Andre Barnwell designed, directed and animated this first Flash-animated episode of Smoke This for Toronto-area rapper Big Page, who is reportedly a big fan of cartoons. Lubomir Arsov helped out on character designs, Evan Bonafacio assisted on animation and Mark Mohammed worked on the vehicle designs.

Later this year, a new Flash-animated series is set to premiere on Cartoon Network. Hero:108 “follows the mythic adventures of Lin Chung, Mystique Sonia, Jumpy GhostFace and Mighty Ray as they fight to bring peace to a Hidden Kingdom where a war between animals and humans is raging,” and the series is a co-production by Gamania Digital Entertainment, Mike Young Productions, Moonscoop, and Cartoon Network Europe. They’ve recently launched a website and a Facebook page. Join either site by tomorrow, May 15, and you’ll automatically be entered in a drawing for a limited edition vinyl toy (inset). By way of Executive Producer, Rita Street, we’ve also landed an exclusive clip – an animatic-to-animation comparison. I really dig those rectangular clouds.

Fatkat Animation Studios’s work has been featured here at least a few dozen times, so it’s with heavy heart that we announce their demise. Over at the Fatkat blog you can read how it all went down, and Cartoon Brew is also reporting on the story.

The response around the web is expected – venom mixed with sadness – but from where I sit, that’s less animation jobs and I never like to report on that. I hope everyone up there finds work soon and congrats on a great run.

For more on Fatkat, read our interview with founder Gene Fowler, who is reportedly starting a new studio called Loogaroo.

For an animation program assignment at the Queensland College of Art, artists Chris Voigt and Chris Russell created a web series pilot, titled The Body Count. The actual assignment urged the students to create and pitch an animated TV show, but these two figured a pilot episode would go one better. They’ve now released this initial episode of a spoof new program, and the results of this online debut will play into their presentation in class. [NSFW - language]

Back in 2007, we highlighted the various animated projects that entered in Sundancechannel.com’s ‘Greenimation’ competition. Cole Gerst’s Yung Yeti took the top prize, which led to a 5 episode order. These installments are all live on the web now, including this 2-minute episode below.