Post Magazine recently posted an article by Ann Fisher titled ‘Animation For TV Shows,’ which starts off with an update on ‘Caillou,’ the animated program for children 2 to 6 that has spawned several DVD releases. ‘Caillou,’ is based on a series of books by Christine L’Heureux and illustrator Helene Desputeaux, and it has been airing in Canada on Teletoon and on PBS in the US. For the upcoming Fall season, the show’s producers have turned to Flash to animate the episodes.

Porting over to Flash has allowed Ottawa-based Cookie Jar Entertainment to bring the show’s animation production back to Canada, while improving their work flow and maintaining ‘Caillou’s hand-drawn look. The animation, produced by Pip Animation, is completed in Flash, but the animators still draw poses by hand and then import their work into the software.

Below are a few highlights of Fisher’s piece, but you can read then entire article at the Post Magazine website.

“…The idea is to make it, obviously, less expensive to produce, to keep it all in Canada where we can access funding for it, keep control of it, to have the show look the same as the previous series, ” (Cookie Jar Entertainment executive producer Lesley Taylor.)

“Flash can manipulate existing drawings,” says Taylor. “It can make them smaller, bigger… it could flip them. It used to be we’d get a video of Digi Beta of the show that would or would not arrive, depending on shipping. And now we go to Web site links and we just look at a whole film for mix approval. It’s not television size, it’s 6-inches across, but there’s no more distance. There’s still time differences but distance is gone. And we’re getting more and more digital in how we work with FTP sites and artwork,” she says. “We still want the handdrawn component of it, but there’s less of that and I’m not paying customs anymore. I love that I’m not paying shipping.”

Everyone loves a comeback. Lance Armstrong, Apple Computer, Carlos Santana; they saw the end of the line, and then refused to quit. Flash animation went through a rough spell after the dotcom collapse, as parent company Macromedia witnessed its stock price plummet from $100 to $7. As the tech investment capital disappeared, so did many animation production houses that relied on Flash. And in early 2003, Fatkat Animation Studios (then known as Trainingscape Studios Canada) closed its doors after 3 years of exciting work and relative prosperity.

But much as Flash animation has seen a revival in recent years, so have the production companies that spawned the revolution. Enter the second chapter of Fatkat Animation Studios, the Miramichi City, New Brunswick animation house headed up by Gene Fowler. Not long after closing, Fatkat re-opened its doors, and ever since the work seems to be flowing in faster than ever; with network pilots, possible feature projects and Fatkat originals all packed into the production pipeline.

It’s a poignant comeback story, and Cold, Hard Flash recently discussed this and many other topics with Gene Fowler, the owner and founder of Fatkat Animation Studios.

AARON SIMPSON: Fatkat Studios disappeared for brief stint. How does the current iteration of Fatkat Studios differ from the previous collective?
GENE FOWLER: Well for one, I own the company now. Before I was simply the executive director of an un–incorporated collective of animators. Most people think that I’m an older gentleman with years of industry experience. Fact is, I’m only 28 and when I opened the first Fatkat studio I was only 24. The studio was assembled for one reason, to create Flash animated interactive training films for a company in California. You can read the full story on our website.

The new collective of artists were born into Flash, whereas the old collective of artists didn’t know what it was when we started. Being the only surviving member of the last studio I can teach our team proprietary production techniques that are proven while they dream up ways of making it all better and experimenting with new, innovative techniques.

AARON: Once Fatkat reformed, was it easy to get the band back together?
GENE: Yes it was actually. As soon as the Trainingscape ship had sunk, I immediately banded together with a group of friends from the studio: Steve Kahwati, Robin Mitchell, Rod Amador and Juan Cruz Baldassarre, and we started over. Most other people saw me as the devil. Even those whom I regarded as close friends turned their backs to me. That’s the price of being the boss I guess.

