From The Dandy Dwarves, a production company originally based out of the Savannah College of Art & Design, comes this inspired, wacky fable about a dying man lost at sea and plagued by a foot with evil intentions. Directed by 24-year-old Christian Simmons, a 2005 Broadcast Design and Motion Graphics SCAD grad, "The Sailor" came about as a result of the group's desire to do a piece involving the water.

"I tend to gravitate toward pieces with a fanciful ugliness to them," explains Simmons, "and I thought it could be reminiscent of an old legend or folk tale." Simmons also wanted the video to seem as if it was part of a much longer project "and only get a brief glimpse of it," he says, "while at the end still feeling satisfied."

The short cleverly combines live-action with an animated speaking foot, complete with a large, teeth-y mouth, voiced by Simmons himself. "On the day of the ocean shoot, our actor J.R. had tracking points painted onto his foot," says Simmons, explaining how they conceived of the talking appendage. "Later, we'd analyze the movement of his foot and then I'd have to match the movement of J.R's foot from the boat so that there wouldn't be any discontinuity with the angle of the mouth as compared to the angle of the foot." Then their visual effects supervisor Andrew Cook painted off Simmons' mouth and artfully stuck it onto J.R's foot. "Then he'd color correct and add a slight morphing to the skin to create the effect of it stretching as the lips speak," he explains.

In the Bay Area, the Dwarves are hoping to continue to make more short-form videos, but "nothing is set in stone," says Simmons. "We loved documentary work as well as -- who knows -- feature films in the future. While we have a somewhat large body of work beneath us right now, I'll go out on a limb and say this is just the very beginning."

You can read more about SCAD's shorts program and watch a making-of video for "The Sailor and Fiendish Foot" at the link.

-Anthony Kaufman

Most environmental news coverage takes one of two approaches: terrifying "the world is about to end" propaganda, or jargon-heavy science updates. So, as the health of the planet becomes an increasingly important issue, perhaps what's needed is a lighter approach. That's the theory behind ZapRoot, an engaging new podcast launched last week by ViroPOP.

Covering the world of "the new environmental pop culture" with bright graphics and a cheerful approach, host Jessica Williamson reports on stories like bee colony collapse disorder with flair and charm (in case you're wondering, the accent comes from growing up between New Zealand and Utah). According to producer Damien Somerset, "ZapRoot was created in response to the way I and the people I know feel about modern environmentalism. We don’t look counter-culture, we don’t act counter-culture, there’s no club that you have to be part of to care about environmental issues. You don’t have to be counter-culture to be green."

"Environmental pop culture makes caring about our planet cool -- we try to cover stories that our viewers can relate to and might have impact on the way they think or live," says producer Sarah Szalavitz. And that's the most striking thing about Zaproot: its positive mindset, promoting opportunities for environmental improvement on a large and small scale. It's enough to make you think the world's not about to end. Maybe.

-Liz Miller

"Afterworld" survives. First launched in February on Budweiser's online disaster BudTV, the animated post-apocalyptic adventure has gone from YouTube fame to corporate immortality -- picked up by Sony, and now webcasting on News Corp.'s MySpace, with all the marketing firepower they supply.

Even though the series has been around the web for several months, MySpace TV's general manager Jeff Berman told the LA Times, "We're confident this is going to be an enormous success." Starting Monday, new episodes will be released daily over the next several weeks. The series is also being broadcast on television on the Sci-Fi network in Australia.

Created by TV producer Stan Rogow ("Lizzie McGuire," "Nowhere Man") and written by Brent Friedman ("Mortal Kombat," "The Twilight Zone"), the web series – split into 130 3-minute episodes – chronicles the exploits of a Seattle man on a business trip in New York who survives a mysterious catastrophic event that makes 99% of the earth's population disappear and destroys all working technology. He eventually tries to find his way home.

While the static 2.5D style animation may prove too slow for the kids, "Afterworld" is well made, with an ominous mood and a compelling conspiracy-laden storyline that speaks well for the potential of longstanding online entertainment in the mold of "lonelygirl15" or "Prom Queen."

"What we're trying to do is create a unique form of entertainment as well as an original business model," said Rogow, who recently launched the digital studio Electric Farm Entertainment, which is responsible for producing "Afterworld."

While the MySpace page currently has little information beyond a registration page and some stats on the series' protagonist, the Times story reported that the website will allow fans to explore the journey of the series on their own. "Fans also can suggest plot lines, solve puzzles and interact with some of the characters, who will have their own blogs on MySpace," reported the paper.

"The idea was to create a new hybrid medium for entertainment using these different forms of technology, so that fans can get their daily snack of entertainment when and where they want," Friedman said.

