This past Friday, my wife and I attended the 35th Annual Annie Awards, which were held on the UCLA campus for the first time. As you may have read here a few months back, it was a proud night for Flash animation.

The big winner at Royce Hall was undeniably Pixar’s feature film Ratatouille - which wrapped up 10 awards. On the TV side, two series took home a pair of trophies - Robot Chicken and Nickelodeon’s Flash-animated series El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. The show, which was created by Jorge Gutierrez and his wife Sandra Equihua, walked away with awards for Best Animated Television Production for Children and Character Design in an Animated Television Production, a category Gutierrez was nominated for two years ago. Congrats to Dave Thomas, Tim Yoon, Gabe Swarr, Roman Laney and the crews at Boulder Media and Six Point Harness. [read Cold Hard Flash interviews with Gutierrez and Yoon]

El Tigre was also nominated in two other categories:

• Monica Kennedy for Character Animation in a Television Production
• Shawn Patterson for Music in an Animated Television Production

Below is one of the El Tigre clips Patterson submitted for the awards. Its from episode 9, titled Yellow Pantera.

Sadly, it looks like this award-winning show will be ending this year, but it will surely go out on a high-note. Nickelodeon hasn’t picked up the second season, and as Patterson put it on his MySpace page “all great things come to an end.”In the Best Animated Television Commercial category, Acme Filmworks’ Powershares spot, titled Escape Average, took top honors. This weekend, I asked Dave Wasson, the director of the commercial, about the ceremony and production experience:

When Patrick Warburton announced that our Powershares spot had won I was completely caught off guard. At past Annie Awards, I’d been nominated quite a few times, but had ever won. So I had sort of given up on the idea of taking home a trophy. I tried to get Ron Diamond and Gwynn Adik to join me on stage but they wouldn’t budge (they’d decide to give me “my moment in the sun”). I hadn’t written anything down so I gave a short, rambling thank you speech and staggered off stage.

The schedule on this spot was crazy; three weeks total from the time I got the outline from the agency until the day we delivered the finished spot. That said, of all of the projects I’ve directed, it was actually one of the most fun. I really clicked with the agency creatives right from the start, and they were completely open to me taking their idea and running with it (incidentally, in case any agency executives are reading this, this is the best recipe for good commercials - I’m just sayin’). Dave Knott and I completed the storyboard in two days. The following day I made the animatic. Using Flash I was able to create the character designs and backgrounds in record time.

Even though our crew was small, they were super talented, which made it all the more enjoyable. I contacted Brendan Burch at Six Point Harness Studios and he hooked us up with a couple of his best guys. Saharat Tantivaranyoo did a beautiful job with the character layouts, and James Krenske’s animation is kick ass! Back at Acme Filmworks, I worked with Nic Mermet on After Effects to composite all the elements together and add all of the multi-plane parallax. All in all, it was really a great experience.

[Watch Wasson's Powershares commercial here at Cold Hard Flash]

Back at the Annie Awards, Flash animation continued to echo throughout the night. The creators of Flash, Jonathan Gay, Gary Grossman and Robert Tatsumi, were honored with the Ub Iwerks Award, which highlights excellence in technical achievement. I won’t go into much more detail on this, as a we’ll be posting a lengthy interview with all three guys tomorrow.

But in the meantime, here’s a clip that played just prior to their award. It’s a collage of various Flash-animated projects from the last 10 years. Antran Manoogian, the president of ASIFA-Hollywood, asked me to assemble the clip, and I was happy to oblige. It’s simply a hint at all of the great Flash animation out there - we surely left out some incredible projects. Thanks to Antran for the invitation, and to Les Perkins for helping me put this together.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Alongside John Canemaker and Glen Keane, John Kricfalusi accepted his Winsor McCay Award, which honors “career contributions to the art of animation.” John K’s The Ren and Stimpy Show was credited with “reinvigorated television animation,” but he was also noted for his pioneering work on the internet’s first cartoon series - The Goddamn George Liquor Program, which was animated entirely in Flash.

There were also a handful of nominees on Friday representing Flash-animated projects:

BEST ANIMATED SHORT SUBJECT
Chip Wass’ short Mascot Prep – part of Disney’s Shorty McShorts’ Shorts project - animated at Boulder Media

ANIMATION PRODUCTION ARTIST
Natasha Liberman – Growing Up Creepie - Discovery Kids

BEST ANIMATED TELEVISION COMMERCIAL
Esurance Homeowners spot – W!LDBRAIN

BEST ANIMATED TELEVISION PRODUCTION FOR CHILDREN
Little Einsteins – Disney Channel
Peep and the Big Wide World – Discovery Kids

Lastly, I’d like to congratulate my cousin, Elizabeth Harvatine, for her nomination in the Character Animation in a Television Production category. She was honored for her stop-motion animation on Adult Swim’s Morel Orel, and her pal Eric Towner took home the trophy for his work on another stop-motion project - Robot Chicken. (inset photo credit - Tennessee Reid Norton)

For as good as they are, I don’t think the Boulder Media gang brags enough about their work. So I’m going to have to do it for them. This Dublin-based animation studio not only provides service work for Flash series like Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends and El Tigre, but they also make time for creative exploration. The following three shorts all lean on their soundtracks for the majority of the audio experience, a refreshing departure from the often talky world of animated shorty. A tip of the hat to Robert Cullen, the creative director at Boulder Media, for helping pull this post together and for providing an environment where this type of work can flourish.

