Here's a story from North America. Actually it's a wonderful, very simply drawn animation which seems to come from a more innocent age.

It's by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore - made a couple of years ago, while they were still at college in Maryland Institute of Art.

On the soundtrack is Garrett's distinctly idiosyncratic song folk tune extolling the virtues of loving all god's creatures - with vocal help from Kirsten. That's a little marvel in itself.

Then they generated an estimated 40lbs of drawings to making their film, which is totally great.

Ms Lepore is clearly going places, and has already animated spots for Heinz and MTV. Her non-commercials films include this stop-motion to Grandmaster Flash's It's Nasty.

But her tour de force thus far is her graduation film, the ten minute film Sweet Dreams. This delightful journey of discovery of a icing-sugar-topped cupcake has just played at South By South West. And it's actually good enough to get stand comparison with the work of the great PES.