Do you believe that if you just mail yourself a copy of the character you created you will receive complete copyright protection under federal law and the international treaties to which the U.S. belongs? Or that if you would like to use some music to go with your animation, you can use any song you’ve ever heard for free just so long as you don’t use more than four bars from it? Although you will not find such folklore debunked on popular myth-busting websites like www.snopes.com, they are in fact urban legends.

Why is it beneficial to be an intern?

When trying to break into an industry you may have experienced the catch-22 of not being hired because you do not have enough experience, and not having enough experience because no one will hire you. While most major companies refuse to hire a full-time worker with little or no experience, they will jump at the chance to hire that same person on a “temporary” basis for little or no pay. Thus we have internships!

I remember as a kid getting an animation book out of the local town library. To this day I still have no idea what it was called or who wrote it, other than it showed how to set up animation equipment at home, including a camera lashed onto a piece of wood, and a light-box made out of old tomato crates.

Luci Napier: I come from an eclectic creative background: I have been fascinated by music, dance and theater since I was a kid. Not being a very good dancer (lol!), I would often come home from class frustrated that my body couldn't do what I wanted it to do. That's when I would pick up a pencil, a chunk of clay, or found objects to create a visual piece to make a character move the way I hoped my own body could.

I'm actually going to talk about something *PRACTICAL* for once! No, really! I'm totally serious. I know you think I'm going to *start* to talk about something practical, and then careen off into some bizarre tangent that's only barely relevant to anything you're working on, but this time, I'm really going to pass on an honest-to-God, bona fide "trick."

Peter de Sève has been drawing obsessively since he was a child. Born in Queens, New York in 1958, his love for drawing was fueled by monster movies, comic books and the work of Frank Frazetta. In high school, he studied figure drawing at the Art Students League in New York on weekends while creating comic strips and fantasy illustrations in his basement.

Did you know that "Cars"', Pixar's new animated feature movie, working title in 2001 was "Route 66" (after U.S. Route 66), but in 2002, the title was changed to prevent people from thinking it was related to the 1960 television show with the same name?