Fred Seibert, one of my partners at Next New, let a pretty amazing thing slip the other day — that over at his other company, Frederator Studios, he’s making the new Castlevania movie with none other than Warren Ellis and James Jean.

The funny part was how I found out: in one of our regular, free-wheeling meetings where we talk about creative, I was showing him the mini-social network recently set up on Ning for members of Ellis’ message board, The Engine, as an example of an easy way to create basic community features around a show (which, by the way, our friends at JETSET just did) and Fred did a bit of a double take, and said, “Warren Ellis? I’m making a movie with him!”

Apparently Fred had no idea I’m a fan of Ellis’ writing and part of the loose (and large) community of people whom he’s pulled together on places like The Engine and the Bad Signal mailing list. And it wasn’t until Fred blogged about it tonight that I checked out the Castlevania production blog Ellis is writing and saw that James freaking Jean is providing art direction. This is the sort of thing I could completely geek out over, despite the fact that I missed Castlevania as a game growing up — hopefully, by knowing Fred, I’ll get a peek at the process every once in a while.

A little while back, I wrote about Nathan Fox here, and was super-pleased to get a nice note from him about it. We had a nice back and forth over email which led to him getting interviewed on the Pulp Secret Report today, but even better for me, he sent me this super cool self-portrait via email. I hope he doesn’t mind me posting it (I think fatherhood suits him, personally). 3D glasses not included.

Be sure to check out Nathan’s work on DMZ#18, on newsstands now at your friendly neighborhood comics shop. And check out the interview on Pulp Secret, embedded below.

Drawn by Pain is a new 12-part series on the web, mixing live action and anime, focusing on a girl who can manifest her drawings in the real world. Cool anime swordplay and angsty pubescent drama in the streets of New York, and a pretty darn good trailer… and be sure to check out the video responses fans are posting, which I can’t figure out how to link to directly, but are the first time I’ve seen people using this (Brightcove) feature.

I love that writer/director Jesse Cowell and animator Erica Langworthy just went out and made this themselves; I’m definitely going to be sending this over to our folks at Channel Frederator and Pulp Secret, and if we get a chance to meet the folks behind the show, I’ll post more about it here.

FLOATING | Floating barefoot. | via pulphope

I’ve been remiss in not telling the world about this sooner, but the best thing any of you could do to brighten up your day is press play on the little video below. Adventure Time is an original cartoon short from a young animator named Pen Ward (blog), who pitched the series to my partner in Next New Networks, Fred Seibert, for his cartoons business. The short keeps racking up a quarter million views on YouTube, then getting yanked (the rights are owned by Viacom, as part of the Random Cartoons series), but someone’s recently uploaded it again – watch it while you can (or try the Addicting Clips link).

It’s obvious from just a few moments’ viewing that this is a really special cartoon, and a bit miraculous for being one that, as Fred says, both older and younger people can love for entirely different reasons. I love lines like “I’m 28″ and “Rhombus!” and “my hat is awesome!” but a nine year-old might simply love when they yell, “Adventure Time!” And we’re both right. If you think this should become a full series like I do, and revolutionize kid’s cartoons all over again, I don’t know, post this on your blog and tell Nick you want your Adventure Time.

*** special bonus fun-time link: Monster Party!!!

What a treat this week to get the Sunday NY Times Magazine and see this great Speed Racer homage on the cover by Nathan Fox, whose work I’ve always noticed and liked, as part of a series of illustrations for this week’s story about Toyota.

Fox has a loose, brushy style and pop sense of color that often gets him compared to Tomer Hanuka or Paul Pope; I think that all three of them are diverging a lot lately, but that latter comparison would be more apt in this series, where Fox let a manga influence really take over, and composed the drawings in panels, which I haven’t seen too often in his commercial work. Wish there were larger and clearer images online; illustration really gets the short shrift sometimes in the digital version, and these were especially beautiful in print.