The 35th Annual Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards will be held this year on June 13th at the Lincoln Center in NYC. But several artists who worked on Flash-animated shows have already been honored, and will walk home with big ol’ golden statues. Emmy awards were recently announced for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation, and all three artists worked on Flash-animated series. Sanda Equihua, a co-creator of El Tigre, won for her character design work on the Enter the Cuervo episode, Bob Boyle took home the production designer trophy for Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, and Peter Ferk snagged the award for storyboarding on Growing Up Creepie. Congrats, gang!

After challenging the conventional album distribution system last Fall, Radiohead has turned its attention to how animated music videos are produced. On March 17th, the band announced that it had teamed up with Aniboom and Adult Swim for a groundbreaking music video contest. The concept of a user or listener-generated music video contest goes back to Madonna and MTV’s 1986 Make My Video competition, but when a band of Radiohead’s size is paired with the connective possibilities of the internet, we’re likely to see uncommon results.

Those results will arrive in 4 stages, starting with the April 27th deadline for the storyboard submission round. In this initial phase, animators, writers and other artists can submit a clip displaying their concept for a music video – using any song from Radiohead’s #1 album In Rainbows. The field will be subsequently whittled down to 10 semifinalists, who will each be awarded $1,000 to make a 1-minute music video. These 10 are culled to 5 finalists, whose work is then presented to the band.

Finally, on June 30th, the winner will receive $10,000 to make a full version of their video (complete schedule and rules)

The 4-step process is a clever approach to the ever popular world of user-generated content, or UGC. It lowers the bar for entry, allowing artists to dip a toe into the contest without committing a month of their life to a submission that may not even make the finals. It’s actually an analog of the traditional method employed at major animation studios: concepts are presented, a rough pass is produced and then the final work is revealed to scrutinizing executives. Only here, the “executives” are one of the coolest bands in the world.

And while we know Radiohead for their progressive approach to the music industry and their unique blend of sonic experimentalism and alternative rock power, they know a thing or two about music videos. Jamie Thraves’ music video for Radiohead’s 1995 track Just is often listed amongst the best music videos of all time, and another three, Fake Plastic Trees, Karma Police and Street Spirit (Fade Out), have received similar acclaim. Their music videos are simply legendary. It’s enough pressure to make an animator freeze up in fear.
Read the rest of this entry »

Gabe Swarr, a Spumco-trained Flash-animator and a director on Nickelodeon’s El Tigre, has managed to find time on the side to produce a few shorts. Aside from the Donkey Kong clip we featured here last month, Swarr has also produced a Mario Bros. short titled What the Shell?!, which he submitted to the Nintendo Short Cuts Showcase contest. He produced the entire short in a weekend along with help from Tony Mora, who supplied the background paintings.

Swarr also produced an intro video for I Am 8-Bit, Jon Gibson’s video game focused media company.

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)

The 35th Annual Annie Awards will likely be a big night for Ratatouille, Surf’s Up and Persepolis, but February 8th, 2008 will also be a night to celebrate Flash animation. The Annie Awards, for those unfamiliar, are what some Americans consider the “Oscars” of animation, and the nominees were announced today.

El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, a Flash-animated show that airs on Nickelodeon, leads all TV series with 4 nominations, including a nod for Best Animated Television Production and an individual nomination for Jorge R. Gutierrez, the co-creator of the series. It should also be noted that 2 of the other 4 nominees in the Best Production category are also Flash-produced – Peep and the Big Wide World and Little Einsteins (which also utilizes After Effects).

Next, John Kricfalusi, a true pioneer in online Flash animation, will be receiving a Windsor McCay Award for his series The Ren & Stimpy Show and “use of artist-driven Flash animation.”

Lastly, Jonathan Gay, Gary Grossman and Robert Tatsumi, the creators of Flash, will receive the Ub Iwerks technical achievement award.

I’ve already marked my calendar – and can’t wait to trumpet Flash at stateside animation’s biggest night.

Unrelated to Flash news – my cousin, Elizabeth Harvatine, was nominated in the Character Animation category for her stop-motion work on Moral Orel. Go Liz!