On the heels of recently adopting a dog, multi-hyphenate artist (sculptor, comic-artist, toy maker, animator) Gina Kamentsky has released a new short film. Lil’ Basenji is a wacky 2-minute Flash-animated film on the subject of dog identification. Sounds like Kamentsky could be an advisor on the White House dog.

Vancouver animator Brent Bouchard recently produced a new short film, titled Teen Wolf. For those of you not up to date on your Teen Wolf references, in this 1985 live-action feature film, Michael J. Fox played Scott Howard, his girlfriend was named Lisa ‘Boof’ Marconi, and his bestfriend was Rupert ‘Stiles’ Stilinski.

Atom.com managed to snag an exclusive premiere of a new Happy Tree Friends 2-parter. Junk in the Trunk, which was directed by Ken Navarro, features Lumpy and his pet elephant. Part 1, which you can see below, contains not an ounce of blood. Fear not, the bloody second half can be seen here.

M. Wartella, an illustrator, comic artist and animator, has worked on several Flash-animated TV series, including Wonder Showzen and Superjail! His recent gig, however, found him creating storyboards for the CG Adult Swim show Xavier: Renegade Angel. For an upcoming episode, the show creators, Vernon Chatman and John Lee, invited him to bring a sequence to life in 2D.

The episode, titled Damnesia Vu, premieres Thursday, March 19th (tomorrow!) at 12:15 am ET/PT. Below we ask him a few questions about the production, and his response includes a video tutorial detailing his one-man-band process. But first, here’s a :25 second clip from the 2:00 minute sequence he animated.

AARON SIMPSON: When did you produce this segment?

M. WARTELLA: The animation was done entirely by hand over the course of one month late last year. No assistants or in-betweeners or background artists or anything like that. Just cranked it out all myself, which isn’t too bad for a two-minute cartoon. I’d just come off a gig storyboarding the second season of Xavier, and I think the show’s directors, Vernon Chatman and John Lee, were inspired to try something different based on the illustrative style of the animatics I was doing. They asked if I’d be willing to animate a special segment, and of course I said yes.

SIMPSON: What type of creative direction were you given?

WARTELLA: Well, I had worked with John and Vernon on Wonder Showzen, so I already had a bit of insight into their particular brand of humor. The premise of this episode, Damnesia Vu, is that Xavier is kind of “Quantum Leaping” into different lives, sort of a reincarnation theme, and they had the idea that it would be a cool twist for Xavier, a CGI character, to jump into a flat 2D world. They wrote the script, and we just kind of developed it back and forth from there.

SIMPSON: What transpired during that back-and-forth?
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Hopefully you caught Max Gilardi’s Flash-animated short Jerry, which he produced back in 2007. He has a signature brand of storytelling that involves little dialog, repetition and minimalist audio. It’s kind of mesmerizing, and the same can be said about his new short, Jackie, which is part of the Jerry storyline. I won’t tell you any more than that, as it’s a fun reveal. Check it out over at Newgrounds, where Gilardi is one of the top 15 best-ranked artists of all time.

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