This animated short by Michael Stevenson, his senior film from San Francisco State University, is a bright and colorful masterpiece of claymation.

According to his website – Pigeon Pilfer was completed in four months with sixty pounds of clay, a digital SLR camera, and one tiny hot room.

With its consistently blue color schemes, beautifully composed shots, exquisite lighting, smooth animation, brilliant effects, meticulously rendered layouts, and masterfully deliberate pacing, The Cat Piano is a fantastic short film by The People’s Republic of Animation. Narrated by Nick Cave. Directed by Eddie White & Ari Gibson. Produced by Jessica Brentnall.

The cool, jazzy, mysterious vibe reminded me of one of the short stories in Jim Davis’ Garfield’s Nine Lives graphic novel. Its atmospheric tone and poetry made thoughts of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories pop into my head. It’s impeccably stylish art direction and film noir design sense alone is worth the watch.

With every great piece of character animation comes striking, innovative, stylish, or original character design. In recent years, some animation artists have published their own books on the subject; David Coleman’s The Art of Animal Character Design, Mike Mattesi’s Character Design From Life Drawing and Tom Bancroft’s Creating Characters With Personality just to name a few.

But I now present to you the mother of all Character Design books to inspire any animator.

Great New Characters is spectacular 670 page cube-shaped book with so many character designs to drool over that you won’t know what to do with yourself. It was created by Zeixs in collaboration with the cutting edge publishing house Feierabend Unique Books, and the ground-breaking design agency 12ender, with a brilliantly illustrated cover by Patrick Morgan.

From their hugely popular Design Cube Series, which has several volumes covering the art of Graphic Design, Typography, Poster Design, T-Shirt Design, and Logo Design, comes this superbly illustrated edition that brings together an unsurpassed collection of the most creative and inventive characters from designers and artists from around the world. Featuring a huge variety of styles and mediums – including 2D, 3D, animated, illustrated, digital, vinyl, paper, plush, textile, street and urban.

If you are a character designer of any sorts, you’re visual cortex will be appropriately stimulated by this bible of pioneering design samples.

Back in April we posted a gorgeous CG milk ad from Psyop. Another one has emerged, this one playing off milk’s protein, which can help hair grow strong and healthy. It also apparently tames a nasty case of snake hair. The ad is for the California Milk Processor Board and the agency behind the Toma Leche campaign is Grupo Gallegos.

NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar called Earl ‘The Goat’ Manigault the best basketball player he ever matched up against, but Manigault’s most intense foes were drugs. Arnoux Anthony, Dessinges Rémi and Fesquet Guillaume students from French animation school Supinfocom Arles, created this homage to The Goat, titled From the Hoop, which illustrates the tough streets of Harlem, where he grew up.

Check out this strange and violent trailer/pitch for an animated series by the name of Cat Shit One. It was directed by Kazuya Sasahara, and it’s based on the manga property Motofumi Kobayashi (released in the USA as Apocalypse Meow). The series is due out in 2010.

Check out this watercolor-style rotoscoping for Dublin-based Fight Like Ape’s new Tie Me Up With Jackets music video, directed and produced by Eoghan Kidney.