Back in 2001, the internet was burning out and online entertainment was too. It was a sobering experience, but Aaron Augenblick decided to booze it up instead. He created Drunky, a Flash-animated film that rose above the clunky cartoons that the software had become synonymous for. It had style, smooth animation and a very memorable character. The original short, titled In Through the Out Door, was screened at Annecy and Slamdance, and became a signature piece in the Augenblick Studios library. Since then, Aaron’s studio has worked on variety of excellent projects, mostly aimed at the grown-up audience, including Golden Age, Superjail and a personal favorite: Wonder Showzen.
Now that web entertainment is back in full force, Drunky returns. Augenblick has resurrected Drunky for a new 11-minute pilot titled Fish House Punch. You’ll meet one of the most “colorful” grandmothers ever to walk into a bar, and to describe the overall tone of the piece I’ll borrow a phrase from the carnival boss - you’ll be “revolted in amazement.” Click below to watch an excerpt at the Augenblick website, which has been relaunched to include high-quality versions of the entire studio library.
Sam Burkardt, an animation director based in Paris, recently put the Adobe Creative Suite to the test. Along with French production company 3xplus, Burkardt designed and animated this pilot presentation for a multilingual series titled Idiomaniacs. Aimed at the 8 and up crowd, the 1-minute episodes explore and compare the idioms of 4 foreign languages - English, German, French and Spanish. The series comes complete with an interactive website with games and descriptions of the origins of these idioms. Burkardt used Illustrator and After Effects, but animated in Flash.
Chuck Gammage, who animated on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, has created a new series concept titled The Kid Man and Lemon Show. To bring the show to life, Gammage called upon Jamie Mason, who directed and animated this promo below for Chuck Gammage Animation Inc.
David Cowles, whose illustration work has appeared in dozens of magazines ands newspapers, teamed up with New York-based studio FlickerLab to create Skitterville - an animated pilot. The world of Skitterville centers on a caterpillar named Bob Chubby and all of his insect buddies.
Cowles explains:
Flash was a perfect match for the characters, since I first did the character designs in Freehand, which is also vector based. The animators at FlickerLab did a great job of assigning body languages for the various characters, and once we got on the same page about going for that 50’s limited animation look, the results were amazing.
Here’s the test reel:
Director Harold Moss and producer Sally Anne Syberg recently answered a few questions about the project.
AARON SIMPSON: Can you tell us more about the plans for the Skitterville test reel?
HAROLD MOSS: We are working with David Cowles, the creator of Skitterville, to find a home for all our good friends in Skitterville. It’s a beautiful place filled with fabulous bugs of all stripes and sizes, and we’re hopeful at finding a place for it soon, either as a 1/2 hour animated series, or as shorts.
AARON: How did FlickerLab end up teaming with David Cowles on the project?
SALLY ANNE SYBERG: Michele Weiss and Nancy Kanter at Playhouse Disney approached FlickerLab in 2005 about a pilot for their preschool block. We did a test and subsequently the pilot. David is an incredibly talented fellow and we all got along very well. After Playhouse Disney passed on the pilot, we stayed in touch with him and continued to work on Skitterville and his other properties as well.
AARON: Can you explain the production pipeline involved in the project, and who was responsible for each step?
HAROLD: For the test reel, Animators Nikolay Nachev and Phil Lockerby took David Cowles’ characters, which were created in Freehand, and converted them into Flash files. In Flash, they built some basic walk, crawl, flutter and fly cycles for each. FlickerLab Art Director Zartosht Soltani worked off of David’s background sketches and painted several full backgrounds. We combined these cycles and backgrounds in After Effects to give a sense of each character’s personality, and how they moved through their world. This was edited to a first pass at a theme song composed by me and composer David Wilson.The pipeline for the 22-minute pilot follows:
David Cowles created the show and designed the characters and the world of Skitterville. He sold the show as a pilot to Playhouse Disney, and worked with their writers to develop the script.
Playhouse Disney brought us together on the FlickerLab side, Harold Moss directed, Sally Anne Syberg produced, Frank Gresham animation directed, Zartosht Soltani art directed, Phil Lockerby and Nikolay Nachev were lead animators, David Zung and Frank Gresham created storyboards.
We received designs from David Cowles, and script from Michele Weiss at Disney
Zartosht Soltani worked with David Cowles character designs and sketches to create the look of the world. It was a conversation between them, carried out in with lines and ink. This conversation continued with David throughout production regarding the personality of the animation, the look of the characters
David Zung created rough storyboards based on the script and rough VO record
Harold Moss and Sally Anne Syberg cast the show
Nikolay Nachev and Phil Lockerby began creating animation samples and walk cycles
Harold Moss directed the voice-over in New York and LA
Frank Gresham tightened up the storyboards based on the edited voice track
Storyboard animatic was edited
Backgrounds and animation began
Compositing was done with exports from Flash and Photoshop backgrounds in After Effects
Sound Design started by Tom Lino
Final music composed by Harold Moss and David Wilson
Online edit completed at FlickerLab
AARON: David is a well-known illustrator, but he’s also an animator - did he have a strong vision for how the short should move?
