The gargantuan effort and time Nina Paley spent to get her independent film, Sita Sings the Blues, to the silver screen appears to have been well spent. This 82-minute, Flash-animated feature has already wowed audiences at the Berlin International Film Festival, but her recent screening at the Tribeca Film Festival (where she caught “Tribeculosis” - ha!) has revealed a torrent of glowing reviews. This morning, Variety’s Ronnie Scheib said that her film “constitutes an irrefutable argument for classic 2-D animation as a viable, vibrant low-budget arthouse medium for adults.” How ’bout them apples?

Along the way, Paley paused to join Bill Plympton, Matt Singer and Alison Willmore in an animation discussion with IFC:

If you haven’t seen it already, here’s the trailer for Sita Sings the Blues, dubbed “The Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told”:

Mike Roush’s 5-minute film was recently accepted in the Short Film category at the 2008 Annecy International Animated Film Festival. The Hidden Life of the Burrowing Owl, which was produced by Shannon Prynoski and Titmouse Inc., was animated in Flash, and composited with photo-realistic environments. Allison Craig and David Vandervoot joined Roush on the animation effort, and it marks the first release from the Titmouse Shorts project. Here’s the trailer.

I saw a preview of this film last month, and it’s an exceptional short; subtle, clever and completely unique. Bravo gang, and congrats on your nomination.

Last night at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Joost van den Bosch and Erik Verkerk, the Dutch artists behind Ka-Ching Cartoons, debuted their new 7-minute Flash-animated short The 3D-Machine. Inspired by 50s monster movies, this film is actually produced in traditional 3D format (glassed encouraged, but not required), and the team used Photoshop and After Effects for the backgrounds and Premiere for the editing. The film is about “a professor who invents a machine that can bring everything he draws to life.”

You can view a trailer over at the Ka-Ching website.

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Jossie Malis’ Flash-animated short Bendito Machine was selected as a finalist at the 2006 Annecy International Film Festival - what many view as the Oscars of animation.

Since this success, an numerous other awards, Malis has endeavored to turn Bendito Machine into a shorts factory. The second of 9 planned shorts recently released and below is the first 25 seconds. For the entire short, head over to Jossie’s site, where he has also offered iPod downloads and wallpapers.

Michael Nesbitt, an artist living in Aylmer, Quebec, has found local fame for his Flash-animated anime short Yuki Tani No Shurabi. The 6-minute film recently won an award at the California International Animation Festival. According to an article in the St. Thomas Times Journal Nesbitt began the film in school, and recently returned to the unfinished film and is now selling his own DVDs. Below is a trailer for the short.

And here is how the local news covered the story.

For those planning on being in the Los Angeles area next weekend, FITC Hollywood 2007 is being held at the Hilton in Universal City. This event aims to “facilitate the interaction of key content industry drivers with the best content delivery technology in the capital of entertainment and rich media.”

On Sunday, October 21st, a Flash Animation Workshop is being hosted by Tim Jones, Barry Kelly, Al Rosson and Dave Wolfe, authors of the upcoming book Foundation Flash Animation Techniques. The 10-5 session is a pre-festival workshop that will walk “step-by-step through a “typical” Flash animation project, giving you hands-on experience at each phase of the production.” Tickets are $199 and $125 for students.

Earlier this year, Austin-based documentary filmmaker Anne Lewis partnered with artist Yehudi Mercado and Horseback Salad to create an animated short titled Separate Vacations. The film is structured around an audio vignette about a kennel told by Lewis and then Mercado created the rest using Flash and After Effects. It premiered at the 2007 SXSW Film Festival.