3 buddies, 1 ice cream van and a road-trip for the ages. Ice Cream Road is a 5-minute film directed by Frenchmen David Decobert, Thomas Fourniret and Jean-Philippe Florin for the Annecy 2011 YouTube Contest. The theme this year is Animation, Land of Freedom, and artists are encouraged to include a reference to the USA, who are the 2011 guest country. I think this one has a strong chance at taking the top prize:

Last Friday we posted Cedric Villain’s submission for the Annecy 50th Anniversary contest on YouTube. While that was a well-executed short, I’m going to predict that the winning submission was posted today. It’s by Bernard Derriman, the brilliant animator from Sydney, Australia. You know him from his series Arj and Poopy and the dozen other shorts we’ve posted of his shorts we’ve posted here throughout the years. Playing off the theme of “birthdays or celebration,” Derriman has uncorked an excellent little film. Pop pits a chicken versus a fox in champagne-soaked battle that should have the judges drunk with enthusiasm. Derriman had help from long-time friend, and fellow countryman, Adam Phillips, who helped launch the bazooka champagne effects.

Cedric Villain has delivered his submission for the Annecy 50th Anniversary contest on YouTube. The Festival international du film d’animation à Annecy kicks off on June 7th, and the winner of the competition gets a flight to the festival and a 6 night hotel stay. This piece builds rather slow, but it pays off nicely at the end:

Three cheers for Nina Paley and her Flash-animated feature film Sita Sings the Blues, which took home the top feature prize at the 32nd Annecy International Animated Film Festival. As you may have spotted at CartoonBrew.com, Paley received an Annecy Cristal trophy after the jury, which included Matt Groening, voted in her favor. Bravo, Nina!

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.