Two Flash-animation powerhouses, Vancouver’s Atomic Cartoons and Ireland-based Boulder Media (Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends and El Tigre), have teamed up on a new series. The Big City Birds promo will debut this week at KidScreen, the New York convention for kids entertainment creative executives, but in the meantime, we’ve been treated to an exclusive peak at the project.

Big City Birds was created by Ridd Sorensen, who works at Atomic Cartoons as a Supervising Director and runs Big City Cartoons. At the Vancouver-based studio, Sorensen has added his hand to shows like Atomic Betty and Captain Flamingo, both Flash-animated shows. Big City Birds centers on two birds and their animal buddies who live, well, in the big city. The show is targeted at the pre-school market (kids 4 to 6), and the show is aiming to hit the air in the Fall of 2008.

Besides teaming up with Boulder Media, Sorenson and Atomic joined forces with, amongst others, Jeff Agala, another director at Atomic Cartoons, and Jon Affolter, who provided Flash animation.

The series looks fantastic – gorgeous layouts, beautiful character designs and strong character animation. After KidScreen wraps, we’ll get the full promo up on CHF, but in the meantime, feast your eyes on these layouts.

Joe Corrao, a pioneer in online animation, became known for his ‘Sluggy and Poppo‘ series by way of Wired.com’s Animation Express (R.I.P.). An illustrator by trade, Corrao has worked out of both San Francisco and Brooklyn while continuing to develop his original series. Through his 4 Eyed Animation company, he recently released a new project called ‘Lil Ratskulz.’ The pilot is available on his website, and he’s already put another in the pipeline.

‘Freak Show,’ the new Flash-animated series created by David Cross (‘Arrested Development’ and ‘Mr. Show’) and Jon Benjamin, premiered last week on Comedy Central. In the coveted slot right after ‘South Park,’ ‘Freak Show’ airs at 10:30pm ET/ 9:30pm CST.

The animation is being produced by Radical Axis, the studio behind ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force’ and ‘Squidbillies,’ another Flash-animated show.

Below, Craig Hartin, Animation Director/Producer & Radical Axis, answered a few questions for CHF, but first, a clip!

AARON SIMPSON: The initial order is for 7 episodes. How far along is the team?
CRAIG HARTIN: Currently we have turned in 4 of the 7 episodes. The turn around is fast on the shows. We will have the final episode turned in by the first week in November.

AARON: Was their an un-aired pilot produced?
CRAIG: We did create a pilot. It was about ten minutes in length. A lot of what is in episode 1 is seen in the pilot. We made some minor adjustments to the files but the overall look and feel of the show was created during the pilot.

AARON: Do you storyboard first, then record, or vice versa?
CRAIG: We often have many things happening simultaneously due to the production schedule. We wait until we get the record version of the script and then start boarding based on it. A lot of times we will have designs of backgrounds and characters ready to take with us to the record for David and Jon to look over and approve.

AARON: Who designed the characters?
CRAIG: Todd Redner and Eric Cerda, based on notes from Scott Fry, RADICAL AXIS CEO, and direction from myself Craig Hartin, Animation Director/Producer Radical Axis, designed the freaks. After that we took all the combined drawings and made them into model sheets and sent them off for approval.

AARON: Where David Cross and Jon Benjamin involved in the look of the show?
CRAIG: We had a lot of conversations with David and Jon on the feel for the show and the look that they were going for. So most of the influence was from these conversations with them.

AARON: How much paper is used in the production?
CRAIG: Both Scott Fry and I are big on brainstorming before we send anything off. So we did a lot of paper drawings of characters and backgrounds, then went into the meeting room with them, put them on the wall and marked them all up. This helped us nail the look a lot quicker than sending every rough drawing that we came up with. Aside from that the entire production is created in the computer.

AARON: What was the biggest hurdle the production team faced in creating the first episode?
CRAIG: The biggest issue that we ran into was what software to use. Be began looking very seriously at Harmony, who was very helpful, but the big issue there was the learning curve and our start date for production. We had to begin production almost immediately after being told that the show was picked up, which meant that we had less time to experiment with other software.

