Yet another amazing student film has emerged from the French school Gobelins. Le Royaume (The United) is the creation of Nuno Alves-Rodrigues, Oussama Bouacheria, Julien Chheng, Aymeric Kevin, Sébastien Hary, Franck Monier and Ulysse Malassagne. It’s surely an original tale. We watch a King boss around forest creatures, demanding a castle be erected in his honor.

I enjoyed the creative twists in Natalie Piotrkowski’s traditionally-animated short, Have a Chase. It was created in her final year at Vancouver Film School in the Classical Animation program.

Graham Annable has teamed up with Telltale Games to create a new iPhone and iPad game – Puzzle Agent. The game ended up winning the award for Best iPhone Game at E3. Here’s a humorous trailer:

And I also spotted several behind-the-scenes pieces focusing on Annable and his craft, including this one that discusses Annable’s inspirations.
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After Monday’s post of the Gobelins student film Smoke My Christmas, I was thirsty for more. This morning, I drank in Jean-Luc, an equally wonderful film, that is infused with the rubbery lunacy that made me fall in love with animation in the first place. This traditionally-animated short was directed by Arthur Peltzer, Fabien Guillaume, Jean-Baptiste Maligne, Jerémy Macedo, Julien Daubas and Paul Nivet, third year students at the French animation school. It’s a fast-paced romp about a video game nut named Jean-Luc who suffers a seizure, only to be rescued by an amorous, dashing doctor.

…. and here’s a slideshow Paul Nivet put together of the development process behind the short.
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Aside from the Adult Swim block, Cartoon Network has essentially turned it’s back on cartoons. It all went down in 2009, with the new CN Real block of live-action scripted and reality shows, like Survive This. It’s a move that questions whether the network itself may survive this.

To their credit, Regular Show premieres next Monday and it looks kinda awesome, Mad (based on the Mad Magazine universe) appears to have potential, and they were smarter than Nickelodeon last year in picking up Adventure Time. But they hit the reset button hard, prompting Craig McCracken, the creator of The Powerpuff Girls, to say “It’s a little sad. . . . Cartoon Network had something really unique.” Nick Woytuk, a student at AI of Portland, agrees, and he created this spec network ID with the tag “Keep Toons at Work.” Amen, Nick.

Yum Yum is Beth Algieri and Jonny Plummer, two London-based, world-class designers who also direct. This short below was made simply to “brighten up your day.” Mission accomplished.

The talented folks at Make have crafted a stylish short that pits conservation vs. industrialization. Using no dialog, director/writer Danny Robashkin asks if it’s possible for these two concepts to live in harmony. The short, titled Envirometer, has travelled the globe, screening at dozens of festivals including the Edinburgh International Film Festival.