SALLY ANNE: David did have a strong vision for how the characters could move but our animation director, Frank Gresham, and lead animators, Phil Lockerby and Nikolay Nachev, were very enthusiastic about Skitterville and lavished their attention and skills on the characters. David knows that others are more skilled at animation than he is and gave FlickerLab plenty of creative and interpretative freedom.
HAROLD: This was a continuation of the conversation between the artists at FlickerLab and David Cowles. He had a very strong sense of who these characters were, having lived with them in his head and on his screen for years. He imparted the essence of this to the animators, and they in turn offered up their interpretations. This back and forth helped yield a real richness to the characters and their style of motion.
AARON: Who wrote the soundtrack for the pilot?
SALLY ANNE: The soundtrack for the pilot was written by Stuart Kollmorgen who was at Red Dog, but now works as Big Yellow Duck.
AARON: How long has Flickerlab been utilizing Flash in animation productions?
HAROLD: FlickerLab started its life in 1999 creating an animated Flash series for the web, This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow.
HAROLD: We soon turned that expertise to film and television, creating the first Flash-animated content to be broadcast by Cartoon Network - two pilots for Adult Swim:
HAROLD: We have since used Flash in countless productions for broadcast, film, and online.
AARON: What else is in the pipeline at FlickerLab?
HAROLD: What isn’t? We have a live-action puppet/animation kids series in development and a documentary series combining animation and live- action. We are continuing our animation of Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen shorts that run during his show. We are currently animating a second in a series of spots for the American Heart Association. We recently animated a beautiful spot for St. Joseph Medical Center in Baltimore.
AARON: Thanks, Sally Anne and Harold. Beautiful work.
The Massachusetts-based National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), has partnered with Scott Nash’s SNAP Studios to create a series of educational safety shorts.
According to the NFPA, The Uh-Ohs are “block-shaped critters that are cute, curious and careless,” and Nash explains that each episode will feature Rounders, friendly, hard working animals, who try to prevent the Uh-Ohs from hurting themselves. The property will be rolling out coloring books, key chains, t-shirts and plans for an animated series are in the works. Below we learn three safety messages: always enter the water feet first, stay 3 feet away from a hot stove and always wear a helmet when you ride a bike. Nash brought in Dave Schlafman to co-write and direct and Casey Leonard helped out on the animation front.
Bam Margera, one of the infamous Jackass daredevils, has been animated many times in the past - but mainly as a video game character. But back in 2006, this star of MTV’s Viva La Bam was illustrated into his very own Flash-animated pilot - Bamimation. I found this canceled pilot floating around the web, and am fairly certain it was animated by Six Point Harness in Hollywood.
Dan and Jason, one of the director teams at Hornet Inc, have created a new series pilot for the 4Kids TV network. Rocket Monkeys is a Flash-animated series featuring a pair simians, Wally and Gus, who were blasted into space. The pilot episode is now “on the bubble” over at the 4Kids website - and if enough people vote, the series will continue. The pilot was animated by Markus Wagner, Justin Roth and Efrin Citron. NOTE: at two points during the stream, commercials play, but the show returns after 30 seconds.
Back in 2001, the internet was burning out and online entertainment was too. It was a sobering experience, but Aaron Augenblick decided to booze it up instead. He created Drunky, a Flash-animated film that rose above the clunky cartoons that the software had become synonymous for. It had style, smooth animation and a very memorable character. The original short, titled In Through the Out Door, was screened at Annecy and Slamdance, and became a signature piece in the Augenblick Studios library. Since then, Aaron’s studio has worked on variety of excellent projects, mostly aimed at the grown-up audience, including Golden Age, Superjail and a personal favorite: Wonder Showzen.
Chuck Gammage, who animated on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, has created a new series concept titled The Kid Man and Lemon Show. To bring the show to life, Gammage called upon 
HAROLD: For the test reel, Animators Nikolay Nachev and 
SALLY ANNE: David did have a strong vision for how the characters could move but our animation director, Frank Gresham, and lead animators, Phil Lockerby and Nikolay Nachev, were very enthusiastic about Skitterville and lavished their attention and skills on the characters. David knows that others are more skilled at animation than he is and gave FlickerLab plenty of creative and interpretative freedom.
The Massachusetts-based National Fire Protection Association (
