively long piece. I hope they’ll be doing more of these long-form animated pieces in the future. The designer and writer of the piece was Willie Real and the animator was Michael Lipman (aka Lippy). Also, kudos to Google for not being afraid to slip in a nod to gay marriage.

Canadian cartoonists Seth Scriver and Shayne Ehman recently finished raising over $10,000 to complete their animated feature Asphalt Watches. They describe their collaborative two-man animated epic in the following way:

Asphalt Watches is a true adventure story: in 2000, we hitchhiked across Canada together. The animation captures our crazy journey, full of hilarious and amazing encounters. Using music and songs we make ourselves, alongside hand-drawn Flash animation, we tell the tale of making our way from a 7-11 near Chilliwack, BC where a guy was hanging out with a knife in his belly… to meeting one of only “two real Santas” in the world outside Calgary… to barely escaping death near Regina, SK. Our style is to turn real-life characters and settings into funny and poetic abstractions that depict the feeling and essence of what happened.

The film should be finished this year. There’s an official film blog and the trailer below:

(via Meathaus)

Courtesy of Benny & Rafi Fine and the animators at TwoAnimators we finally get a glimpse of what will happen to Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang when they begin to grow up.

To be sure, there’s a cute voice track in this interstitial for British children’s channel CBeebies, but the piece as a whole is charming and delivers on all fronts, with sharp direction, design and animation (I love the run cycles of the brothers at the beginning). The piece, called “Sam,” was directed by Matthias Hoegg of Beakus, who also made a couple other shorts in the series earlier this year.

CREDITS
Directed, Designed by Matthias Hoegg
Animated by Amaël Isnard and Matthias Hoegg
3D Animation by Amaël Isnard
Additional Compositing by Leo Bridle
Produced by Beakus

We’re back from our Comic-Con hiatus with the fifth film in Cartoon Brew’s Student Animation Festival: The Impossible Moon by Meinardas Valkevičius. The film was made at the Vilniaus Academy of Arts in Lithuania. To comment on the film or read extensive behind-the-scenes notes from the filmaker, click HERE.

This just might be my personal favorite film of the festival. There are countless student films that tell stories set in space (with a large percentage of them revolving around the Russian dog Laika for some inexplicable reason), but this one stands out, mainly because it dares to challenge our perception of a famous historical event. The Impossible Moon convincingly presents an alternate history of an iconic moment through superb command of the animation medium, especially camera, staging and sound. Regardless of your feelings about the story (and for the record, I’m a space buff who doesn’t buy into any conspiracy theories), the film immediately grabs the viewer with its audacious, thought-provoking concept. My favorite part of the film is the relationship between astronaut Michael Collins and his two inflatable travel companions, which affirms that an emotional bond can exist even in a conspiratorial setting.

Cartoon Brew’s second annual Student Animation Festival is made possible through the generous support of Titmouse and JibJab.

Españistán by Aleix Saló serves as a reminder that animation is a medium for educating and informing as well as entertaining. The topic: an explanation of Spain’s housing bubble and subsequent economic crisis. Sound familiar? It’s currently the most popular animated short in Spain, which has been mired in weeks of protests and sit-ins by people who are fed up by the country’s two-party political system and its class of arrogant and out of touch politicians. Sound even more familiar?

Above is an English fansub of Españistán; the original upload has garnered over 1.3 million in the six days since its debut.

(Thanks, Animaholic)

Keymon Ache premiered earlier this week on Nickelodeon India. Watch the first episode on Nick India’s website. It’s about an ordinary Indian boy and his magical rapping monkey Keymon Ache.

The series, which is being touted as “India’s first non-mythological contemporary show,” is produced by DQ Entertainment. Why this is important: the show’s entire production, even the creative pre-production elements, were done entirely in India, and the results are almost on a par with Western animated series. There’s a handful of localized touches, such as the boy not wearing shoes in the home, but for the most part it looks and feels like a Western show. The fact that India can now produce an entire Westernized animated series from concept to completion is both an accomplishment and a game-changer for the animation industry.

