Greek artist Petros Vrellis created this beautiful interactive animated version of Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” (video). The interactive work is powered by openFrameworks, an open source coding toolkit for creatives.

via Colossal & Creative Applications Network

Adventures in Plymptoons! by Alexia Anastasio is a documentary about animator Bill Plympton (trailer). The film will be screened on February 17 at the Boulder International Film Festival, February 20 at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana, and March 8 at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York.

This is a collaborative “portrait“ piece on Bill Plympton: The King of Indie Animation. It evolved into a uniquely molded peek into Bill’s creative vision and the inspiration for his hand drawn, animation art. The film crew interviewed and followed Bill on his travels to film festivals, animation master classes and personal appearances in New York City, Woodstock, LA and Portland, Oregon where Bill originally hails from and back to his studio in New York City where his animation magic happens.

via Drawn

“motion feel” by Shinji Inamoto is a frenetic computer animation in which objects undergo wide-ranging transformations. The animation is set to the song “La Combe du Tréboulou” by Thiaz Itch.

via who killed bambi & the MAGNOLIUS machine factory

New York City-based animation studio Nathan Love is behind these cartoon character mashup identification bumpers for the Cartoon Network. We previously posted How The NBC Peacock Logo Was Created, another fun animated project from the studio.

via Quipsologies

“To R.P. Salazar, with Love” is a short animation that tells the true story of how two strangers with very similar names (and nearly identical email addresses) fell in love after a misdirected email connected them. The animation was created by The Rauch Brothers and is part of the StoryCorps oral history preservation project.

In January 2007, Rachel P. Salazar and Ruben P. Salazar were living 9,000 miles apart and completely unaware of each other’s existence. But when an email meant for Rachel accidentally went to Ruben, it wasn’t long before an ordinary mistake began to look like an extraordinary stroke of luck.

See Previously: Animated 9/11 Stories Recorded by StoryCorps

via Neatorama

“The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” is a wonderful Oscar-nominated short animated film about the curative power of story. The film follows a man who loses his books in a hurricane, only to find them after the storm flying like birds. The film is by animator William Joyce (formerly of Pixar and Dreamworks) and co-director Brandon Oldenburg, both of Moonbot Studios. It is also available as a companion interactive iPad storybook.

Inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, “Morris Lessmore” is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favor.

via Short of the Week

Rob Yulfo edited together a series of Peanuts clips in You’re a Creep! Charlie Brown which is set to an eerie cover of Radiohead’s hit song, Creep, by Swedish girls’ choir Vega Choir.

Thanks to Joe Selby for the tip!

Brazilian animator Beto Gomez has imagined “a world where the simple act of reading” has “turned deadly” in the animated short, Reading Kills. The short was the final film project for Gomez who attended the Vancouver Film School Classical Animation program. Gomez describes a bit of his inspiration and process for Reading Kills:

Reading Kills was an idea that I had in 2007 (I believe) after watching Don Hertzfeldt´s “Rejected”. At that time I had no idea how to animate, so I kept the idea in an old paper that luckily didn’t get lost until 2011 when I entered VFS and had to work on a classical animated film.

The whole short took around 5 months (5 months of deadlines!) to be completed, same period that I renounced to shave my beard until completion of the film…

So the film was finished after these steps: storyboard, layout, rough animation, clean animation (done with a brush pen), scanning, Toon Boom, photoshop, sleeping pills (paying attention, right?), After FX and finally Premiere.

Andrewjcm made a compilation featuring The Many D’ohs of Homer Simpson from seasons 1-20.

via reddit

A Year of Sun with Mr. Persol is a fun retro-styled animated commerical directed by Kevin Dart and Stéphane Coëdel for Italian eyewear brand, Persol. The short was produced by Passion Pictures in London through advertising agency, Winkreative. You may remember that Kevin Dart and Stéphane Coëdel also collaborated on the short animated film Yuki 7: Looks That Kill that we posted about in August 2011.

via Kevin Dart

This charming stop-motion music video for the song “The Right Heart” by Scary Car features figurines and sets made by a MakerBot Replicator 3D printer (the Replicator was announced last week). Scary Car consists of Brooklyn-based musicians Bryan Scary and Giulio Carmassi. The animation was created by Annelise Jeske.

Burrow is the 2011 graduation film from Mexican-born animator and artist Federico Gutiérrez from Vancouver Film School. This bizarre and fascinating animated short follows the phantasmagoric romp of a naked couple.