Carte de Visite is a melancholy story about carnival folks and the artists performing in a “freak show.” Directed by Paul O’Flanagan, the film is dialog-free, and driven by a beautiful score composed by Tom Lawrence. Dave O’Sullivan handled the art direction here, and I found myself lost in the lush exteriors and chilled by the bleak interiors. Paul and his team employed not just Flash, but also some 3D elements that are composited seamlessly.

Barbershop is a musically-driven short written and directed by Mick O’Sullivan, and co-directed by Catherine McIntyre. Crafty 1950’s character design, slick backgrounds (again by Dave O’Sullivan) and bouncy animation make this snappy short a highly entertaining watch. Animation direction was provided by Paul O’Flannagan and the animation crew included Gillian Comerford, Richard Kelly, Tim Dowling, Mark Flood, Adam Kelly, Peter Slattery and Monica Kennedy, who is up for an Annie Award this year for her work on El Tigre.

The Big Rock Candy Mountains, makes wonderful use of a 1905 Harry McClintock song, creating an inventive world that compliments the imaginative lyrics. The short was directed by Ian Kenny and animated by Tim Dowling and Roger Grogan. The gorgeous backgrounds were designed by Tom Galvin.

Robert Etchingham, a Flash animator hailing from Dublin, Ireland, has worked on several projects discussed here - Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera and Carter & Son. When he’s not at work at Boulder Media, Etchingham is creating his own projects, which include Speakeasy, a mobster, film noir cartoon starring Jack Knife, an Irish/American hoodlum. Robert has cut together a trailer for the project, which is below.

Etchingham will soon be setting out for his new home in Vancouver. There he’ll continue to watch gangster films, including Jimmy Cagney flicks which he lists amongst his favorites. Good luck with the big move, Robert!

Dublin-based animation studio Boulder Media is forging into the original production world with their new property Carter and Son. The new action-adventure series concept was created by Boulder’s Emmy-nominated Creative Director Robert Cullen, and it “follows the adventures of Master Illusionist Jonathan Carter and his twelve year old son Charlie who possess psychic and telekinetic abilities.” The Boulder team is shopping the property in Cannes at MIPCOM 2007, which is only weeks away. Below is the trailer:

Boulder Media has added their stamp to some of the best Flash-animated series on air, including Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and El Tigre.

Disney’s Shorty McShorts’ Shorts keeps on blast out new projects, and I can hardly keep up. So here’s several, starting with The Imperfect Duplicates of Dodger Dare, the creation of my friend Andy Suriano, a fellow Michigander. The voice of Beauty is performed by Lisa Loeb, and Andy, who boasts plenty of improv experience, played several roles as well.

The animation was produced by Copernicus Studios in Canada. These guys are real pioneers in the animation world, and are producing perhaps the best Flash work on the planet right now. If you squint your eyes you can see the pencil crayon strokes they uses for the character outlines - a painstaking approach that delivers a cartoon look not often found in Flash productions. You can tell that Murray Bain, the art director at Copernicus, and his co-workers have really benefited from their collaborations with John K. They work pose-to-pose throughout Dodger Dare, which gives their work a more traditionally animated feel.You can also download that for your iPod.Next up is Mascot Prep, the creation of Chip Wass, who also created the designs for Shorty McShort Short himself. Boulder Media in Ireland produced the Flash animation.
And lastly is Flip Flopped, a show I believe was produced in Flash (help, anyone?). What I do know is that the voice of the Dad was played by Jeff Garlin, one of my favorite actors, and the co-star of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Dublin-based Boulder Media recently animated a new cartoon for Disney Channel’s Shorty McShorts’ Shorts project. Troy Ride was the brainchild of the National Television gang - Brumby Boylston, Chris Dooley, Bucky Fukumoto and Brian Won.

Thanks to Alex at Mukpuddy for the tip.

Sean Szeles, one of many talented artists working with Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua in Burbank on Nickelodeon’s new hit El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, has unveiled a few animated work-in-progress scenes on his blog. Sean describes in detail how the pre-production process works, explaining how Fred Osmond, Dave Thomas, Gabe Swarr, Ricky Garduno, Luke Cormican and Aaron Horvath all take part.

The episodes are shipped off to Ireland-based Boulder Media (and a few are currently in the oven at Six Point Harness), but before that, Sean gets to add a few fully-animated cycles and shots. My favorite is Manny’s jump over the fence.