I know this is meant to be the season to be jolly, but I just had to post this short Argentinian animation. It truly is a tear jerker in more than one sense. You’ll know what I mean once the big twist is revealed.

Bot animation and humour are simple and unpretentious, and I think that’s how it wins you over. Above all I love the characters design. It was created by Juan Pablo Zaramella, an Argentinean award-winning director and animator.

Passion Pictures, have done it again! Well, more specifically Pete Candeland has done it with the directorial skills that brought us Rock Band cinematic for The Beatles, he’s recently directed this commercial for Coke Zero called ‘Happy Kingdom’.

The clip was produced by Debbie Crosscup from Passion Pictures and the designated creative agency was Ogilvy Argentina, with the creative direction of: Gastón Bigio, Jonathan Gurvit, Javier Mentasti and Christian Camean.

Penguins are no longer flightless birds, how? Thanks to gravity zero and the help of a handful of talented animators, director Frank Vroegop and art director Federico Costa. Another brilliant production created by Delapost in Paris.

It’s quite visible how much fun this must have been, is like reproducing the dreams of someone who has too much cheese and chocolate the night before. Because the animation is quite realistic, and a lot of the details are too, you kind of wish it was real. You can enjoy it all the same and still smile as you see these dashing seabirds finally taking off.

I just bumped into this great animation I saw a couple of years ago and I thought I should share it here in case some of you haven’t seen it. It was written and animated by Carlos Lascano as part of the Red Bull program organised together with the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, collecting creatives from around the world.

It beautifully combines multiple animation techniques, like using real human eyes for the main character, just as Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski did on Madame Tutli-Putli . Puppet style animation in After Effects (presumably), touches of frame by frame animation, lots of very detailed texturing and a successful colour grading in post-production.

It got featured on Motionographer and Drawn back in 2008 and it was awarded a Honorable Mention in 2D animated film at The Hyde Tube Festival 2009 in Paris.

It may not mean much to you if you’re not from south America, but Boogie, el aceitoso (the oily) is a comic book legend created by the talented Argentinian cartoonist Roberto Fontanarrosa. Boogie is making it to the big screen by the hands of production company Illusion Studios. In my humble opinion the animation is not flawless but it’s good enough quality so you can enjoy it’s dark and painted over many times black humour.

Boogie is a cold-blooded and ruthless hit-man. Always on the run, Boogie follows his own rules. A violent, chauvinist and sadistic character starring in a film that features a story line, music and images targeted to teen and adult audiences. Women, alcohol, bullets, it has it all. Boogie, combines black humor, incredible 2-D backgrounds and 3-D graphics with a sharp screenplay. Boogie, is a film that provides a lethal dose of irony and such extreme violence that it becomes impossible not to laugh.