An uninhibited couple is immersed in the absurd night of the umbelicus.

via Cartoon Brew

In 1966, animator Gene Deitch created this delightful 12 minute version of The Hobbit. The animation was only screened once as part of a scheme by producer William L. Snyder to profit off the film rights for the J. R. R. Tolkien story, a Deitch explains in his fascinating online book Roll the Credits.

via Cartoon Brew

“The Joy of Books” is a wonderful stop-motion animation in which the books in a small bookshop come alive at night. The animation is by Sean Ohlenkamp and quite a large number of volunteer book wranglers. It was shot after hours at Type Books in Toronto.

via The Awl

These wonderful animations (1 and 2) based on the art of Edward Gorey were used in the memorable opening sequence to the PBS Mystery! series. The opening animations, which took several different forms from 1980 to 2008, were created by animator Derek Lamb.

via Brain Pickings

“Pingu’s THE THING” is a twisted claymation mashup of John Carpenter’s The Thing, and Pingu, a claymation children’s show about penguins. The short claymation is by Lee Hardcastle (making-of video).

Australian filmmaker Nick Khoo humorously imagines what happens to an annoying driver honking in deadlock traffic in the animated short, Road Rage.

Dedicated to all those jerks who cut me off on the road. You know who you are…

via Geeks are Sexy

David Prosser of Studio AKA directed and designed Good Night, an imaginative animated advertising spot commissioned by McCann Oslo for Norwegian oil and gas company, Statoil. The piece, done in both live action and animation, has a young girl asking her father what he does for a living which then goes into a fun undersea romp as he explains he is a “treasure hunter” for a “treasure” (oil) that the whole world needs.

Skwigly recently interviewed Prosser about this piece. Here he describes his inspiration for the style and content of Good Night:

I was keen to include cross over in the transition from live-action to animation so there are objects from the girl’s room which are reflected in the animation and vice a versa (if you look closely you can see the troll and the octopus!). The world had to be playful enough to reflect the young girl’s imagination and not too dark, yet be reflective of the apparent dangers of the ocean and the obstacles that have to be overcome in this intrepid line of work. They’re is also layers of 2D animated objects and loose 2D linework throughout the animated world, an element that hopefully harks back the that of a childlike drawing, slight naive imperfections that give a depth to the spot and also an element of my signature.

via Cartoon Brew

Pythagasaurus is an animated short directed by Peter Peake of Aardman Animations. Comedians Bill Bailey, Martin Trenaman and Simon Grenall provide the voices for this humorous film about two cavemen seeking help from a small-brained dinosaur that is shaped like a drafting triangle.

3D Artist magazine interviewed Peter about the project:

I actually came up with the idea for Pythagasaurus in the pub. Don’t exactly know why I started going on about a dinosaur who was good at maths but I knew straight away that he had to be called Pythagasaurus. It was that throwaway but the next day it was still stuck in my head and seemed to have potential. A rare occurrence.

via Creative Review

images via Peter Peake for 3D Artist

French animator and teacher Denis Chapon spent over three years making 12 drawings each day of animated scenes. Each time, he would use the last three drawings from the day before which resulted in the lovely four-minute short, 12 Drawings a Day, An Animated Diary.

The 23rd of June 2008, Denis went to the copy room. He found a hole lot of paper printed one side and blank on the other side, he thought he would do something with it. The same day he drew 12 drawings of animation. Since that day he has made 12 drawings every day.

This project has no script, no storyboard, they are all drawn with none erasable pen, and I have not changed the rhythm of the animation afterwards.

via Curiosity Counts

In 1947, American animation pioneer Max Fleischer made a technicolor animated short based on the original 1939 book from Montgomery Ward, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and in 1948, the short was updated to include a new (but now very familiar) song by songwriter Johnny Marks.

via Brain Pickings

In Morphology, director Peter Sluszka takes a clay figure of a man and wonderfully transforms him to other shapes using stop-motion animation.

Also check out the amazing claymation morphing ad he created for luxury vehicle, Land Rover:

via Colossal

“The Christmas Card” is a wonderful 1968 cut-out animation by Terry Gilliam. The animation was for the British TV series Do Not Adjust Your Set, which included several other members of what would become Monty Python’s Flying Circus. “The Christmas Card” shows up in this 1974 clip from the Do-It-Yourself Animation Show, in which Gilliam explains his technique.

via The Presurfer

Freelance illustrator and animator Kirsten Lepore created the sweet short on gift-giving, To Give A Present, for Nick Jr. preschooler TV show’s Yo Gabba Gabba!: A Very Awesome Christmas special. Adam Deibert composed the animation’s tune and James Husband performed it.

via Colossal

Ant Blades of Bird Box Studio has created a cute interactive series of animated videos called Singing Christmas Hedgehogs. To play, you choose your own Christmas hedgehog, then pick a song or activity for your hedgehog and the video takes you from there.

via Oh have you seen this?! and b3ta