Jossie Malis’ Flash-animated short Bendito Machine was selected as a finalist at the 2006 Annecy International Film Festival - what many view as the Oscars of animation.

Since this success, an numerous other awards, Malis has endeavored to turn Bendito Machine into a shorts factory. The second of 9 planned shorts recently released and below is the first 25 seconds. For the entire short, head over to Jossie’s site, where he has also offered iPod downloads and wallpapers.

Michael Nesbitt, an artist living in Aylmer, Quebec, has found local fame for his Flash-animated anime short Yuki Tani No Shurabi. The 6-minute film recently won an award at the California International Animation Festival. According to an article in the St. Thomas Times Journal Nesbitt began the film in school, and recently returned to the unfinished film and is now selling his own DVDs. Below is a trailer for the short.

And here is how the local news covered the story.

For those planning on being in the Los Angeles area next weekend, FITC Hollywood 2007 is being held at the Hilton in Universal City. This event aims to “facilitate the interaction of key content industry drivers with the best content delivery technology in the capital of entertainment and rich media.”

On Sunday, October 21st, a Flash Animation Workshop is being hosted by Tim Jones, Barry Kelly, Al Rosson and Dave Wolfe, authors of the upcoming book Foundation Flash Animation Techniques. The 10-5 session is a pre-festival workshop that will walk “step-by-step through a “typical” Flash animation project, giving you hands-on experience at each phase of the production.” Tickets are $199 and $125 for students.

Earlier this year, Austin-based documentary filmmaker Anne Lewis partnered with artist Yehudi Mercado and Horseback Salad to create an animated short titled Separate Vacations. The film is structured around an audio vignette about a kennel told by Lewis and then Mercado created the rest using Flash and After Effects. It premiered at the 2007 SXSW Film Festival.

The 2007 Flashforward Film Festival winners were announced last Wednesday night, and a couple familiar faces took home rubber arrows. Bernard Derriman’s Arj & Poopy episode Congo Windfall took home the top prize in the Cartoon category, while Laith Bahrani snagged the trophy in the Art category for his Flash-animated music video Creep. The final award given that night was the audience choice, which went to Adam Phillips, for his innovative 30 Shorts in 30 Days project. Phillips is no stranger to Flashforward rubber arrows, having won in 2003, 2005 and twice in 2006. Below are some clips from the event:

Thanks to Lynda, Toby and Christoph for the invite. I had a blast. And congrats to all the nominees.All three of these artists above have been interviewed here at CHF:

Bernard Derriman
Adam Phillips
Laith Bahrani

The 2007 Ottawa International Animation Festival wrapped up last night, and a few Flash-animated submissions took home awards. Golden Age, Aaron Augenblick’s series of comedy shorts grabbed the Grand Prize for Best-Commissioned Animation, while Squeeze the Day, a 2006 episode of Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends, grabbed the award for Television Animation for Children.

Nick Cross’ Flash-animated The Waif of Persephone screened in the Narrative Short Animation category, and a Cross was featured in an article at canoe.ca in the weeks leading up to the event.

I spent this past week in Portland, Oregon for the 1st Annual Platform International Animation Festival. Portland itself was a thrill, and the festival surely lived up to expectations.

I joined Dan Sarto’s (AWN.com) Attack of the Blog: Meet the Bloggers panel on Wednesday (see Charles Zembillas’ photos), and then moderated The Flashers Convention, a panel covering the use of Flash in the world of character animation. Joining me on the panel were Brendan Burch (Six Point Harness), Nina Paley, Delna Bhesania (Bardel), Chris Staples (Cartoon Network) and David SanAngelo (Soup2Nuts).

We covered the benefits of Flash to independent animators, cost savings in the TV world and whether or not ‘Flash’ is still a dirty word in the animation industry. Harmony, the digital 2D software from Toonboom, ended as a topic multiple times, and seems to be making headway versus Flash.

Thanks to all who attended, and to Cartoon Network, Irene Kotlarz and Anne Denman for inviting me. I’ll surely be back next year.