Flash Animation on Wikipedia
Over in the CHF message boards, I’ve posted my intentions to overhaul the Wikipedia ‘Flash animation‘ post. It’s woefully in need of repair and updating, and I think we’re just the community to take care of this situation. 
For starters, let’s figure out the timeline for Flash-animation on broadcast television. Why does this matter? To know where we’re going in our ‘paperless 2D’ industry, we need to know where we’ve come from. This is a great opportunity to cement the history of the rapidly-growing digital 2D medium.
In my mind, this first list should include any type of Flash animation on TV. This would include TV series, TV commercials, interstitials and even title sequences. Below is what I could come up with, but I’m expecting plenty of revisions and additions to this:
BROADCAST FLASH TIMELINE
2000
- Breakup Girl on Oxygen
- The Rosie O’Donnell Show title sequence, produced by Bullseye Art
2001
- Ollie’s Under The Bed Adventures – March 2001, a half-hour special on Teletoon produced entirely in Flash
- Quads! – November 2001 on Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service network
- TV Warehouse – BBC program – title sequence done in Flash by Elephant Egg
by Collideascope
2002
- The Proud Family Shorties – Hyperion Pictures under the Animobile label. Two episodes animated by Animax (The Beach and The Picnic)
- Home Movies – Season 2 – Season 1 was ‘squigglevision’
- Mucha Lucha – first US network Flash series
- The Mr. Dink Show – Canada’s first broadcast Flash production
- Bobinogs – on BBC Two Wales
- Don’t Call Me Judas – an animated music video by Bucket Truck produced entirely Flash
Next up:
Online Flash series
Feature-length Flash animation
Theatrical-release Flash animation
October 31st, 2006 at 12:45 am
The first Flash cartoons created for broadcast that I’m aware of are my own Breakup Girl shorts, who’s online versions are still viewable at breakupgirl.net/flash/ . These aired (IIRC) in March 2000 on the fledgling Oxygen tv network as part of “X-Chromosome” a sort of female Liquid Television overseen by Kit Laybourne and Machi Tantillo. Actually, we may have been beaten on air by another “X-Chromosome” segment called “The Ruth Truth” that was also done in Flash, but had more of a motion-graphics style.
At the time I know we were innovators in using Flash for broadcast, so I always had my eye out for other people doing the same. Thats why I remember months later (Fall of 2000) when The Rosie O’Donnell show had their opening sequence animated with Flash by Bullseye Media (and mistakenly claimed it was the first Flash on TV). Add them to the list too. Great blog — Chris K.
October 31st, 2006 at 4:06 am
The Proud Family Shorties were produced by Hyperion Pictures under their Animobile label which is credited as Editor. These were created to be exclusively broadcast on the Disney channel as a means to continue viewer interest in the Proud Family show as it went into reruns. All of the shorts were developed and animated in the Animobile section of Hyperion, though it should be mentioned that episode #2 was initially animated by ANIMAX who was hired as a subcontractor to speed the production up, but the product that was delivered was not of the quality that was desired by Hyperion and most of the shots from the short had to be reanimated again. These shorts were highly succesfull in demonstrating the efficiency of the Flash-to-Broadcast pipeline and were ultimately broadcast on Saturday mornings on ABC.
The production time to create these shorts was from late May 2002 to September 2002.
Hope it helps.
October 31st, 2006 at 4:46 am
Hey Aaron,
Great article! Anyhow, I just wasnted to let you know that I along with a few key animators were responsible for putting out “The Proud Family Shorties” back in 2002.
The story goes like this… Hyperion Studios responsible for many movies including ‘Brave Little Toaster, and Thumblina, was the mother company to many smaller companies. One of those companies was “Jambalaya”, who was responsible for Proud Family , headed by Bruce Smith. Another company under Hyperion was Animobile, primarily doing phone games and web cartoons. At that time, I was the Director of Animation. We got the opportunity to do the Proud Family Shorties – 3 shorts to be played Disney Channel. We worked very hard to try and get this out because we new it was the start of something good. Because we were doing something completely new to us, we ran a little long, and had to hire on Animax to help out with one of the shorts. At the end, we submitted some awesome shorts, with some great animation. We were forwarded an email from a Disney exec who said that Eisner loved the shorts, and didn’t know that they were done in Flash…
Hyperion / Animobile Animators:
1)Dave Markowitz
2)Alex Meza
3)Keith Holven
4)Anselm Yew
5)Doug Rowell
6)Sean…?
7)John Anderson on BG’s (in Flash)
and Animax who did a great job at helping us push the medium.
As far as I know, everyone named is still pushing the medium of Flash to greater limits. Thanks for the forum!
Dave Markowitz
Lead Animator – Evite
November 1st, 2006 at 12:14 am
Don’t forget March 2001, Ollie’s Under The Bed Adventures, a half-hour special on Teletoon produced entirely in Flash.
Then early 2002, Bucket Truck released Don’t Call Me Judas an entirely Flash animated music video.
November 3rd, 2006 at 4:46 pm
From Brazil, some webseries in flash:
- Mundo Canibal (webtoons)
http://www.fabricadequadrinhos.com.br/mundocanibal/indexo.php
- Charges (political)
http://charges.uol.com.br/
November 3rd, 2006 at 7:35 pm
hey – there were actually two episodes of the proud family shorties that animax animated – The Beach and The Picnic.
And a hello to Dave – we’re in the midst of updating the imdb listings for Flash shows we’ve done and the Proud Family Shorties are in the midst of getting posted – would like your help updating the list of folks involved when it goes live.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Bullseye Art produced the Rosie O’Donnell Show opens in both 2000 and 2001. Both years the open was nominated for a daytime Emmy for ‘Main Title Design’. Definitely a first for Flash in that area!
Heh. I guess none of us had Oxygen (or were watching it). Heh.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
The Rosie opens were definitely the first to air on network tv (as opposed to cable).
December 1st, 2006 at 7:26 am
For the Webisode part – Atomic Cartoons produced 5 2-3 minute eps of “Dog in a Box”. 2001. This was around the same time Mondo Media was producing Thugs on Film. Right before the whole dot com thing busted.
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:36 am
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