David Cowles, whose illustration work has appeared in dozens of magazines ands newspapers, teamed up with New York-based studio FlickerLab to create Skitterville - an animated pilot. The world of Skitterville centers on a caterpillar named Bob Chubby and all of his insect buddies.

Cowles explains:

Flash was a perfect match for the characters, since I first did the character designs in Freehand, which is also vector based. The animators at FlickerLab did a great job of assigning body languages for the various characters, and once we got on the same page about going for that 50’s limited animation look, the results were amazing.

Here’s the test reel:

Director Harold Moss and producer Sally Anne Syberg recently answered a few questions about the project.

AARON SIMPSON: Can you tell us more about the plans for the Skitterville test reel?

HAROLD MOSS: We are working with David Cowles, the creator of Skitterville, to find a home for all our good friends in Skitterville. It’s a beautiful place filled with fabulous bugs of all stripes and sizes, and we’re hopeful at finding a place for it soon, either as a 1/2 hour animated series, or as shorts.

AARON: How did FlickerLab end up teaming with David Cowles on the project?

SALLY ANNE SYBERG: Michele Weiss and Nancy Kanter at Playhouse Disney approached FlickerLab in 2005 about a pilot for their preschool block. We did a test and subsequently the pilot. David is an incredibly talented fellow and we all got along very well. After Playhouse Disney passed on the pilot, we stayed in touch with him and continued to work on Skitterville and his other properties as well.

AARON: Can you explain the production pipeline involved in the project, and who was responsible for each step?

HAROLD: For the test reel, Animators Nikolay Nachev and Phil Lockerby took David Cowles’ characters, which were created in Freehand, and converted them into Flash files. In Flash, they built some basic walk, crawl, flutter and fly cycles for each. FlickerLab Art Director Zartosht Soltani worked off of David’s background sketches and painted several full backgrounds. We combined these cycles and backgrounds in After Effects to give a sense of each character’s personality, and how they moved through their world. This was edited to a first pass at a theme song composed by me and composer David Wilson.The pipeline for the 22-minute pilot follows:

David Cowles created the show and designed the characters and the world of Skitterville. He sold the show as a pilot to Playhouse Disney, and worked with their writers to develop the script.

Playhouse Disney brought us together on the FlickerLab side, Harold Moss directed, Sally Anne Syberg produced, Frank Gresham animation directed, Zartosht Soltani art directed, Phil Lockerby and Nikolay Nachev were lead animators, David Zung and Frank Gresham created storyboards.

1. We received designs from David Cowles, and script from Michele Weiss at Disney
2. Zartosht Soltani worked with David Cowles character designs and sketches to create the look of the world. It was a conversation between them, carried out in with lines and ink. This conversation continued with David throughout production regarding the personality of the animation, the look of the characters
3. David Zung created rough storyboards based on the script and rough VO record
4. Harold Moss and Sally Anne Syberg cast the show
5. Nikolay Nachev and Phil Lockerby began creating animation samples and walk cycles
6. Harold Moss directed the voice-over in New York and LA
7. Frank Gresham tightened up the storyboards based on the edited voice track



8. Storyboard animatic was edited
9. Backgrounds and animation began
10. Compositing was done with exports from Flash and Photoshop backgrounds in After Effects
11. Sound Design started by Tom Lino
12. Final music composed by Harold Moss and David Wilson
13. Online edit completed at FlickerLab

AARON: David is a well-known illustrator, but he’s also an animator - did he have a strong vision for how the short should move?

SALLY ANNE: David did have a strong vision for how the characters could move but our animation director, Frank Gresham, and lead animators, Phil Lockerby and Nikolay Nachev, were very enthusiastic about Skitterville and lavished their attention and skills on the characters. David knows that others are more skilled at animation than he is and gave FlickerLab plenty of creative and interpretative freedom.

HAROLD: This was a continuation of the conversation between the artists at FlickerLab and David Cowles. He had a very strong sense of who these characters were, having lived with them in his head and on his screen for years. He imparted the essence of this to the animators, and they in turn offered up their interpretations. This back and forth helped yield a real richness to the characters and their style of motion.

AARON: Who wrote the soundtrack for the pilot?

SALLY ANNE: The soundtrack for the pilot was written by Stuart Kollmorgen who was at Red Dog, but now works as Big Yellow Duck.

AARON: How long has Flickerlab been utilizing Flash in animation productions?

HAROLD: FlickerLab started its life in 1999 creating an animated Flash series for the web, This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow.