In addition to a second season of "Afterworld," Electric Farm will also produce two other Web series that combine live action and animation, one about zombies in L.A. called "Woke up Dead" and "The Gemini Division," starring Rosario Dawson as a New York cop investigating the bizarre murder of her husband.

-Anthony Kaufman

A hybrid of late-nite comedy, soap opera, and even a little actual news reporting, Goodnight Burbank is one of the web's most established original series. In this episode, original cast member Susan Jones returns to visit little sister Kelly, tech correspondent Dane Rivers tries out some material on the makeup girl, and Gordon may be dead of a heart attack. Just another day at our favorite local news broadcast.

Creator and star Hayden Black began Goodnight Burbank in January 2006 when a friend offered him access to a green screen: "I dusted off the idea because it was the easiest, quickest, cheapest thing to do." Although every episode uses real headlines as set-up for jokes and fodder for discussion, Black is careful to make sure that the majority of the topics discussed are "evergreen": "From the get go, the idea was to question the press/media and its motives - and there's no easier way of doing that then to break through the smoke and mirrors of a glossy newscast and see what's REALLY being talked about."

GNB benefits from Black's connections within the comedy world -- initially casting actors he met through an improv class at Upright Citizens Brigade, he went on to assemble a large ensemble of actors with impressive credits. His latest coup is Rich Fulcher of the British comedy series The Mighty Boosh, who plays tech correspondent Dane Rivers; Fulcher actually approached Black about making an appearance and Black jumped at the chance. "I couldn't be happier. He's back in the UK shooting the third season of Boosh, but he's coming back to the US for a while in September and we'll make sure to shoot a bunch more segments with him."

Rivers's segments give Goodnight Burbank a chance to plug other web series, a practice which Black says is purely altruistic. "Last year at the podcast expo, I realized there were two ways of building an audience: one, screaming "Look at me!" to the mainstream media and two, taking the audience that exists online and letting them know about other shows. So I told some people I was going to put my money where my mouth was and start doing a segment that (in GNB's inimitable fashion) promoted them. I never did it to have other people promote me in return. I did it to promote online media -- in the spirit of brotherhood. Or sisterhood, depending on if I'm wearing a dress that day."

-Liz Miller

A man peers at the moon. The man on the moon waves back. Blink, and the man on the moon is by you at the beach. And he's leading you towards the ocean...

In case you missed last week's coverage of Room 401's increasing bizarre web presence, a brief recap: Room 401 is Ashton Kutcher's Punk'd-esque reality horror series, airing to little notice on MTV this summer. But astute viewers began noticing subliminal clues planted within the episodes by Kutcher himself, and in following the clues uncovered a tangled network of websites leading to a much larger game, full of videos and secrets and clues.

We don't know what is happening here, and we don't know who made it. But there's an eerie quality to this video's beauty. And we're looking forward to getting some answers.

Welcome to the world of Dudes in Bed, where if you're a straight man, any topic is fair game as long as your pants are off. In this first episode of the ongoing web series, Dan Bialek and guest stars Ryan O'Neill and Jeff Danis sprawl across a queen-sized bed (beloning to Bialek's girlfriend Amanda) and discuss Jeff's recent haircut. It's not quite as gay as it sounds. Well. Maybe.

Dan Bialek held any number of odd jobs, including covering city council meetings for the Hermosa Beach Easy Reader and interviewing extreme sports stars for ESPN (the hardest part of which, he says, was "asking them to stop smoking pot so we could interview them on camera"). But five years ago, Dan began his career in the world of stand-up comedy, starting as The Comedy Store's doorman and eventually working his way up to regular performance and hosting gigs at the legendary club.

When asked to develop a comedy series for NBC Universal's Dot Comedy.com, Bialek turned to the Internet for inspiration, and realized what was popular: naked people. Specifically, naked girls. "When I was looking around, it seemed like every show had a half-naked girl or a girl in a bikini hosting it," Bialek says, "but nothing with guys. So I thought it would be funny to shift the paradigm the other way, by having guys sitting around talking guy stuff."

What constitutes guy stuff? "Not what you'd think. I mean, I don't know anything about sports. When guys get together, they usually end up talking about their dads, because everyone has a story about their dad doing something crazy. Like, my dad chased the school bully with a hammer in his Corvette. Ryan's dad illegally raised a falcon in Indiana." The only topics that haven't come up so far are sex or pornography, because "with three guys in their underwear on a girl's bed, it gets way too weird way too quickly." Bialek observes that while at first the guys find the situation a bit uncomfortable, eventually everyone relaxes. "It's kind of like hanging out in a jacuzzi. The first five minutes are really strange, then everyone gets used to the water and it's fine."

