Ron Doucet and Mike White of Collideascope Digital Productions recently finished a music video for the electronic band MSTRKRFT. It’s for the band’s song ‘Work on You,’ and it’s a gorgeous video, completed entirely in Flash. The team took advantage of Flash’s ability to cycle and re-use, but there’s also a great many traditionally animated shots that push this video over the top.

The production team drew on inspiration from 80s cel-animated shows like ‘Transformers,’MSTRKRFT is the brainchild of Jesse F. Keeler (JFK) and Al Puodziukas (ALP). The production team included, among others, Derek Jessome, Jeff Knott, David Sourwine and animators Bianca Siercke and Rachel Morrison.The project was chronicled in a 2-part documentary that you can see below.
PART 1

PART 2
Collideascope was featured here back in January. Did I hear Mike call them ‘Collidea-ma-scope’ in the first part of that doc? Ron’s award-winning, Flash-animated short ‘The Chase,’ was recently discussed in the CHF message boards.

Ghostbot has more Flash animated goodness for your eyes to feast upon. Roque Ballesteros, Alan Lau and Brad Rau are back at it, this time with a music video and a new Esurance TV spot.

The music video is something the Ghostbot gang mentioned in their CHF interview back last summer. It’s for the band Five Iron Frenzy and the song is called ‘Wizard Needs Food Badly.’ It’s currently airing as the second half of the Channel Frederator podcast (M4V), bumped up against a great looking short called ‘The Dan Danger Show!’ by Butch Hartman & Steve Marmel.

Ghostbot came through again for Phil Robinson over at Wildbrain, delivering another delicious Esurance spot called ‘Proof.’ The company seems to like them so much, they’ve dedicated a section of their website as a shrine to Ghostbot’s work. An interesting note here – this is their first project completed entirely without paper. The Ghostbot gang has gone digital, designing and animating on Cintiq’s. This info was shared over on the Ghostbot blog, where you can read more about the production, and who did what.

Jared Deal tipped me off to a project he had a hand on – a Flash-animated music video for The Redwalls, a four-piece band out of Chicago. The animation crew was also a four-piece band – Mark Salisbury (supervising director), Scott Martin (director), Tim Shankweiler(background design) and Jared Deal designing some characters, building layouts and animating like a fiend. It was intended for The N network, but it never aired. After sifting through The Redwalls website, it appears as though they went for a live-action video. Ho hum.

Jared also had other news for me – he and Garnet Syberg-Olsen are embarking on new 5-minute animated short based on a story by Stern Rockwell. Rockwell runs ‘Streets Are Saying Things,’ an online graffiti museum, and the short will follow two friends, Bet and Dooz, as they set out to tag a pristine train. It’s the latest project from their production entity – Carnival Cartoons. You can see a BG ruffs over at Garnet’s website.

Meet Steve Scott, animation director. He’s rep’d by London-based Not To Scale, and his work is simply stunning. Have a ganders at this little Flash-animated gem – it’s the music video for a song called ‘Suburban Harmony’ by Telemetry Orchestra.

Oh, by the way, you just met Steve Scott, musician. That’s right, Mr. Scott is IN Telemetry Orchesra. That’s his band. Reminds me of the talented folks in Lemon Jelly, who also make their own Flash-animated videos.

Steve has also done some work with the design and animation shop Sixty40, who were recently profiled here at CHF, and here you can see his VH1 spot that tries to clear up the mysteries behind some Led Zeppelin lyrics.

I got in touch with Steve, who actually spent a year working at Disney, and he explained his process:

Almost all of my projects were created using Flash, but always as part of a process. I usually use Illustrator for character design, then do animation in Flash and then, at some stage, chuck everything into After Effects for further grading.

Wrapping up Student Week here at Cold, Hard Flash, I’d like to introduce you to Shaun Bakkem-Reimers, a Flash animator up in Portland, Oregon. He’s attending Oregon State University, and his recent music video for the Portland’s The Punk Group has been gaining praise (and surely a few cold stares). According to an article in The Daily Barometer, Shaun started creating the video for ‘Fat Girls on Bicycles’ back in March of 2005. It’s not his first widely seen Flash project. A little over a year ago, Shaun added his ‘Bobby the Lizard Boy’ short to the growing list of Flash projects on the Nicktoons network.