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HAROLD: We soon turned that expertise to film and television, creating the first Flash-animated content to be broadcast by Cartoon Network - two pilots for Adult Swim:

Saddle Rash

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The Finkel Files

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HAROLD: We also produced the animated sequence A Brief History of the United States of America for Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine.

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HAROLD: We have since used Flash in countless productions for broadcast, film, and online.

AARON: What else is in the pipeline at FlickerLab?

HAROLD: What isn’t? We have a live-action puppet/animation kids series in development and a documentary series combining animation and live- action. We are continuing our animation of Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen shorts that run during his show. We are currently animating a second in a series of spots for the American Heart Association. We recently animated a beautiful spot for St. Joseph Medical Center in Baltimore.

AARON: Thanks, Sally Anne and Harold. Beautiful work.

What British book series that has sold over 100 million books has been turned into an animated TV series? For all I know Harry Potter may be headed to TV, but today we’re talking about Mr. Men and Little Miss. This children’s book series was created by Charles Roger Hargreaves, and had already spawned 3 animated series efforts - in 1975, 1983 and again in 1995. Now Cartoon Network and Chorion Ltd. have co-produced 52 11-minute episodes that begin airing in the US on February 4th at 9am ET.

This Flash-animated series is being physically produced by Renegade Animation, based in Glendale, California. Below you can see a clip from the series that is formated as “the first animated program to bring sketch comedy to young children.” More videos are available at the official website.

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This Friday, January 18th at 7:30pm (ET/PT), Cartoon Network (US) is premiering the first episode of the new Flash-animated series George of the Jungle. The show was co-produced by Classic Media, Teletoon Canada and Studio B Productions, who also physically produced the project. According to a recent New York Times article, Cartoon Network picked up 52 11-minute episodes, which will air in half-hour blocks in the above-mentioned time slot. For those who remember the original series that Jay Ward produced back in 1967, you’ll recall this was also a primetime show.

Below is the title sequence followed by a short episodic clip.

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Shilo, a creative production studio, has done nothing short of redesigning Cartoon Network. Backed by The Hives’ track Fall is Just Something That Grown-ups Invented the 1-minute music video is a compsite of Flash and After Effects animation with live-action skateboarding plates. Digital Arts features Shilo in a story about the project and their process.

Head over to Shilo’s site to see a cleaner Quicktime version.

Mike Young Productions is behind Cartoon Network UK’s newest Flash-animated series - Hero: 108. The action series is a partnership with Gamania Digital Entertainment, who are one of the largest publishers of online multi-player games in Asia. So you can bet that this property will be revealed in an interactive format before long.

The series was created by Phoenix Tarng who is party of Gamania’s in-house team, and it was based on a Chinese novel titled The Water Margin. I’ve found reference to both 11-minute and 22-minute episodes, and the latest release date I’ve seen is Fall 2008.

Cartoon Network’s new “hybrid” show, Out of Jimmy’s Head features live-action actors paired with a Flash-animated 2D cast. The show is an extension of a made-for-TV film Re-animated, which was created by Adam Pava and Tim McKeon and animated at Renegade Animation. Here’s a clip from the series:

The new TV series drew 1.4 million viewers a few weeks back, some critical raves from sources like Hollywood Reporter, but has also received a high level of criticism within the animation community. The flap centers around Cartoon Network’s recent movement away from cartoons. Here’s a quote from a recent message board post about the premiere episode:

Well, the show is as cheesy, badly acted and written as I thought, but after actually sitting through a whole episode, I did notice one thing: the cartoons were great.

And according to an article at AWN.com, “animators work on set, doing drawings on a Wacom tablet and basically creating storyboards on the fly while the live-action production is going on, incorporating ideas generated by what’s happening on the set.” Matt Danner, the supervising producer and animation director for the series is one of those artists who heads to the set in Downey, California each day and as you can see in the clip above, the animation is some of the strongest Flash work around.

Lastly, here’s a clip from Ryan Green, who runs Bluefoot Studios. He animated this Flash-animated promo for Out of Jimmy’s Head in two nights.

Eric Pringle, the Emmy-nominated Animation Director on Cartoon Network’s Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends, is paving his own animation path. Prophet Buddy launched online today with the pilot episode titled Mustard Must-Have. This Flash-animated series about a cat and his prophetic mouse pal will reveal new episodes weekly.

Pringle directs and animates what he calls “an internet comic that happens to be animated.” The voice acting team boasts an impressive cast - Eric Bauza, who currently plays Rodolfo Rivera on Nickelodeon’s El Tigre, is the voice of the Cat and Matt Danner, the Animation Director on Out of Jimmy’s Head, offers the voice of the Mouse.

For more on this new series, check out the blog.

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