First of all, apologies if you arrived here excited by the pretense of the crappy (yet oddly endearing) 1980s cartoon of the same name. Here’s something very arguably better. Adam Phillips, the guy who created the superb Bitey Castle shorts, has been commissioned to produce a number of brief animated cartoons to promote the new 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons.

Episode 1: The Beholder (above)
Episode 2: The Gnome and the Teifling
Episode 3: The Mindflayer

He’s working on a fourth as I type.

Meanwhile, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins over at Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz from PvP have put together a podcast of, essentially, eight hours of them playing Dungeons and Dragons around a microphone. With the wrong people this really could be the dullest thing on earth but it somehow manages to remain entertaining throughout the four half-hour and a bit podcasts they’ve already put out. Stick this link into iTunes or your podcast grabber of choice: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/rsspodcast.xml or, iTunes users, try this – more here, though you’ll need to sign up for a free account to access the pages.

They’re also doing a little strip to accompany each show.

And, oh ok… If you insist.

Oh hi… are you still here?

I’ve been a little bit more than busy recently and quite a lot of dust has settled all over the furniture here at Antikewl Daily. I’ve been such a bad blogger that I’ve sometimes found it easier to twitter cool stuff or simply email other bloggers so the cool stuff doesn’t go to waste! Here’s a great example of that. It’s an awesome animation by Italian artist Blu (thanks Edd!) and I meant to blog about it ages ago. You’ve probably seen it already by now.

Right, this is going to stop right here! From now on I pledge to post here at least twice a week. Not a massive target, granted, but I believe that if I aim low I’m bound to at least nearly hit it form time to time! You never know, I might even get around to shoving that new design up one day as well…

If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking around!

P.S. If you’re into the whole twitter thing, Antikewl Daily has a twitter feed as well.

I had a Halloween post all ready but never got around to posting it. I guess it’s a bit late now so I’ll have to save it for next year. C’est la vie.

This, however, I do have to share. Friends of a friend of a friend (yeah, we’re that close) created (and dressed up as) a Big Daddy and Little Sister from the Bioshock. Amusingly, the costumes are better than the ones at the games own launch event! (Thanks to See-ming for the tip!)

More Bioshock Halloween costumes on Cult of Rapture.

Update: Forgot to link the “making-of” set.

Update 2: Another video of a dad and his kids playing Big Daddy and Little Sisters. “no little sisters were harvested in the making of this video or when walking rapture looking for treats” (via Wonderland).

Possibly an enormous co-incidence, but the new animated Play-Doh bunnies commercial for Sony Bravia by ad agency Fallon bears a rather remarkable resemblance to one of artist duo Kozyndan‘s earlier pieces of artwork, “What’s next, USA-chan?”

It really is a beautiful commercial, but a huge shame they haven’t credited the very obvious inspiration. Bad Sony. Again.

Chris Sanders, former Disney artist and the creator/director of Lilo and Stitch, finally has a website. He also released a new sketchbook at this year’s San Diego Comi-con which I’ll have to order a copy of to sit alongside the one he printed last year on my bookshelf.

To promote the Simpsons Move a 7-Eleven in Burbank, California has been dressed up as Apu’s Kwik-E-Mart, complete with Slurpee machines and Krusty-Os.

Not new news by any stretch, but this is the first time I’ve seen the infamous rejection letter that Disney sent in response to a woman who applied for a job as an animator with my own eyes: “women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing cartoons for the screen in making animated cartoons, as that is performed entirely by young men”. (via Boing Boing)

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Imagineer, former animator and Disney Legend, X Atencio speaks on the Official Disneyland Resort Podcast about his work as an animator through to an imagineer at Disney, and talks about his work on the original Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.

Talking of Disney animators, Clay Kaytis has just put up the latest segment of his interview with Burny Mattinson at the Animation Podcast.

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I haven’t had a chance to post anything for a while so I’m catching up a a bit here. Originally mentioned by Blackwing Diaries, the UCLA’s Department of Special Collections unveiled a new website with 5,100 images from the archives of the LA Times and the Los Angeles Daily News.

Cartoon Brew has been rooting through the archives and has come up with a load of interesting photos of Disneyland, Walt Disney Studios (the strikes, and the never very camera-shy Ward Kimball), Bill Peet and many more that haven’t been seen for a very long time. Enjoy.

Update: Boing Boing has also been on a photo hunt and come up a whole new array of goodies.

I thought I’d drop Disney a line to find out what happened to the Walt Disney Legacy Collection DVD set and, more specifically, the Destino DVD. Sadly, I still don’t know much more:

“At this time, we do not have a DVD release date for DESTINO. We will forward your request for release to our Marketing Department for consideration. No additional LEGACY COLLECTION releases have been announced.”

Did I dream the Destino DVD box mock-up that was, until recently, displayed on the Legacy site?