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.

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In October of 2007, CHF featured M. Wartella’s psychedelic music video for The Go’s track You Go Bangin’ On. He joins us today for a very insightful interview into his process, his past music videos and his recent work on Adult Swim’s upcoming series Superjail.

AARON SIMPSON: How did the You Go Bangin’ On music video land on your plate?

M. WARTELLA: Well, we’ve been friends with and following The Go since their Sub Pop days. We try to catch their shows when they come through town (New York City), you know, hang out, drink their beer, and over the years we’ve just kind of become friends. Since they were looking to do something different for their latest record, they asked me to do the album art. Of course, as soon as I heard the new tracks, I was happy to oblige because I think this is their best release to date, and the critics seem to agree so far. But basically, the band decided they wanted to have an animated music video too, so that is how it came about.

AARON: Did you “pitch” your animation concept to the band before starting?
M. WARTELLA: At first, we wanted the whole video to be animated, kind of like a Yellow Submarine or Josie & The Pussycats thing where the band is drawn as cartoon characters. But as I started thinking more about it, I realized that most people, especially the band’s fans, would probably want to see real pictures of the group, not my drawings. So we started playing around with more of a Terry Gilliam/Monty Python paper cut-out approach. Of course, I realized that this was going to involve a photo shoot, and once I knew we were gonna have to do a shoot, I decided that we should just film the band “live” against a black backdrop, and then superimpose a “psych-out” style animation on top of them, like an old Jefferson Airplane or The Strawberry Alarm Clock type thing (below). Read the rest of this entry »

Greg Franklin, the in-house director and head of development at Six Point Harness, pointed me to a Flash-animated clip I hadn’t seen. Apparently, half of the web has, as this short film has been viewed on YouTube over 250,000 times. It was animated by Aaron Augenblick and the gang at Augenblick Studios for Louis CK’s HBO comedy special titled Shameless.

The 2007 Ottawa International Animation Festival wrapped up last night, and a few Flash-animated submissions took home awards. Golden Age, Aaron Augenblick’s series of comedy shorts grabbed the Grand Prize for Best-Commissioned Animation, while Squeeze the Day, a 2006 episode of Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends, grabbed the award for Television Animation for Children.

Nick Cross’ Flash-animated The Waif of Persephone screened in the Narrative Short Animation category, and a Cross was featured in an article at canoe.ca in the weeks leading up to the event.

For the upcoming film The Ten, which hits theaters August 3rd, director David Wain called upon New York’s Augenblick Studios to animate one of the 10 vignettes loosely based around the ten commandments. Around 1 minutes into this trailer and again at 1:45, you’ll see brief clips of the animated work from the film.

The team behind the film are the masterminds of the comedy troupe The State, who also created Comedy Central’s Reno 911!. Below are some stills from the film, which stars Paul Rudd, Winona Ryder and Rob Corddry.

Adult Swim is set to unveil several new pilots on May 13th, but they’ve given us a tease today on the website. Two of the 5 new series are animated in Flash, That Crook’d ‘Sipp (animated by Turner Studios) and Superjail (animated by Augenblick Studios).

Superjail

That Crook’d ‘Sipp

That Crook’d ‘Sipp was created by Jacob Escobedo, Nick Weidenfeld, and Mike Weiss. Superjail, set to debut in 2008, was ceated by Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick and Ben Gruber.

VH1’s head-banging new reality series ‘Supergroup’ is all about the Flash. Damnocracy, as they band is known, has now been animated in Flash twice, once by Hornet Inc’s Aaron Stewart and again by Augenblick Studios.

Stewart and his team, which included Creative Director Jim Fitzgerald and animators Gregor Hofbauer and William Bredbeck, animated the show’s title sequence. Stewart used element of photo collage in the segment and some over-the-top special effects likely created in After Effects.

Augenblick Studios produced a short for the band that debuted on a jumbotron in Las Vegas during one of the episodes. As you can see in the clip over at the Augenblick site, the supergroup can’t find enough superlatives to lavish upon the Aaron and his team’s animation.

Beyond having the same first name, both Stewart and Augenblick have recently picked up some similar award hardware (at the same awards show no less). Stewart won BDA Gold for his ‘Matzo and Metal’ VH1 promo and Augenblick Studios received a 2006 Promax Award for Best Interstitial for ‘Revue Your History with Varla Jean,’ which has been airing on the Logo Channel in 2006.