Bialek is excited for future episodes of "Dudes in Bed," which he says he can literally produce forever. "I've got a lot of extroverted stand-up comedy friends. So it's just a matter of luring them over to my house with pizza and beer and X-Box. Once they're there, I ask if they're wearing underwear or not -- and if they say yes, I'm like, 'guess what we're doing for the next 20 minutes?'"

-Liz Miller

Whether David Wain or his followers are aware, it must be stated that Wain is probably one of the biggest influences on internet comedy. The Stella Shorts, of which he held a guiding technical hand, and his 2001 feature, Wet Hot American Summer set somewhat of a standard for the irrational, random and abstract humor that so many have attempted to duplicate. His return to online video, Wainy Days, part of the recently launched My Damn Channel, reflects all the inexplicable whatnot we expect from him, and even shows the kiddos a thing or two about web series development.

"I like that there are really no rules," Wain says of working in the web idiom, "and that you don't have to reach any specific running time. I also like the webisode idea - really enjoying telling an ongoing story." And with so few web series actually living up to their genre with a connective thread, he seems to be taking an original albeit traditional approach, although seemingly out of necessity. "I'm also in prep in L.A. for a movie I'm shooting, so haven't been able to do everything myself - so I've gotten some of the best writers and directors I know to shoot some Wainy Days pieces."

Running his episodes like a traditional TV series with various talent taking the reins is a new approach, and with ten episodes planned, it'll be exciting to find something dynamic each week. But as always with Wain's work, don't think too far ahead. "I like that there are not a lot of set conventions for webisodes - we're inventing the format as we go."

As much as Wain has been part of many collectives and collaborations, with Wainy Days we're finally getting a chance to see what Wain as an individual has brought to each of these. What remains are the random outbursts of filth, the more-than-anything-can-happen riffs on the conventions of Hollywood cheese, and surprisingly, the genuinely huggable characters with arcs, as bizarre as they can be. For his fans and followers, worry not, he promises much more lunacy, in the form of "cross dressing, sperm donating, street singing."

Happy to have him back online.

-Spencer Somers

The "my dad can beat up your dad" dictum is as old as combat itself, but the guys at Team Tiger Awesome put together this literal interpretation of a tired threat to show you just how gruesome dad-on-dad warfare can be.

This is the group's first video for SuperDeluxe, and it's pretty hilarious. We're particularly into the flashy graphics (love the slouched posture) that cut up the action; they were made by (TTA member) Clint's sister, a graphic designer. According to Nicholas Mundy, "We have the banners all over our house; it's how we decorated for the summer."

Mundy also informs us that TTA decided to cast fellow LA-based comedians (and TDR crushes) Invisible Engine after helping that trio out behind the camera on their St. Patrick's Day video. Ahh, we love the smell of online video collaboration on a crisp Hollywood morning.

Aspiring do-it-yourself video-makers, meet Eric Beck: he may be your new online bestfriend. As the host of Next New Networks's how-to weekly series "Backyard FX," Beck offers "Hollywood style-special effects for extra value meal prices," as he says in the introductory webisode, with specific topics ranging from building jet packs to puppets, zombies to this week's entry, bloody gunshot wounds. While the show – sort of a "Mythbusters" for the underground filmmaker – is as low-budget as the showcased effects, the videos are crisply edited, informative, and Beck, himself, is an affable and entertaining webcaster.

Launched in mid-May, Backyard FX's YouTube channel "Indy Mogul," has 4,202 subscribers and their recent video on how to make ultra-cheap zombie make-up has received nearly 450,000 YouTube views since going up last week. New webisodes go up every Monday, with suggestions from viewers fueling subsequent shorts. With no shortage of pleas for help from video-makers ("I challenge you to make an exploding head, or an exploding body part," writes in one fan), Beck and the Next New Networks crew will be keeping busy in the weeks to come. For more info, check out: http://www.indymogul.com/

Bob Odenkirk is probably best known as one half of Mr Show, the cult comedy series that enjoyed a nice little run on HBO a few years back. He's also a seasoned director with four features under his belt, including the upcoming The Brothers Solomon.

For his latest project, Odenkirk has gone viral. Derek & Simon: The Show is a series of shorts that first hit the festival circuit in 2006. A year later, Odenkirk has decided to turn them into webisodes via his page on Super Deluxe.

The shorts follow a pair of 20-somethings as they negotiate their way through relationship-land. In this clip, Derek makes the mistake of meaning to do one thing but saying the exact opposite. Click on the link below to watch the hijinks ensue at their local bowling alley.

(Via Matt Dentler's (super terrific) blog.)