A few months back, we featured Harry Partridge’s short Jimmy Tickles’ Magic Pickles, which is filled with very “traditional” looking animation. Since then, Patridge has been hard at work on his next piece, which reminds me of Bart Simpson’s title sequence skateboard ride, but with a slightly different outcome (which is slightly NSFW). Chuck’s New Tux was written by Harry’s friend Nathan Tuffin, who had recently been lamenting the fact that his scripts never ended up being realized. Problem solved.

A few years back, Trevor Piecham, who resides in Boston, animated his first short film, titled Hyperactive Ingredients. Piecham, who holds a day job at Soup2Nuts, drew the initial keyframes traditionally and then executed the inbetweens in Flash. The short feels ripe for a Spike & Mike’s screening, but you’ll never guess where it ended up - Annecy. That’s right, the highly-regarded French animation festival accepted Piecham’s short, and screened it alongside Augenblick’s Golden Age in a 2007 collection titled Politically incorrect: Why Not?

NSFW - complete with buckets of spew, scat and blood.

Late last month, we profiled a few final films from graduating Sheridan students. Since then, two more bubbled up, and the first is by Alan Cook and Philip Rodrigues. Eight months in the making, Unicycle Joe is the story of a boy with a unicycle leg. The film was animated entirely in Flash, and composited together in After Effects with Photoshop backgrounds. When you’re done, get an eyeful of the color script at Alan’s amazing blog.

Next up is kaBOOM, a short by Jordan Lamarre-Wan that features an unusual trio competing in a drag race. Jordan teamed up with Brian Seligman who composed and performed the original score. A big batch of development art is available at the film’s website kaboomfilm.com, and you can see Jordan’s animatic (or Leika) at his blog.

Vancouver Film School’s animation program recently said goodbye to Pedro Eboli. But before he left, Eboli took 2 weeks to learn how to use Flash, and in the following 2 weeks he created this short below, titled A Pug’s Life. Congrats on graduating, Pedro!

David Ferguson, an animator in Glasgow, has started uploading several of his Flash-animated shorts to YouTube. His use of suggestive backgrounds and quirky character designs immediately captured my attention, and his kooky, bittersweet storytelling is quite refreshing. So many Flash animators, including myself, strive for slick, fluid animation - but Ferguson crafted his own style that’s a bit jerky, floaty and wonderfully unique. Enough gushing - onto his latest work, titled Terry Runders Kicks a Stone.

I just used the words “quirky,” “kooky,” “floaty” and “jerky” in a single paragraph. Nutty.

Tim Farrell, the talent animator behind Email! and a Dinosaurs in the Bible, just animated his way into a woman’s heart. His marriage proposal was recently accepted, and then shared online. Please join me in congratulating Tim and his bride to be!

I’ve always resisted the urge to post stick animation here. The exception occurs when someone transcends the format, like Alan Becker’s Animation vs. Animator. And 25-year old Chinese artist who goes by JustSolo just set the bar a notch higher with Ghostfight: Battle of the Swords, which could pass for high-end gameplay video.

The short is now in the #1 slot at Newgrounds, a site his government won’t even let him view. For screengrabs and project details, check out his blog.