AARON: How involved are David Cross and Jon Benjamin in the oversight of the animation?
CRAIG: Both David and Jon are very hands on with this show. Both very hard workers. They want to see the animation getting better and better just as we do. They are also understanding of the limitations of animation.

AARON: Besides Flash, what software is incorporated into the production pipeline?
CRAIG: We begin with building the radioplay in Final Cut as well as the animatic. After that we will kick out the digital animatic to the Flash animators. Once animation is complete we move animation out to the compositors for composite in After Effects. We have also been using Illustrator for some of the backgrounds. All mixing on the show is done through Pro Tools.

‘Squidbillies,’ the new Flash-animated series from the Williams Street team, premiered last night on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. It’s a fast-moving, highly-entertaining romp through the mountains of Georgia, where a giant, man eating snake lives next door to a squids. While the animation is simple, the gritty, hand-drawn character line work set against the almost sloppily painted backgrounds give the show a refreshing and new look.

The opening title cards of the first episode walk us through the ‘Squidbillies’ development stage.

SQUIDBILLIES PRODUCTION TIMELINE
“Squid” and “hillbillies” combined to make “Squidbillies”
Pilot made
Pilot revised
New Pilot made with 6 producers
(The number ’6′ then counts down to ’2′)
We like it!
Greenlit to Series
6 episodes ordered
20 episodes ordered
(the number ’20′ then counts down to 16)

Can’t say I’ve seen a show that recounted the rocky road it took to get to air even before a frame of animation goes by. Very clever.

‘Squidbillies’ feels like a late-nite, animation mixture of ‘Mr. Show’ and the Coen Brothers’ classic film ‘Raising Arizona,’ complete with what appears to be an homage to Nick Cage’s character – the show lead is named ‘Early’ Cuyler. And the humor is on par with ‘Arizona.’ In the first episode, titled ‘This Show is Called Squidbillies,’ the sheriff is in Early’s house getting a haircut, and he confronts Early’s sister, Lil, about what appears to be a moonshine rig:

SHERIFF
Did you know that moonshine is illegal here in this county?

LIL
Oh, that’s just my meth lab.

And Early’s mom, Granny, is confined to a home, but comes correct with unrestrained dialogue:

GRANNY
It’s God’s honest truth. When Jesus was president, he ate babies all the time.

It all goes by extremely fast, like most Adult Swim shows, so it’s almost imperative to watch this show repeatedly. You don’t want to miss Early’s sexual passion for pumpkins, the Space Baby, Early’s ‘Breathe if You’re Horny’ hat or the title cards at the end of the show that explain how graphic sex made it into the first episode.

If you missed last night’s show, you can check out a clip from an episode at the Adult Swim site.

(UPDATE – AWN posted an article stating a September release of ‘Squidbillies.’ Six episodes are reportedly on tap.)

You may already know that the ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force‘ creators, Dave Willis and Matt Maiellaro have been hard at work preparing a theatrical version of ‘ATHF.’ But what you may not know is that this same duo has been called upon to create a second original show for Adult Swim – ‘Squidbillies.’ This project has actually been in the works (first announced in March 2004) for quite some time, but all signs point to a July 2005 release for this Flash-animated show set in the North Georgia mountains.

A ‘Squidbillies’ pilot aired back in November 2004, and you can get a glimpse of the show’s unique look by downloading two promo clips from the Adult Swim Fruitcake site. The loose, folk-art background style looks amazing, and the character design seems like a mixture of refrigerator art and ‘Beavis and Butthead.’

The original announcement at the 2004 upfronts gave the following synopsis of the show:

Five million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean covered North America all the way to the Ohio Valley. As the ocean receded to form our present-day geography, a family of squids was stranded in a remote setting in the North Georgia mountains. This motley melange of mischievous mollusks, influenced by the rural ways of the redneck locals, quickly “adapticise” to a world of fighting, feuding and fornicating with a Faulknerian flambé of ferocious sea creature livin’. The humor lies in the “adapticization.”