Doug Bressler, one-man band behind Doogtoons, has launched another collaboration with online comedy team Ask a Ninja. Over the last year of so, Bressler has released a handful of shorts featuring the Ninja, and now he’s sharing A Very Ninja Christmas - Part 1 (Flash segments start about 1 minute in). We learn how much of the North Pole (or ‘Black Pole’) are actually all ninjas - including the paindeer.
A note to Los Angeles-based readers… Doug Bresler, the creator of Doogtoons and the animator behind “Weird Al” Yankovic’s animated Trapped in the Drive-Thru short, will be hosting a free seminar at the Santa Monica Apple Store this Saturday at 3pm. According to Bresler’s site, he’ll be giving a behind-the-scenes look at his most popular Flash-animated shorts and insight into the animation process. The event, titled Making Cartoons the Doogtoons Way, is scheduled to last 2 hours.
Bresler has also been animating on a popular GoPotato.tv series called Eli’s Dirty Jokes. Here’s the latest episode titled The Farmer’s Daughters.
Doug Bressler, the artist behind DoogToons and Nick and Haig, has teamed up again with the father of musical comedy “Weird Al” Yankovic. Bressler animates a segment of an interview with Yankovic, and we learn about his spelling skills.
Spelling Bees and Accordions
Weird Al’s Childhood
Late last year, Doug Bresler, the creator of Doogtoons and Nick and Haig, animated an interview with “Weird Al” Yankovic. The two have reunited for a second animated project - this time on a music video. Bresler animated and directed an 11-minute parody of R. Kelly’s ‘hip-hopera’ saga Trapped in the Closet. The track is called Trapped In The Drive-Thru and it’s off Yankovic’s latest release Straight Outta Lynwood, his most successful chart album in the U.S.
Doug Bressler, the creator of DoogToons and Nick and Haig, recently sat with Sunny Gault from the Veoh show Viral and showed her how he assembles one of his Flash cartoons. He gets an intro at :45, but then you’ll need to scrub forward to around 7:25 to see the full piece.
Channel Frederator has announced an exciting new animation project with a clever name - FredEx. 
It’s an experiment in animation colloboration that challenged filmmakers from around the world to produced 10-20 seconds of animation on a common theme. The first installment is ‘Robots,’ and iPod-ready episode is available for download now (NSFW).
The shorts were produced in a variety of formats, including the following Flash shorts - Salad Bars by Mukpuddy, Weddings by Doogtoons, Dating by Animax Entertainment and Death by Bernard Derriman.
It’s no secret now that Weird Al Yankovic has returned to greatness. He landed the first Top 10 single of his career only a few weeks ago with ‘White & Nerdy,’ which is accompanied by a hysterical video that Yankovich directed himself.
But Al turned to Flash animation directors for several of the other tracks on ‘Straight Outta Lynwood,’ which is currently in the top 25 albums on Amazon.
You’ve probably seen John K’s (’Ren & Stimpy’) music video for ‘Close But No Cigar,’ which was animated in Flash at Copernicus Studios.
John and Katie Rice handled the layouts, a process catologued at John’s blog in great detail. Weird Al loved the video and had this to say about the results in an interview at About.com:
I’m not a huge fan of Flash animation in general, but this was by far the best Flash that John or I had ever seen - they really blew us away.
Next is a video for ‘Virus Alert,’ created by David Lovelace, the creator of the Flash-animated series ‘Retarded Animal Babies.’
In a Hartford Advocate article from September, Yankovic detailed how he discovered Lovelace’s work:
I scoured places like Newgrounds to find talent, and that’s where I came upon Dave’s work. I really liked Dave’s drawing style and his sense of humor, and thought that he’d be a good call for the ‘Virus Alert’ video… I was fortunate enough to get a few animation icons (like Bill Plympton and John Kricfalusi) to sign on to the project, but I also wanted to work with the best and the brightest of the new crop of Internet flash animators.
Lastly, Doug Bressler, the creator of ‘Doogtoons,’ recently animated an interview with Weird Al in Flash.
I couldn’t confirm which software Thomas Lee’s ‘I’ll Sue Ya’ video was produced in, but I’m guessing After Effects, even though Lee is most known for his Flash work on ‘Star Wars Gangsta Rap.’
I also found a few ‘unofficial’ Flash animated Weird Al homages - Ryan Simmon’s animated take on the Weird Al TV show theme song, and Robert Montjoy’s version of ‘Lost Rhapsody.’ Of course, there are several more tracks on the album, and we’ll just have to wait and see which lucky animators are up next.