These guys had all the high level talents Fatkat needed to get back in the game. But it was slow going and the abrupt sinking of Trainingscape left us pretty broke. In the months following the Trainingscape break up, many from the group left to search for work elsewhere. It was pretty mutual and we all understood the situation. Rod and I stuck together for a few extra months and produced 4 pilots for a CBC short series. After those were done, I moved back to Miramichi, New Brunswick and Rod back to Ottawa, Ontario. We pretty much did nothing that summer. Some freelance work here and there. We still keep very much in touch and work together and visit each other from time to time.

AARON: How many employees currently work at Fatkat?
GENE: There are 6 official producers beating the bushes for us; while roughly 22 artists plug away at the projects we bring in for them.

AARON: When did you discover Flash?
GENE: I found out about Flash in 2000. Said yes to a few hefty contracts without even knowing how to use it.

AARON: You’ve described your studio as ‘Flash-exclusive.’ Is Fatkat a Flash-only studio?
GENE: Well, 90% of everything we do is Flash. I have been doing huge productions in Flash for a long time so we push our expertise in the Flash production pipeline. We also execute in Maya and After Effects as well.

AARON: What type of project isn’t right for Flash?
GENE: There are very few, except for the obvious ones. I would say that a lot of mo’graph’ (motion graphics) stuff that could be done in Flash would be better left to After Effects. For example we produced a 30 second spot for the RCMP last April in Flash that would have been better through After Effects. But at the time, the person behind it didn’t have enough training in AE so he used what he knew best. Still looked great, client loved it – but would have been better in AE.

AARON: What’s the secret to designing a character so that it works well in the Flash animation pipeline?
GENE: Depends on the production but some of the general items are little things. Making sure that the character and all it’s parts were created at 100% true size and not resized to fit the work area after it’s been designed. There’s nothing worse then hitting the true size shortcut key and having all the body parts explode/implode. Also making sure all the centre points are in the right spots and that the symbols are set to single frame. All layers should be named properly and also color coated. We even keep the library super clean. Nothing out of place, nothing out of whack.

Other notes of interest are keeping the whole character and all of its layers in a layer folder, but also, along with that, keeping a layer on the outside of the folder that is associated with that layer. So that when animating you can select a key frame in that blank layer and drag it down into the folder, which selects all the hidden layers in the folder. Pressing F6 leads to not only putting a keyframe on the blank layer but all those in the folder without having to actually open it. There’s lots of other little things but let’s keep them for the rest of the interview.

AARON: Can you tell us more about the 4 pilots you created CBC’s ZeD?
GENE: They were pretty stiff and limited but it was the most we could muster for the timeframe and budget. We went on to produce 20 more that fall. We were starting to find our groove so the last half of them looked pretty good.

AARON: One the bigger projects you produced for ZeD was called ‘And I Still Blame Hollywood’ (‘AYIBH’). Did this production go smoothly?
GENE: Yeah for sure. It was great little project and our first co-production along with New Brunswick’s first animated series. A big step for us along with our province. The other producers were out of Prince Edward Island, Copie Zero Media + TV. Great guys over there; good story folks.

The Production went off without a hitch. ZeD and Copie Zero pretty much left us alone with the whole thing. All twenty episodes went out on time and on budget.

Compared to a lot of our stuff they were a bit subpar animation and design wise – but the comedy was good and so was the animation for what it was. A fun production indeed. It didn’t get picked up for a second season. ‘AYIBH’ was ZeD’s first commissioned series. It seems that season of the entire show (not just our portion) was too expensive. The following season they eliminated commissioned pieces and now just pay on delivery. It’s great for independent producers whom are looking for a chance to get their stuff on TV. It’s a great idea they have going on there and indeed worth a look.

That’s the end part 1. Check back soon for part 2 of Gene Fowler: The Comeback Cat.

