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On a Talk Show Far, Far Away…

aaron — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:44:16 +0000

Mike Parker, the man behind College University, has crafted another cartoon for CollegeHumor.com. Star Wars parodies are a dime a dozen on ye old interweb, but we’ll always take another… if they’re funny. Tune in for Ackbar! The Star Wars Talk Show, and see if you agree:

Player Haters Are Just For Laughs

aaron — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:02:40 +0000

Mike Parker from College University just passed me this animated pilot he produced – titled Player Haters. It was created for JustForLaughs.com, in hopes a series pick-up. There’s no groundbreaking animation here, but some good internet comedy. Plus there’s a Mario cameo. What else do you need? Animation by Mike Parker and Dave Patriquin.

Piles of Flash Animated DVDs

aaron — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:13:28 +0000

There’s heaps of new Flash-animated DVDs on the market….

First we have Pucca: Spooky Sooga Village, that features 77 minutes of spooky, Halloween-themed shorts. The series, as you may know, started out on the web and graduated to a Flash-animated TV series in 2006.

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! A Tale of Tails arrived last week, featuring 8 episodes of the series created by Bob Boyle. The show is aimed at the 3-7 audience. In honor of this release, let’s watch a promo for the Wubbzy Dance Contest.

And I’ve also spotted new DVDs from College University and Jimmy Cross – It’s Monkey Time!

Comic-Con 2007 Wrap-up

aaron — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 15:05:00 +0000

Whew! I thought LA had traffic, but I believe the Comic-Con crush takes the cake. I often stood in the same place for minutes at a time, waiting for the surge of people to thin out and move forward.

Human pinball aside, I always look forward to Comic-Con – its where I often meet Flash animation gurus who I’ve only shared email exchanges with. I spent several hours chatting with Shad Petosky and Julia Vickerman from Puny Entertainment, talking about the up-and-coming Minneapolis studio. They introduced me to Yo Gabba Gabba’s Kevin Lee, and we talked about upcoming premiere on Nick Jr.

Speaking of Nick – I also spotted a banner for Making Fiends, Amy Winfrey’s Flash animated series scheduled to launch on Nickelodeon. From what I’ve heard, a significant portion of production has wrapped, so the premiere can’t be far off.

Like last year, I bumped into Tom Fulp who heads up Newgrounds.com. I picked up a t-shirt and discussed some new figurines they’re planning to release, their upcoming game Castle Crashers, and Tom’s commitment to getting his hands dirty on the games and animation produced out his Philadelphia office. But I met someone new at the booth – John Baez, one of the founders of The Behemoth, the game studio behind Alien Hominid. Baez and Fulp have teamed up on this venture, which has received a great deal of press and awards.

I scheduled some time to meet up with Ghostbot crew, who I’d only shared emails with, dating back to the CHF interview in 2005. But first I dropped in on their autograph session, where Alan Lau, Brad Rau and Roque Ballesteros were busy inking some of their signature characters for waiting fans. Afterwards we talked Flash animation, series development and some recent work for Warner Bros. I’m planning on writing up before long.

Six Point Harness artists Saharat Tantivaranyoo tipped me off about 8fish, a relatively new Flash animation studio based in Sandy, Utam. They were showing off 3 original series concepts and screening samples of their work.

Just walking the floor, I also spotted a banner for ABC Family’s new Flash-animated series Slacker Cats. The primetime series has been touched by several LA-based studios, including Film Roman, Six Point Harness, Renegade and Animax and it is schedule to premiere on August 13th.

Lastly, I happened by the College University booth, which sat adjacent to Newgrounds and the Behemoth. I talked with Mike Parker, swapped stickers and had a look at their latest DVD release, which features season 2 of College University. Mike and his brother Andy have also been hard at work on Clock Suckers, which airs on collegehumor.com.

Here’s a tip – start planning for next year – as I’m sure hotel rooms are already getting booked up.

2006 Comic-con Wrap-up

aaron — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 14:23:00 +0000

I spent two days at Comic-con in San Diego this past weekend, and witnessed one of most intense people-crushes I’ve ever seen. Ticket sales were actually halted on Saturday, with attendance estimates ranging from 125,000 to 150,000, up from 104,000 last year. As you can see in the photo below, the concept of a ‘personal space bubble’ was hard to come by.

I was hunting down as many Flash animation names as I could, and using this event as a barometer, I can safely say Flash animation is a healthy industry. I met:

- One of the founders of independent animation company Net Hat Co
- the two chiefs of Titmouse Studio, Chris and Shannon Prynoski who premiered Metalocalypse
- Bob Boyle, who showed an episode of upcoming Jetix show ‘Yin Yang Yo!’
- George Elliott, founder of Elliott Animation, who are animating ‘Yin Yang Yo!’
- Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua, the creators of Nickelodeon’s ‘El Tigre’
- Tom Fulp (photo) of Newgrounds and The Behemoth, who was showing of his new 2D platform game ‘Castle Crashers’
- Brooke Burgess, whose ‘Broken Saints’ series is out on DVD August 1st
- The guys behind ‘College University’ and ‘Dr. Shroud’

I’ve also posted about 20 photos from my San Diego adventure over in the Message Boards.

The Wire’s Flash Article

aaron — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 16:08:00 +0000

A small New Hampshire newspaper called ‘The Wire’ recently ran a cover article titled ‘Flash Nation: How a new generation of animators are changing cartoons.’ It’s a fantastic read, starting with an overview of how Flash came to be, then running through the dot-com era and on up to the current slate of on-air and web-based animation. There’s a handful of revealing quotes, and the author, Larry Clow, offers up a bevy of great links and references to recent Flash projects, including Jib Jab’s ‘This Land,’ Fat Pie’s ‘Salad Fingers,’ and the internet series ‘College University.’ This man has obviously done his homework, and his 3,000 ode to the Flash animated revolution is an inspiring read.

Below are a few of my favorite quotes from the article:

Long a staple of college kids and bored cubical dwellers who pass links to Flash sites around in e-mails, Flash animation is starting to hit the big time.Legions of amateur auteurs are using Flash to drive the animation revolution. Like a tiny digital snowflake, each Flash short is unique.

The inhabitants of Flash Nation are a strange lot, but it’s a story as old as the Web–put the means of production in the hands of the people, and they will make weird, weird stuff.

Flash is the future, they say, an emerging medium that, already enjoying a ubiquitous presence on the Web, is poised to take over TV, DVD and everything else.

“Flash has made it to the mainstream,” said Nicholas Da Silva.

“With Flash, you’re able to produce something at half the cost,” Da Silva said. “The cost of the software isn’t as expensive as high end software for animation. One or two people can have a studio at home and crank out their own stories.”

“You can do everything in Flash, without the overhead,” he said. “One person could be a studio, two people can develop a great concept.” (Jeremy Clough)

“Flash is just another animation tool. It’s what you make of it. I don’t think hand-drawn art of any kind will ever die. There will always be new toys, but there’s no substitute for the fundamentals,” (Kirk) Millett said.

Though there’s no agreement on the future of traditional animation, there is an almost unanimous opinion that Flash is democratizing cartoons.