FACT: Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, co-wrote Toy Story. Now that we have your attention, I would like to direct your gaze at this animated “application” below. It was created by the gang at Ghostbot for Joss Whedon’s Evil League of Evil contest. It’s a search effort built around Whedon’s 42-minute online musical film Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which is now available for viewing at Hulu.com. Enjoy the malevolent mirth of Huggles!

Three Courses of Death, the second episode of the Happy Tree Friends spin-off series KA-POW! has been released. It features the Buddhist Monkey is his third starring role; his previous appearances were in Enter the Garden and Books of Fury. In this episodes, which is by far the most action-packed, we learn the back-story on how the Buddhist Monkey lost his hair. The 3-minute shorts was directed by Alan Lau who oversaw animation at Ghostbot, while animation was handled by Roque Ballesteros, Tony Cliff, Amanda Lattrell, Alan Lau, Brad Rau, Kris Toscanini and Lyla Warren. If you paid attention to the end credits, you’ll see that effects animation was handled by none other than Adam Phillips, the Flash-animation wizard behind Brackenwood.

The new Happy Tree Friends project is officially live. It’s a spin-off project called KA-POW!, and it’s all-action, all the time. Okay, there’s comedy too… and blood. Lots of blood. The first episode is titled W.A.R. Journal Operation: Tiger Bomb and you are invited to watch:

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

The project is based out of Mondo Media in San Francisco, but for this new series they’ve invited the gang at Ghostbot to animate. These companies have teamed up before for projects like Mole in the City, but for KA-POW! we’re seeing some new takes on the art direction.

To learn more about that and other topics, we are now joined by the co-creator of Happy Tree Friends, Kenn Navarro, writers Warren Graff and Ken Pontac, and Brad Rau, who works at Ghostbot. I should mention that I’ve now started consulting for the team at Mondo, so read cautiously. I’m working from the inside now, and I’m not to be trusted.

AARON SIMPSON: As you now watch your creation spawn a spin-off series, it must be pretty thrilling. Did you have any idea your original short would grow into something this popular?
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What do you get when you cross cute, cuddly woodland creatures with a war zone? Happy Tree Enemies! Well, it’s actually called KA-POW! – a new spin-off action adventure series from Mondo Media, the team behind Happy Tree Friends, that features some familiar faces, including Flippy, Buddhist Monkey and Splendid. The animation is being provided by Ghostbot, and overseen by Mondo leads Kenn Navarro and Rhode Montijo – the creators of HTF. You’ll have to wait until September 2nd for the first episode, but here’s a teaser to tide you over.

The animation rockstars known as Ghostbot have teamed up with the rockstars know as No More Kings. Frontman Pete Mitchell approached the Ghostbot gang about animating the music video for the track Michael (Jump In), which is off their album titled No More Kings. Mitchell conceived the video and directed (he’s a trained animator, with experience at Disney and Henson), but then handed over the physical production of this Flash-animated project to the San Francisco-based studio.

According to the Ghostbot blog, the band visited the studio along with a few of the folks from Astonish, the record label. On the band’s blog, you can see some stills from a behind-the-scenes video shoot (inset), plus they’ve posted some sample storyboards.

The band members are pop-culture nuts (notice the Knight Rider nod at the end of this video), and there’s another animation twist in their story – their name came from a 1975 School House Rock episode titled… No More Kings.

Thanks to Stephen Levinson for the story tip.