Welcome to the new Animation Snack, brought to you by MyToons.com! This is the place for tasty tidbits on All Things Animated! Stay tooned here everyday for animation news, intimate interviews, exciting contests, great prizes and events. It's easy to comment & connect with animation industry experts, artists and fans.

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Though we’re sure you know of the scintillating Stefan Bucher, we cannot help but effuse our love for him and his delightfully delectable way with animation. 

His magnificent monsters have grown from a casual daily doodle, into a bewitching book, and now into open source monster mania.  The process reminds us of those sponge capsules that you dropped into water as a kid – except the results are way better than a wet-sponge elephant!

From publishing their comments in a hardbound book, to welcoming them into his animated abode, Stefan Bucher always includes, incorporates, and loves his fanatic friends and supporters, and invites them to join him on his jubilant journey to forge new paths in animation and the creative community.

Check out Stefan’s brilliant blog to see for yourself – I promise you, its contents are utterly uh-mazing.

No, they’re not dishes on an exotic menu – they are the ingredients of the latest FREE version of Blender!  Blender is an open-source software for 3D modeling, rendering, animation, post-production, interactive creation with playback available for Windows, Linux, Irix, Sun Solaris, FreeBSD and/or Mac OS X – all available to you for FREE at Softpedia.  What’s more is that Softpedia guarantees that the software you download will be 100% free both in price and from malware such as viruses, spyware, Trojans, and backdoors.  We all use Blender extensively here at MyToons, and encourage everyone to Support Open Source!  Check out the details for yourself on Blender.org, and see the final product in action on MyToons.com!

Stephen Leonard has put pencil to paper in more ways than one. As a script writer, he learned that many ideas stay on the page, but never quite come to life as the visuals they were intended to be. “Speaking from both experience and common sense,” advises Stephen, “it’s a lot easier to get someone to watch something you made than it is to get them to read something you wrote.”

 Congrats to this week’s winner, adamcalfee – his stellar artistic style and design, along with hundreds of votes from the MyToons community, landed his animation Moonboy in the top spot.

Channel surfing…how mundane. Or overwhelming? Moonboy – a short film about a disillusioned boy who wishes for better things – features a child clicking through channels, only to find disappointment. Hmm, are we noticing a recurring theme here?

Don’t miss your chance to flip to the top as a weekly winner, check out the Get with the Times! Contest page for more details!

POP! This week ends with a bang as Sydney’s joe__kim claims the title of Weekly Winner! With 2,963 community votes, his animation Balloon floated to the top – congrats!

Balloon is a cute animation that shows just how hard and awkward flirting can be, especially for this shy couple at the bus-stop. It’s a good thing someone was there to let the air out of the tense situation. 

“What is the point of this shot, and what will I learn about the character?”  As he relays his own story of creation for his wonderful animation Balloon, Sydney’s own Joseph Kim poses solid questions to help any animator hone and tighten their story lines and shots.  Touching on everything from pitching and process to personalities and HD production, Joseph Kim offers sound animation advice while telling his own story of animation experience growth.  Click through to read for yourself!

Want to rise up as a weekly winner in the Get with the Times! HD Contest? Check out the details here, and remember to cast your vote every hour!

It’s been a few years since we’ve been able to run to the theaters for some major Star Wars action – but the long wait is coming to an end! Prepare to witness the Separatists face the Galactic Republic in anime-esque CGI with the release of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

The film – soon to turn TV series – is set for release August 14 in Australia, and August 15 in the United States and United Kingdom (click here for release dates in your neck of the galaxy).

Until then, you can satisfy your Jedi fix by checking out the trailer, right here on MyToons.com!