Usually first attempts at anything are bit wobbly. Your first bike ride tends to require Band-Aids and your first oven experiment will likely set off smoke alarms. Well, for artist Sim Marriott, his first go at animation turned out just fine. He animated this spot for UK auto repair provider Kwik-Fit on paper, scanned the drawings into the computer, assembled in Flash and then composited in After FX. The agency on the job was DDB London. How about a first try at animated web series, Sim?

SuperNews half-hours are still pouring out every Friday night at 10/9c, and out here on the internet, the Current team continues to deliver more Flash-animated comedy. This segment is titled Using Pets To Get You Laid.

Harry Partridge’s Flash-animated spoof Saturday Morning Watchmen will hit 2 million views today over on YouTube. Next up, a short he produced before that one for Playboy.com. It’s actually pretty tame, so no need to close the blinds – here’s Hal the Misinterpretive Porn Star.

In related news, Playboy.com is hosting an animation contest that runs thru May 31st.

Chris Graf, an FX animator in Ottawa, Ontario created this little quickie in Flash titled Odeus I. There isn’t any audio.

Remember the Activision games for the Atari 2600? I played those to death. Freeway was one of the first, releasing in 1981. Pitfall! came a year later, and now Activision is one of the biggest video game publishers in the world.

And last year, GameTap, the broadband gaming network, hired Six Point Harness to make a series of animated shorts featuring the characters from several of these original game properties. They’re essentially marketing tools to drive more subscriptions to the online service, but you can also play some classic online games for free including Defender and Joust. They were directed by Chris Martin, Fawn Veerasunthorn and Mac Whiting and fell under the Re\Visioned brand, which also saw some 2007 Lara Croft shorts.

Watch all six at YouTube, and here’s two of my favorites:

Freeway (play online – $4.95 per month for over 300 games)

Pitfall! (play online)