Sharon Katz, creator of HAPPY BIRTHDAY HANNAH (Audience Choice Award, Chicks 'n Flicks Film Festival), has finished her newest animated short, THE ANGEL'S FOOT CAKE / DER FUS TORT. In the film, Drinkeleh Fresserkeh decides to make a cake in the shape of an Angel's foot. The Angels take umbrage and the fun begins in this delightfully raucous modern Yiddish animated tale. The film premiers April 29, 2001 at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. For more information, visit www.sharonkatz.net Rochester, New Yorks Animatus Studio is premiering their latest Flash Webtoons: The Dinner Dogs' TOTALLY ME, a music video for kids, and SU AND MO EPISODE TWO, the continuing story of the lap-dancing bad boys of animation. The Dinner Dogs are a musical group that perform hip, imaginative songs for children. SU AND MO, twin sumo wrestlers, are notorious for the patent-pending extreme lap-dancing that they perform at the world famous Club Hippendale's. The new shorts can be found at www.animatusstudio.com Eyelumination Studio has reinvented America's best-loved cloth chimps in a 3D animated short, SPORT MONKEYS, which premiers on iFilm.com this week. Written and directed by Ryan Nellis, the film follows the continuing adventures of Kobi-ba-bobi, a young sock monkey who learns the meaning of honesty and fair play, and a whole cast of woolly characters. SPORT MONKEYS traces lineage to the Depression, when money and toys were scarce and mothers sewed together socks and other scaps of fabric to make sock monkeys. The new short can be found at www.ifilm.com The second installment of Augenblick Studios three part Flash-animated DIGNIFIED DEVIL adventure series premiers this week on Hypnotic. Many have mistaken Franklin Raine for the devil, dignified or not. Appearances are deceiving though. He's not the devil. He's actually a pretty nice guy. A drunk and a drifter, Frank is always somewhere he shouldn't be. Always trying to make sense. Always drinking... Based on a true story. This week, Franklin plays shrink to a troubled young girl and gets repaid in full. The new short can be found at www.hypnotic.com/hypnotic.asp?content=/dig_devil.asp Also debuting this week on Hypnotic is EARTH DAY, a unique, 15-minute spoof on old-school slasher flicks featuring a cast of dolls. Created by Meredith Casey and Michiko Byers, the live-action film uses special effects and experimental camera work to shoot the dolls in action as they embark on a nature retreat only to be massacred by a psychotic killer through a series of bloody attacks with chainsaws, drills and shark spears. The film features the voices of Mark Hamill and Jason Ritter of MTV's UNDRESSED. Visit www.hypnotic.com.
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
