If only more animation studios prefaced their feature films with short cartoons, we might get more fun romps like The Colors of Evil. In this film, which Phillip Simon and Alyse Miller created as their thesis project at Ringling College of Art and Design, a wicked little girl summons a demon to deal with her…

Digital artist Victor Hugo (as far as I can tell, his real name) created this fantastic 3D image of Tony Stark hanging out in his lab. Now that Disney has its white-gloved fingers in both Marvel and Pixar, we have to ask: How isn't this already a movie?

Animator John Banana has created this charming short animation as an homage to Dave Stevens' jetpack-wielding hero. It's cute stuff, and the only thing it's missing is a CG John Locke as Howard Hughes.

This here is a 1982 demo reel from Information International, Inc. (or Triple-I), the computer designers who animated Tron — in this montage, you can see plenty of clips from Michael Crichton's kooky plastic surgery flick Looker.

The Last Airbender will carve a new path in visual effects, showing you things no movie ever has: water tentacles and gusts of fire. We visited Industrial Light and Magic, and saw what every other movie will be copying soon.

In its documentary Extraordinary Animals In The Womb, National Geographic captured rare highly detailed images of animals at various stages of gestation. Now you can see fetal dog, elephants, penguins, and dolphins still inside the womb.

Will Avatar keep its technological promises? We've seen a huge backlash against the film's CGI, and our sibling site suspects it will suck. But when it opens, Avatar will prove a remarkable advance in motion capture and computer animation.

Directors like James Cameron and Robert Zemeckis are using motion capture and computer animation to place actors in unusual bodies and fantastical environments. But the medical community is increasingly utilizing technology originally designed for movies and video games.

There have been countless characters in movies and television generated entirely using computer effects. But which one was the most believable as a character?

Like robots doing complicated surgeries, the computers that generate CGI effects are more than just tools. They're storytellers. This week on io9, we explore a world where humans watch the world through computer eyes just by going to the movies.