We’re back with the second half of the Cold, Hard Flash interview with Campbell MacKinlay, the Director/Writer of ‘Doodlez,’ the short-form series currently airing on TeleTOON in Canada and Nicktoons in the States. Let’s see what Campbell has to say about alternatives to Flash, his work with Harry Knowles and which artists make him want to start doodling.

AARON: Beyond Flash, what other software does your team use to create ‘Doodlez’?
We compile our shows in Final Cut Pro, and run the final product through After Effects where we add a very slight blur in order to take a little bit of the digital edge off of everything. We try to do anything we can in order to avoid the dreaded “Flashy-ness.”

But truly, the entire production would grind to a halt were it not for one piece of software: Tetris.

AARON: Do you and your team use Flash to create the ‘Doodlez’ animatics?
CAMPBELL: Yes. Our pipeline runs almost exclusively through Flash. We have created interconnected template files for storyboards, animatics and layouts, so that each can be automatically populated by copy-pasting common symbols (and accepting the replacement) from the previous step.

As one might imagine, timing is a really important issue for the show, and it is one that is revisited throughout the process. As we timed out the animatics, we would often add antics and settles, by squashing and stretching the storyboard poses, which would result in a further defined blueprint to follow.

Also on the issue of timing, during the first season we found that the animators had a tendency to overrun the 2-minute episode limit, so that we had to create a final step in which we would need to cut the show to time.

As a result, in the second season, I would time the shorts out to 1 minute 45 seconds, leaving the animators a bank of 10 seconds to withdraw from as they needed, and myself 5 seconds more to fill out the show when it was complete. Adding time is a pleasure, while cutting is a nightmare, especially when the pacing of the show has such a tendency to add congestion.

AARON: Have you considered using any other vector-based software to animate ‘Doodlez?’
CAMPBELL: I think that any animation studio that hopes to survive needs to constantly keep their eyes and ears open. At Trapeze, we try to consider every viable option for getting our work onscreen. We don’t want to be left behind the curve, because of an allegiance to specific software, if something else appears that is superior to it. To this end, we’ve had a few conversations with Toon Boom at various stages about what their software can accomplish.

Until recently, Toon Boom’s product has not been compelling enough for us to consider making the change from Flash. However, we’ve recently had a demonstration of the capabilities of its newest iteration, Harmony, and were VERY impressed. Some of the features of this software quite simply blew us away.

But currently, its cost per seat is absurdly prohibitive, so it seems that we’ll have to be pinning all our hopes on the long-anticipated release of 8-ball for the time being. Hopefully, Flash has been paying attention to what its competitors and other vector-based programs such as Moho and Expression3 have been doing, and do their best to integrate similar features into this new release. Flash artists have waited a long time for an upgrade that focuses on our needs, so I certainly hope it’s worth it.

AARON: What’s the story behind those animated GIFs you did for Ain’t It Cool News?
CAMPBELL: The story is that I liked the site, and thought I saw an opportunity to contribute something. So I cooked up a quick animation of Harry with the little secondary Alien mouth (from Alien) popping out of his mouth and snapping.

He dug it, so I kept doing them and he kept posting them. When I stopped doing them I had completed 182 of them, a bunch of random illustrations, bumpers for the aintitcooltv pilot, and two animated shorts that opened the Butt-Numb-A-Thon 2 and 3 film festivals. Since I stopped, he’s just been cycling through the existing ones (though 3 or 4 were submitted by other guys).

AARON: What animators and artists do you draw inspiration from?
CAMPBELL: Most closely connected to inspiring ‘Doodlez’ are the folks behind the ‘Looney Tunes,’ (especially Clampett and Avery) and the DePatie-Freleng ‘Pink Panther,’ Antonio Prohias for ‘Spy Vs. Spy,’ and ‘La Linea,’ aka the line-guy featured on ‘The Great Space Coaster’ which was created by Osvaldo Cavandoli.

