I spent this past week in Portland, Oregon for the 1st Annual Platform International Animation Festival. Portland itself was a thrill, and the festival surely lived up to expectations.

I joined Dan Sarto’s (AWN.com) Attack of the Blog: Meet the Bloggers panel on Wednesday (see Charles Zembillas’ photos), and then moderated The Flashers Convention, a panel covering the use of Flash in the world of character animation. Joining me on the panel were Brendan Burch (Six Point Harness), Nina Paley, Delna Bhesania (Bardel), Chris Staples (Cartoon Network) and David SanAngelo (Soup2Nuts).

We covered the benefits of Flash to independent animators, cost savings in the TV world and whether or not ‘Flash’ is still a dirty word in the animation industry. Harmony, the digital 2D software from Toonboom, ended as a topic multiple times, and seems to be making headway versus Flash.

Thanks to all who attended, and to Cartoon Network, Irene Kotlarz and Anne Denman for inviting me. I’ll surely be back next year.

As reported back in April, various studios from around the world have been invited to create a series of 15 three-minute ‘Habbosodes.’ The effort is headed up by Sulake, the company behind Habbo Hotel, a massive virtual environment with over 3.6 million users. The ‘Habbosodes’ project will resolve with the release of a compilation DVD, that will eventually spawn a TV series.

To date, 5 studios have announced their involvement in the project - Bardel Entertainment, Trapeze Animation Studios, Neptoon Studios (in conjunction with Elliott Animation), Noodlesoup Productions and New Zealand’s Huhu Studios. The Neptoon gang recently posted a sneak preview image of their project over at The Drawing Board message boards.