Ari Folman’s animated documentary Vals Im Bashir (Waltz With Bashir) is a pioneer in many ways. The film was one of the first (along with $9.99) feature films emanating from Israel to be released in theaters. Beyond that, Bashir, a 2D animated film, was produced primarily with Adobe Flash, a medium that is typically reserved for television and internet projects. Of late, many Flash features have been emerging, but none (save perhaps Sita Sings the Blues) have been praised to this degree.

Four years in the making, Waltz With Bashir went on to grab more award nominations than the crew had artists, but no achievement was bigger than the film’s nomination for the Palm d’Or (Best Film) at the 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival. It set the tone for the coming awards season, which saw the film pick up the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and an Academy Award nomination in the same category. Animated films are often left out of the “Best Picture” category, relegated instead to the animation corner of the ballroom, but at the 43rd National Society of Film Critics Awards, Bashir took the top prize – Best Film.

Yoni Goodman, the film’s animation director, took some time between award shows to answer a few questions.

AARON SIMPSON: What has been the best part of the international praise the film has received?

YONI GOODMAN: I think throughout the production our only thought was to finish the film. That was our goal and we thought of nothing past that. Initially it was supposed to be a small art house movie, with very limited distribution, and of course we had our fantasies of how people would react, but we never suspected the movie would go so far and attract that much of attention. The first real shock was the premiere at Cannes. We had heard stories about the event, but nothing could have prepared us for the real thing. At the end of the screening, we had a 20 minute standing ovation from 2,300 people, which was quite a shock (until that moment, I didn’t notice that the theatre had balconies). Later on that week, we were the talk of the festival, and that just didn’t stop. In a way, it hasn’t really stopped since, so we’re still in a 12-month rollercoaster ride.

AARON: Tell us about the whole rotoscoping confusion…
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M. Wartella, an illustrator, comic artist and animator, has worked on several Flash-animated TV series, including Wonder Showzen and Superjail! His recent gig, however, found him creating storyboards for the CG Adult Swim show Xavier: Renegade Angel. For an upcoming episode, the show creators, Vernon Chatman and John Lee, invited him to bring a sequence to life in 2D.

The episode, titled Damnesia Vu, premieres Thursday, March 19th (tomorrow!) at 12:15 am ET/PT. Below we ask him a few questions about the production, and his response includes a video tutorial detailing his one-man-band process. But first, here’s a :25 second clip from the 2:00 minute sequence he animated.

AARON SIMPSON: When did you produce this segment?

M. WARTELLA: The animation was done entirely by hand over the course of one month late last year. No assistants or in-betweeners or background artists or anything like that. Just cranked it out all myself, which isn’t too bad for a two-minute cartoon. I’d just come off a gig storyboarding the second season of Xavier, and I think the show’s directors, Vernon Chatman and John Lee, were inspired to try something different based on the illustrative style of the animatics I was doing. They asked if I’d be willing to animate a special segment, and of course I said yes.

SIMPSON: What type of creative direction were you given?

WARTELLA: Well, I had worked with John and Vernon on Wonder Showzen, so I already had a bit of insight into their particular brand of humor. The premise of this episode, Damnesia Vu, is that Xavier is kind of “Quantum Leaping” into different lives, sort of a reincarnation theme, and they had the idea that it would be a cool twist for Xavier, a CGI character, to jump into a flat 2D world. They wrote the script, and we just kind of developed it back and forth from there.

SIMPSON: What transpired during that back-and-forth?
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Like Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s web empire Google, Craig McCracken’s path to world domination began as a school project. While the TV series and the internet search giant launched within weeks of eachother, it was 1992 when McCracken first brought Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup to life in a student short titled Whoopass Stew! A Sticky Situation, initially introducing the threesome as The Whoopass Girls. The Google gang may preach their altruistic “don’t be evil” mantra, but The Powerpuff Girls immediately “dedicated their lives to fighting crime and the forces of evil.” Let’s watch a few scenes from this original short:

McCracken’s crime-fighting cuties wowed the execs at Hanna-Barbera, in particular Fred Seibert, who navigated Craig’s work into What A Cartoon! Show (initially dubbed World Premiere Toons), the seminal shorts program that spawned a string of animated hits like Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo and Courage the Cowardly Dog. After producing four in-house shorts (only one was completed), the show was given a greenlight by the network for a 1998 premiere (all of this development material is available on the DVD that releases next Tuesday – The Powerpuff Girls: The Complete Series – 10th Anniversary Collection). McCracken’s college roommate Genndy Tartakovsky was already a rising star at Cartoon Network, having created Dexter’s Lab, when the two teamed up to produce the first season of PPG. On November 18, 1998, the series enjoyed the highest rated premiere in Cartoon Network’s history, setting the stage for a six season run.
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Nickelodeon’s hit live-action series The Naked Brothers Band is rocking animation-style this week. At 8:30pm tonight, the band’s first half-hour cartoon special, The Supetastic 6, premieres on Nickelodeon. Check out a 1-minute clip on the Nick’s Turbonick site.

“We’re excited to premiere The Naked Brothers Band’s first animated special which showcases their humor in a fun, new, fantasy-filled format,” said Marjorie Cohn, Executive Vice President, Development and Original Programming, Nickelodeon Networks.

Mark Salisbury, an athlete-turned-artist, captained a small squad of artists through this ambitious production. Working out of Worldwide Biggies, Albie Hecht’s New York-based company which also produces the live-action series, the team drew from a creative playbook to bring this musical action project to life. We recently caught up with Mark to discuss this upcoming Flash-animated special.

AARON SIMPSON: Give us an idea of how this project came to be.

MARK SALISBURY: As far as I know, here’s how it happened. Scott Martin, my partner at my own company Peach Nova, and I did a music video for The Naked Brothers Band two summers ago. The creator of The Naked Brothers Band, Polly Draper loved what we did on that video and said that if they got picked up for another season that they were going to write an animated episode. I’ve since joined Albie Hecht (CEO of Worldwide Biggies and former President of Nickelodeon), where they produce the live action series. And that’s how it happened…. as far as I know.

AARON: Does the animated version of the property take place in a similar world to the live-action Nickelodeon show?
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Back in June, Playhouse Disney began airing a new original animated short-form series called Can You Teach My Alligator Manners? The Flash-animated series focuses on teaching preschool aged viewers to behave properly.

The show is animated by Los Angeles-based animation studio Oddbot Inc, who have also teamed up with Playhouse Disney in the past on shows like Shanna’s Show and Shane’s Kindergarten Countdown. Here’s a clip from the episode titled Movie Manners, and below that we interview Christopher Hamilton from Oddbot.

AARON SIMPSON: Christopher, how did Oddbot wind up working on this project?

CHRISTOPHER HAMILTON: I’ve produced a number of short series for Playhouse Disney since 2003. I directed the Shanna’s Show series, Shane’s Kindergarten Countdown, and was supervising director on Lou and Lou: Safety Patrol during my time at the studio One Red Room, where I also served as the company’s Creative Director. When that company closed its doors in 2006, I formed OddBot Inc. Based on the successful collaborations of our previous projects, Playhouse took a chance on our new studio and asked us to produce another batch of Lou and Lou: Safety Patrol, which later led to an order of the new series Can You Teach My Alligator Manners?

AARON: How much paper and pencil factor into your production?
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