Incidentally, I sure hope I don’t find out how insanely popular this video game reviewer is.

Seriously, it uses up your precious O2 that much faster.

I was so proud of myself for having this idea until I realized it bore a striking similarity to an episode I had already made.

Let’s see how these two compare…

• Leaving a vessel unexpectedly
• Falling uncontrollably
• Scrambling for a vital piece of life-saving equipment
• Kubrick reference
• It’s no help at all

Maybe I should have re-watched my earlier episode concerning how to have an idea:

I assure you, the next one will be longer and more “political”.

Speaking of CERN — and the earth suddenly becoming a ball of evaporating strangelets — I think I may throw a party as a last hurrah before the imminent destruction of the world by Swiss high-energy particle physicists — or to celebrate our continued existence as fairly mundane, non-black hole matter.

I don’t know what I would enjoy more, my continued existence or winning an animation contest. I’ll get back to you on that.

In case you need a refresher:

I haven’t started mine yet. Is that bad?

Also, watch for William Hohauser’s Silly Gags. It’s like the WarioWare of animation.

(Speaking of timeliness… next time I’ll try to give updates on time, and not a month after my cartoons have gone up. Oh, and Happy St. Patrick’s Day!)

That Tim Heiderich has some hilarious observations. His 411 shorts are simple, graphic, and very funny.

After missing him at Mobifest Toronto, I was delighted to meet the man behind Channel Frederator, Fred Seibert, at Nickelodeon in Burbank. He shared some great insights into how one fits into the entertainment industry and told me that the only way to get ahead in Hollywood was to…

Wait, why am I telling YOU?

Check out my work as well as an unbelievable amount of amazing animation updated more-than-weekly at Channel Frederator.

Who knew animation involved so much sleeping and goofing off? View it now, along with the rest of the E411 guides over at Mobifest.net!

And while you’re there, the shouting talking half of Penn & Teller has something to say on Penn Says, with one of my favorites being his thoughts on fame. And just because I’m linking to Penn doesn’t mean I’m trying to convert you into an internet libertarian.

I enjoyed the Mobifest show itself (up until the awards part anyway) and I could see in each short what made it stand out to the judges. And it’s true, you do learn a bit about what works and what doesn’t from watching your video with an audience… like sometimes you can be too clever for your own good. I’m not saying that to sound arrogant, I mean that trying too hard to reinvent a tired story, or abstracting something to the point of obscurity, or just having too many things going on at once, you may just trip over your own feet. From that, here are a few things I learned about producing mobile content:

1. Be iconic. Have a solid, easily-recognizable style, color palette, design.
2. Don’t rely too heavily on audio; cellphones aren’t known for their sound quality. They’re known for having tiny, tinny speakers.
3. You’re on a small screen, so don’t rely on a lot of subtle detail. A whole joke can be lost by a compression artifact or dropped frame.
4. Don’t rush every joke — there’s this thing called ‘pacing’; you don’t have to write like your viewers have ADD.
5. That guy running karaoke at the Holiday Inn can go suck a dick.

Here is the big winner of Mobifest Toronto, and it exemplifies many of the rules above (except maybe the one about that goddam DJ).