Michael Mueller and his friends recently started a game company called Harmony Arcade, and their first release is available on Facebook. Castle Smash is a social game and it “is all about the look on your friend’s face when you arrive onto the battlefield with a solid gold slingshot.” Personally, I like the look on the horse’s face half-way through this trailer:

Joel Mackenzie produced this live-action short, titled The Were Jerk, in 2008 when he was studying at Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. The film also features some brilliant Flash-animation. He corralled his friends Philippe Tardif and Matt Shepherd (who we’ve featured here a number of times) to help him produce this sequence below that was produced almost entirely in Flash, with a little bit of After Effects help.

We’ll start the week of with some “traditional” animation produced in Flash. It’s the latest episode of Simon Tofield’s series Simon’s Cat. Thie episode, produced out of Tandem Films, is titled Lunch Break.

Hornet Inc’s directing duo Dan & Jason recently delivered a series of new, animated spots for confused.com, a UK-based price-comparison insurance company. All character animation in this ad, titled Somebody To Love, was done in Flash and then the team composited the piece in After Effects. The lead animator on the job was Mike Luzzi, and full credits are below:

Directed by: Dan & Jason
Executive Producer: Michael Feder
Producer: Jan Wohrle
Lead Animator: Mike Luzzi
Animators: Connie Li Chan, Jake Armstrong, Mark Pecoraro, Joe Andriola, Keelmy Carlo, Frank Summers, Joe Cappabianca, Rachel Yonda, Efrain Cintron, Lizzi Akana
Compositor: Yussef Cole
Editor: R.J. Glass
Produced at Hornet Inc.

London-based artist Tom Bunker designed, animated and directed these idents for MTV Rocks. Looks like there’s a bit of rotoscoping going on here as well.