A new division at FlickerLab called MOSS, which is “dedicated to producing media that fosters environmental, social and political awareness,” produced this PSA below for the American Heart Association. It stars the animated Better Fats Sisters, who hope to keep us from getting heart disease. You may recall The Bad Fat Brothers from last spring, and this is the corollary aimed at keeping you from having a coronary. Yeesh - what was in my coffee this morning?

Early last month, Nobel Prize winner Al Gore spoke at the Technology Entertainment Design (TED) conference in Monterey, California. He delivered a shortened version of the world’s most famous PowerPoint presentation, the slide show that turned into the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The video of Gore’s 30-minute speech can be seen at the TED website, but below you can view a short segment pulled from the middle. It features Dave Schlafman’s Flash-animated PSA, Sky is Falling, which won Current TV’s Sixty Seconds to Save the Earth contest. We’ve now featured this short on the site 3 times, but it’s just cool to see Al Gore introduce it.

Exxpose Exxon, a collaborative effort by 15 environmental and public interest organizations, has just released a new Flash-animated short that, according to the press release, “mocks the company for spending its record profits on backwards energy policies.” The 1-minute short, titled ‘Toast the Earth,’ was animated by Powerhouse Animation, and the song is by The Austin Lounge Lizards, specialists in satirical folk, country and bluegrass music.

Aaron Stewart, one of the big-name directors at the design and animation studio Hornet Inc., recently completed a series of web-only spots for Jack Link’s Beef Jerky snacks. Working with Carmichael Lynch, the Minneapolis-based agency, Aaron crafted 3 Flash-animated shorts in the vain of dry, instructional ’50’s PSA films.

All three spots are available for viewing at the Hornet Inc. website (view Loin Cloth - view The Rabid Tball Fan - view The “Talker” in 5B) or at the Jack Link’s website.

On the heels of a 2-part interview in February of this year, Aaron sat down to answer a few questions about his latest effort.

AARON SIMPSON: How long did the Jack’s Links project take?
AARON STEWART: It took about three weeks to complete. With me and two other animators (Dan Abdo & Jason Patterson).

SIMPSON: Did you produce animatics before getting the final greenlight?
STEWART: We created a detailed story board and a test animation to show how the vintage film would look like.

SIMPSON: What type of animation direction did you pass on to your team to achieve the look you wanted?
STEWART: I wanted to create a dead pan, instructional animation feel. Making it a little clunky created the charm I was looking for. We wanted to look like a old instructional film that a teacher would show his student. Like we found it in storage and it was created 50 years ago.

SIMPSON: Who designed the characters for the spots?
STEWART: I created the characters and designed the overall look of the piece.

SIMPSON: Other than Flash, what software was utilized to finish the spots?
STEWART: We used After Effects to create the vintage look and to edit the piece to audio we used Final Cut Pro.