(Thanks, Rohit Iyer)

Back in 2009, Cartoon Network Development Studio Europe in London created six 3-minute pilots under the creative direction of Timothy Björklund, who had previously directed American shows like Teacher’s Pet and Brandy & Mr. Whiskers. The studio finally posted them on-line yesterday. The nicest thing one can say is that there’s a lot of talent in that studio and the graphics are fun, but the uniformly obnoxious and aggressive tone of the shorts is an unpleasant reminder of the early-2000s US TV animation industry when nobody seemed able to shake off the combined Spumco/Spongebob influence.

The London studio recently produced its first original series The Amazing World of Gumball, and from the previews I’ve seen, it suffers from the same retrograde tone of these pilots. In a post-Adventure Time world that emphasizes individuality and personal style, generic wackiness doesn’t cut it anymore.

Judge the pilots for yourself:

Elliot’s Zoo by David Needham

The Furry Pals by Rikke Asbjorn

Verne on Vacation by Sylvain Marc

Pinky Malinky by Chris Garbutt

Mutant Moments by Alan Kerswell

Hamshanks and the Himalolly Mountain Railway by Tom Parkinson

(Thanks to everybody who emailed about these.)

Matthias Hoegg, whose graduation short Thursday appeared on the Brew recently, just completed two delightful mini-shorts — “Ollie” and “George” — for CBeebies, the BBC’s channel for preschoolers.

A few details on the production from Matthias:

We had 3-4 weeks for each of them and were working with a small team (in fact just myself for most of it) in the London based studio Beakus. The production process was all-digital using After Effects, Flash, Photoshop and a tiny bit of Maya.

Cbeebies provided us with the edited voice recordings of the kids and gave me pretty much free reign over how I interpreted their narrative. They were really a perfect client and got on board with my direction from an early stage. Working for preschool kids meant an emphasis on characterisation and bold, colourful designs, which were definitely part-inspired by Mary Blair. I wanted to create the impression of discovering the world with child’s eyes and frame everything from a low angle, so you’re in with the flowers and rabbits.

Full credits after the jump:
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Few industry artists I know are as committed to personal projects as Gabe Swarr who’s consistently been making his own work for as long as I’ve known him, which is something like twelve years. He hasn’t slowed down one bit either, an especially impressive feat now that he’s in the middle of producing and directing the hefty 52-episode order of Nickelodeon’s Kung Fu Panda: The Legends of Awesomeness.

For years, Gabe drew Big Pants Mouse — as a comic book, on-line comic strip, and even a pilot at Disney TV Animation (where in typical corporate fashion, they rechristened it Big Shorts Mouse). He retired the character last year to focus on a new pet project Life in the Analog Age.

The tone of Life in the Analog Age — which appears in both comic strip and animated webisode form — is more genteel and introspective than his earlier work. The slice-of-(childhood)-life tales are drawn from his memories of growing up in the late-1970s and early-’80s, which he portrays as a simpler and more innocent time “before digital dominance and information overload”.

His approach is refreshing for its lack of snark and attitude. Watching the shorts brought back plenty of stowed away memories, for example, the mandatory Valentine’s card exchange in grade school (embedded above). Beneath the rose-colored view of such events, Gabe acknowledges the weirdness of childhood rules and rituals. For example, in the Valentine’s Day episode, he observes that the card exchange “was a time to feel liked…a time to feel as if you were part of the class.” But, of course, not really a part of it.

The design of the series has plenty of quirky touches. Some of them, such as the animal-like features on human characters, work better than others, like the stingy color palette of orange and purple, which struck me as too severe for the nostalgic tone of the stories. The animation style is spare but applied smartly to fulfill the need of each story.

The animated webisodes have been released at the pace of one per month, with comics in-between, but beginning next month, Gabe will be releasing two animated shorts per month. I’m looking forward to seeing how the characters evolve as the series moves into a more regular schedule.