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.

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: