“The Adventures of Lil’ Cthulhu” by Zachary Murray, a wonderful way to explain H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu to children, maybe even a few adults too.

Want a child-friendly way to introduce your little one to the traditions of the Old Cult? Meet little Cthulhu, who lives in the magic city of R’lyeh with all his friends, as you and your child embark on a fun and educational journey through the world of the Great Old Ones, meeting all kinds of new buddies from the Necronomicon along the way, from Azathoth to Yog-Sothoth! This series has won multiple awards and has been enthusiastically approved by the department of child-developmental psychology at Miskatonic University.

via Burstein! & I Heart Chaos

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Here’s the trailer for “Travesty City” a beautiful new animated short by Ryan Fedyk, who last year made the wonderful film “Anyone”.

A waiter fills his role with style and precision. As he leaves the restaurant and enters the streets of travesty city, this sense of purpose and stability begins to unravel. How will he translate his sense of belonging at work into the more unstructured reality of his personal life? Will he know alternatives when he sees them?

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“The Seafarers – Island of Horrors”, a wonderfully creepy short film animated by Jim Dirschberger (Eighty Four Films), with artwork by Ferris Plock and Kelly Tunstall.

En route to their next adventure, The Seafarers stop by a mysterious island of horrors. Will they survive?!?!

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A sneak preview of the new 6 part web-based animated series “Anthony Bourdain’s Alternate Universe” coming to the Travel Channel in 2010, featuring Anthony Bourdain of “No Reservations”.

via Veronica Belmont

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“I Love xkcd” by Noam Raby, an animated version of “xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel”.

Here’s the original “I Love the World” Discovery Channel commercial.

via i09

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CollegeHumor has created a parody of the intro that is shown before Pixar films.

via Streeter Seidell

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Marge Simpson is featured on the cover of the November issue of Playboy Magazine, along with a pictorial spread “The Devil in Marge Simpson.

The special version of Playboy with Marge on the cover is only available as a single-copy purchase or download.

via Fimoculous

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guest post by Violet Blue

Comedy is truth: While some of us scratch our heads and wonder how an environment for jobs like “social media guru” and pay-per-Tweet advertising can exist, others create scathingly brilliant and hilarious videos about an environment that is so very ripe for parody. As of today, no one’s done it better than Markham Nolan and his public service announcement video The Social Media Guru. It’s also a promo for Xtranormal Beta, text-to-video moviemaking software that we hope will be available for Mac users sooner than later. Still, the truth hurts. Telling us he’ll gladly give us a special offer for advice on our Twitter accounts (translation: “I’ll sit on your Facebook and whack you up the Twitter. Financially.”) Nolan peels back the rich tapestry of bullshit and delivers line after line of painfully familiar, nonsensical promises that the douchiest of exploitative social media consultants seem to be offering. We OH, and we weep.

We hope you watch this video and learn many ways to monetize your Twitter followers.

via edrabbit

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Brazillian animator Breno Pineschi (Hardcuore) has created “Tic Tic Tac Wafer’s Keyboard”, another wonderful stop-motion animated ad for do bem, this time to promote their Açaí Juice. It’s a follow-up to his Suco de Laranja animated video.

via The Presurfer

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“COMBO”, fantastic stop-motion animation of street art made as a collaboration between Blu and David Ellis, produced by Studiocromie with music by Roberto Lange.

This is a follow-up to Blu’s wonderful “MUTO” created last year.

via Blu

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The early years of Sesame Street featured some great stop-motion animation, two of my favorites shorts were “The King of Eight” and “The Queen of Six”, produced by Jim Henson for the 1970-71 season.

via Drawn!

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Hine Mizushima created a wonderful stop-motion animated music video for “Why Does the Sun Shine?” by They Might Be Giants, from their new children’s album and DVD “Here Comes Science”.

TMBG are currently on tour and are playing at the Fillmore in San Francisco on November 13th.

Oh and at long last theymightbegiants.com has launched a new website design and tmbg.com now redirects to the main site, where previously they had two websites.

UPDATE: Wired’s Underwire recently did an interview with TMBG’s John Flansburgh.

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“The Cat Piano”, a marvelous animated short film by The People’s Republic of Animation, directed by Eddie White and Ari Gibson and narrated by Nick Cave.

In a city of singing cats, a lonely beat poet falls for a beautiful siren. When a mysterious dark figure emerges, kidnapping the town’s singers for his twisted musical plans, the poet must save his muse and put an end to the nefarious tune that threatens to destroy the city.

via i09

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A cool animated video for Google Street View by Google Japan.

via Boing Boing

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Wonderful animated music videos of “Walk Don’t Run” and “Diamond Head” performed by the Japanese ukulele duo U900 from their album “Ukulele Ventures”.

via Sean Bonner

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In the future, dictionaries will use this video to help define the term WTF?

Deep in the forest lived Billy and his charming companions. They peacefully honed their bodies and listened to music there. But a wave of development came upon the forests. One who would turn all to road. Kagamine Rin had come. Billy must stop the construction before all is turned to road.

via Nerdist

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Here’s the new animated video for “Electric Car” by They Might Be Giants from their upcoming children’s CD/DVD “Here Comes Science” (comes out on 9/1). The video was animated by Tiny Inventions and the song features vocals by Robin Goldwasser.

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Gabe Askew created a fantastic cardboard cut-out animated fan video for “Two Weeks” by the band Grizzly Bear.

via Waxy

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“8-Bit Trip” is an amazing stop-motion lego animation by the Swedish band Rymdreglage that pays tribute to classic video games.

via Waxy

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Lori will love this, “Eggs & Sausage” by Tom Waits, animated by Jackie Lay. This video was awarded a Certificate of Typographic Excellence by the Type Directors Club.

via Drawn!

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