The 2009 Ottawa International Animation Festival has come to a close, but below you can enjoy Head Gear Animation’s signal film. It was directed by Julian Grey, who animated the piece alongside Isaac King and Sean Branigan.

A while back, Canadian stop-motion animator Patrick Boivin invited his audience to choose which characters should square off in a fight. The result pits Michael Jackson vs. Mr. Bean.

A finalist for Best TV Series at Annecy, Cuppa Coffee’s Nerdland has been viewable on their website for months now, but I recently spotted the 7-minute pilot over on Vimeo. The stop-motion series concept was generated internally by puppet maker Ted Heeley, and then after teaming up with TELETOON’s Detour the 22-minute series was set into motion. In related news, the 2nd season of Nick at Nite’s Glenn Martin DDS, which is produced at Cuppa Coffee, was just announced.

This new spot for Hershey’s “Happiness Is…” campaign takes a clever look at t-shirt art. It was directed by Chris Bahry at Toronto-based Nakd. Production was handled by The Ebeling Group.

Hey there, Tex. Why don’t you point those sorry eyes of yours at this here cartoon. Saloon is a new Western-inspired CG short from recent VFS graduate Thiago Martins.

Vancouver-based Terry Dankowych is a recent VFS grad, and below you can see the fruits of his training. Orbit is a simple story set in space that was produced in the final 6 months of school.

Stop motion animation is enjoying a major revival these days. Projects like Coraline, Mary and Max, $9.99 and the upcoming The Fantastic Mr. Fox have combined to make 2009 the year of the stop motion animated feature. However, the medium doesn’t appear on TV all too often, presumably because of the painstaking animation process. There’s Robot Chicken, Moral Orel and the upcoming Titan Maximum, but you’d be hard pressed to recall many more.

You’ll likely remember Celebrity Deathmatch, the stop motion TV series created by Eric Fogel that enjoyed a 75 episode run. Well, Fogel returns this year with Glenn Martin, DDS, a series he co-created with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Alex Berger. Animated at Cuppa Coffee Studios, the 22-minute comedy follows the adventures of a traveling dentist and his family. The series is currently airing on Nick at Nite on Mondays at 8:00 p.m. (ET/PT). We recently grabbed a few minutes from Eric’s busy schedule for an interview, but first here’s a clip from the episode titled Pimp My RV:

AARON SIMPSON: How did your involvement with this project begin?
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