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Men's skinmag-with-pretentions-of-intellectualism Playboy is running an animation competition as they attempt to straddle the digital entertainment arena. Details are vague, 10k to the winner, closing date end of May - more details here

Wired reported on this quite charming and super simple stop-mo about the tribes of New York.

Apologies for the lack of blog activity of late. I've been in Vietnam where there is, frankly, not much animation. I did see a water puppet show but it was a bit weird and rubbish.
We did interview the great Ray Harryhausen for the next issue of Imagine, he managed to charm our reporter into a frenzy. Unbelievably cool guy, thanks to everyone who submitted questions to put to him, most of them made it in.

51 animated movie projects at various stages of production will be pitched here over the next few days. A few impressions: There is a greater variety of techniques on display than last year, where most projects tended toward affordable CG, this time around there is considerably more stereoscopic 3-D and traditional or more unusual techniques such as clay and sand.

The other most notable change is the inclusion of games companies. There is much talk of synergy, convergence, shared demographic, multiplatform propositions and of transferable systems and skills. Some games developers have evidently gotten very good at things like quickly and cheaply creating cities and landscapes. They're keen to peddle these services as well as new pipelines and production systems.

The journey to bristol airport yesterday was interesting. jolly fat taxi man picked me up. Unpromted he says, 'had a nice job the other day taking that original Wallace and Gromit film all the way to London to get it digitally stored at someplace called framestore. They had so many tapes they had to sit with them on their laps, ahahahahah. Down Aardman's new place, lovely it is, all made from wood and in the lift Wallace announces what floor you're on. Had that Nick Park in here too once, corporate job, he had his Oscar with him and didn't want anyone to know where he lived so he made me drive him round Bristol for hours...'.
And on this nice (apart from a nasty rascist comment about badgers) taxi driver wittered. Co-incidental? no, I didn't think so either.
Lyon is smashing, after the raging pretension of Monaco last week it's nice to be in somewhere proper French, with passionate artists. Best looking thing so far has been Panique Au Village, demented cow adventures like the cravendale milk ads.

This looks totally brilliant. The fact that some people seem to think he's a real person and are a disgusted about his being fat must be some sly PR shenanigans.

And while we're on the subject of award-winning animation. Sita Sings the Blues swept up at last year's Annecy. Here's the trailer. Word is that distribution has been bogged down with some kind of legal dispute over music.