AARON: What animated programs are on your watch list?
CAMPBELL: ‘PEEP and the Big Wide World!’ Man, that’s a good show. My one year-old daughter hipped me to this show, but don’t discount it based on its preschool credentials. It’s sweet and simple, but very funny, with characters that are super-appealing and somehow manage to seem immediately familiar without ripping off anybody. Also, unless I am VERY mistaken, it’s Flash. (Editor: It is.)

AARON: Do you follow any Flash-animated web-series?
CAMPBELL: Sadly, I don’t. But around the time Icebox went down, I became too busy to keep track of much and tuned out. But, as I am not above this sort of thing, I will take this as an opportunity to plug the webisodes at jinglebelle.com and the corner animation I did for aintitcoolnews.com both of which were created exclusively in Flash, and mostly before I had the even the most remote idea of how to use the thing.

AARON: What animated DVDs are you currently playing?
CAMPBELL: Tom & Jerry, Ren & Stimpy, Samurai Jack, and Porco Rosso.

Beyond DVD, I recently traded for a 16th generation-VHS-copy of the John K. run on Mighty Mouse, which I am digging in a big, bad way.

AARON: Thanks, Campbell. I really appreciate your thoughtful answers and your inspirational work on ‘Doodlez.’ Best of luck with the upcoming episodes!

Dood doesn’t have a home; Dood doesn’t go to school and, as far as we know, Dood doesn’t talk. He’s an unlikely animated star, but this Dood is a star nonetheless. He’s the focus of the ‘sketch comedy’ ‘Doodlez,’ which currently airs on TeleTOON in Canada, and Nickelodeon and Nicktoons in the States. ‘Doodlez’ is a clever, unique series of 2-minute shorts, in which a hand (appropriately named ‘Hand’), a pencil and an eraser run Dood through a gauntlet of sketched-out scenarios. He might get drawn into a mile-high freefall without a parachute, or Dood might find himself holding up 1 ton of weights over his head. In the end, Hand always seems to get the…errr… upper hand. (Click to see ‘Doodlez’ episodes – ‘Tubbo’ ‘Genesis’ ‘Masterpiece’ ‘Gone Fishin’)

‘Doodlez’ is produced by Cellar Door Productions of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (Canada), and they’ve turned to their Charlottetown neighbor Trapeze Animation Studios for the animation. Campbell MacKinley, is currently the hand behind the hand over at Trapeze Animation, and he’s been adding his creative genius to the project since the beginning. You also know Campbell’s work if you’ve frequented the ‘Ain’t It Cool News’ website, where dozens upon dozens of his animated shorts play daily in the upper left-hand corner of the homepage. Cellar Door is currently developing a 7-minute version of the show and Cambell’s gang over at Trapeze have created a pilot episode of the new, longer format. In this new iteration, the all black-and-white aesthetic has been updated to include color accents. This is all on the heels of much well-deserved recognition. ‘Doodlez’ has won two consecutive Gemini Awards for Best Animated Series, a prize awarded by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.

Cold, Hard Flash recently hooked up with Campbell to discuss the world of ‘Doodlez,’ and how his team pulls off such elaborate animation in the Flash medium.

AARON SIMPSON: The ‘Doodlez’ series seems full of drawings, something Flash series aren’t always known for. How much re-use do you rely on?
CAMPBELL MACKINLAY: Isn’t it strange to exist in the animation industry at a time when it is UNUSUAL to refer to a show as “full of drawings?”

On ‘Doodlez,’ there is not very much animation re-use. At no point did we compile a library of animation-loops, though our animators were free to grab stuff from other episodes to use, if it was appropriate. However, we had a very large symbol-library, and most people are shocked to see what our timelines look like. There’s a huge amount of blue and green, especially compared to what I’ve seen from other companies, as we usually run anywhere from 50 – 75% motion or shape tweening.

It’s a very fine line to walk, and from a budget and scheduling standpoint, re-use is very attractive. Personally, I’d prefer every walk or run cycle be specific to the demands of the moment, but I understand why a show would benefit from careful and thoughtful re-use. On other projects, Trapeze has employed very different re-use tactics to very different effect. But ‘Doodlez’ is a show that, at its base, is about creativity, and the pure joy of unfettered animation, and it would be working against itself to have very many shortcuts stand out.

AARON: The series recently strayed away from an all black-and-white look. What spurred the change?
CAMPBELL: Haven’t you heard? Color is the wave of the future!

To be honest, broadcaster demands brought that change about. The general consensus appears to be that our target audience (as defined by the broadcaster) is not interested in watching an exclusively black-and-white show. Having said that, I’m really happy with the use of color as accent. I think it turned out to be something truly distinctive without ignoring what had made it interesting in the first place.

When the shorts first started airing on TeleTOON in Canada, the use of black-and-white turned out to be one of the major identifiers that people would use to refer to the show, so I think it would be a mistake to turn our backs on its use entirely in favor of a full-color show. Why discard something that made you unique and memorable in the eyes of the audience?

AARON: The first 50 ‘Doodlez’ shorts clocked in at 2-minutes, and now Cellar Door, the ‘Doodlez’ producing entity, is pitching the development of 39 7-minute episodes. If these longer episodes end up moving forward, does your team plan on approaching them any differently?
CAMPBELL: We’ve completed one 7-minute short so far. We’ve had to change our methodology somewhat, so that there are more animators working on one episode, rather than the two who were able to take complete responsibility for the episodes of the original shorts.

Beyond that, we hope that the long-form of the show maintains as much fidelity to the original as possible. When something has the appeal that ‘Doodlez’ has, it’s best not to tinker with it too much. Grabbing the interest of an audience is no mean feat, and it would be tragic to lose that connection by making any unnecessary changes.

As well as being involved with the show’s creation, I am a huge fan, and feel incredibly privileged to be allowed to work on the thing. It is the sort of project that people get into animation because of, though not many are actually fortunate enough to ever work on something of its caliber.

It’s been a lot of long, hard hours, but the result has been worth every drop of sweat. Except “Four Seasons…” – that episode kinda stunk up the place.

AARON: How big is the ‘Doodlez’ animation team?
CAMPBELL: During the first ‘season,’ which consisted of 11 episodes, Trapeze was made up of only nine people. At that point we were still being directed by Sean Scott, who created the show. We were split into teams of two: one lead and one assistant, who took ownership of one episode at a time.

When I took the reins as director for the remaining 39 episodes, we hovered around the 20 person mark. For the most part, we maintained the lead/assistant teams, and the idea of one team being responsible for each episode, but also added a clean-up team to take some of the grunt-work burden from the assistant’s shoulders.

The 7-minute shorts will require us to expand again, this time to a team of at least 60. This is in addition to animators we have working on other projects, and so is a pretty big step for Trapeze Animation as a studio.

AARON: Are most of the layouts drawn on paper and then scanned into the computer?
CAMPBELL: The only paper involved in the process is used for rough storyboarding. Every other stage of production (beyond the artists doing thumbnails for themselves) is strictly digital, using Wacom tablets and Flash-MX. By the time we get to the layout process, we are building (or grabbing from the existing library) symbols to be used by the animators, plugging them into layers above the boards.

That’s the end of the first half of the Cold, Hard Flash interview with Campbell MacKinlay, the Director/Writer of ‘Doodlez.’ Check back soon for part 2.

Breakthrough Animation, one of the fine companies behind the international Flash-animation hit ‘Atomic Betty,’ is rolling out a fresh new show. ‘Captain Flamingo,’ a 30-episode co-production with Heroic Film Company, Atomic Cartoons and PASI Animation, will be rolling out on Canada’s YTV in January 2006. The show centers on Milo Powell, a little boy with a terrycloth cape who fights for justice along with his next door neighbor Lizbeth. The property bowed at NATPE 2005, and expect a worldwide rollout to commence soon.