Click on over and see/hear Foul Owl Karaoke - a Flash-animated music visualizer that features stylized character moving to the beats. The experience was created by Das Plankton who picked up a nomination at this year’s Flashforward Film Festival in San Francisco.
[link]
by Nacho Rodriguez
AN INTERVIEW WITH NACHO RODRIGUEZ
Nacho Rodriguez, a 27-year old animator out of Barcelona, has taken the #1 slot in the Flash Animation 10: Best Animated. 
Up against animators with years at Disney and Pixar, Rodriguez, a self-taught artist, and his stream-of-consciousness short Mr. Coo #4 wound up wowing our judges one frame at a time.
Rodriguez created this short using a method often referred to as “straight ahead animation,” whereby the artist just starts animating on frame 1 and moves forward from there (for those not familiar with animation, “pose to pose” animation is the more common approach, and requires planning before tackling a scene). Think of it as animated jazz; challenging the artist to live in the moment and really let down their guard. The results can often be as much a surprise to the artist as they are to the audience, and Mr. Coo is no exception.
What Nacho’s achievement represents is that Flash is merely a tool - a tool that morphs into whatever you want it to be. 
If an artist wants to create simple puppets, the software is more than capable, or if an animator wants to draw fluid, frame-by-frame experiments, Flash will keep up step for step.
As a fitting reward for his achievement, Nacho is receiving an Adobe Master Collection, courtesy of ColdHardFlash. In one box, Nacho will find a combination of all of Adobe’s flagship creative products, including all-new versions of Adobe InDesign® CS3, Photoshop® CS3 Extended, Illustrator® CS3, Flash® CS3 Professional, After Effects® CS3 Professional, Adobe Premiere Pro® CS3 and Soundbooth® CS3.
Join us in celebrating Nacho’s film, Mr. Coo #4, the winner of the Flash Animation 10: Best Animated.
AARON SIMPSON: Congratulations on winning the Flash Animation 10: Best Animated. What other recognition has the series received?
NACHO RODRIGUEZ: Thanks a lot! The first two episodes won the Nontzeflash 2005 3rd prize, Newgrounds monthly top 5, and were nominated at the 2005 Flashforward Film Festival. Also, the series won the Best Animated Webisode at the 2007 Best in the SW Festival. But I don’t participate in as many contests as I should, because it bugs me to send DVD copies to festivals, when it’s so easy to share a SWF online. I’m too lazy, I guess. But why make things heavy and slow?
AARON: What type of influence do you think Flash has had on independent animation?
NACHO: The first one is obvious: it has opened up the possibility for almost anyone to animate; with no need for big or expensive equipment. From my point of view, that popularization is good, but it brings with it some unavoidable, ugly side effects - we are overloaded with crappy animation. Not only regarding artists’ technique, where there’s always too much self-indulgence (”if it moves, it’s animated”), but also the stories and the message. 
So, a large population is given the freedom to creatively explore and make their own art, but they often end up making more of the same, just in lesser quality.
Teenagers have a big share in this, as they are an important part of internet population. Of course, when one starts learning, problems and failures are expected. But a true creative mind knows no age. I see too much amateurish animation from teenagers that just aims to copy something else. Just look at the overload of violent stick figure animation that came after Xiao Xiao, without adding anything new to the original.
On a positive note, this democratization of animation has also allowed talented artists to be discovered. The animation community Newgrounds is a good example of all this: teenage hormones repeatedly producing more of the same, but now and then something really interesting appears. Salutations to Tom Fulp, the founder of Newgrounds, who is a very nice guy.
A great thing about Flash is the variety of techniques it allows you to mix - video, frame-by-frame, interpolation, code, etc. That gives independent animation a vast playing field, which is too often overlooked.
AARON: As you point out, many well-known Flash animations have proven that poor design and sloppy animation can still find a big audience. Is the audience less discerning than in years past?
NACHO: I think so. We have eaten so much crap that we don’t ask for anything better. However, I respect some poorly animated series. There’s nothing wrong with script-driven series, as a quality script can make anything worth watching. South Park is great, but I guess they opened Pandora’s box. The problem comes when a series relies so much on the script that the visuals are superfluous. Some in this vein would be just as good if they were radio shows.
As for the lack in discernment in the audience, there’s a voice saying “the animation is okay like that, it’s the crappiness that makes it funny.” That’s totally wrong. It’s talent that makes an animation funny, whether limited or full. And all of those script-driven series would be 4 times better with the right animation, which doesn’t necessarily means it has to be expensive.
AARON: Do you usually write the entire story for your Mr. Coo shorts first, and then animate?
NACHO: No, I never write the story. I just come up with a situation and start animating without knowing where it will lead. Then the story starts writing itself, revealing meaning that was not obvious at first, and which wouldn’t have emerged if I had followed a fixed script. I know it might suffer from derivativeness, but we already have a lot of solid, conventional narratives.
AARON: It would be easy for viewers to read into the Mr. Coo stories and find a great deal of symbolism - socio-political or at least moral messages. Is this your intention?
NACHO: My intention is simply to depict inner processes that I go through or want to go through. Then “little miracles” happen by which these personal processes match bigger ones. For example, I’ve never tried to talk about politics, but when I talk about the relation between my brain and my heart, a fascist scheme comes out.
Other times, my intention has been to simply have fun animating. But I think there’s symbolism behind every story, whether conscious or unconscious. The dullest stories are also full of symbolism, a silent voice behind them is screaming “I’m afraid of being myself, so I copy what everybody does”, or something like that.
AARON: But everyone is influenced by the past, whether it’s past experiences, or artists who have come before them. What artists have inspired your work?
NACHO: Pink Panther, John Kricfalusi, Cow and Chicken, Bruno Bozzetto’s Allegro Non Troppo (which I watched as a kid and deeply touched me), Dali, Jodorowsky, Otomo, Miyazaki, many comic artists like Moebius, Hugo Pratt and the great Chris Ware.
Lately I replayed the game The Neverhood, which I played when I was 17 or so, and found many similarities with Mr. Coo. I surely have taken things from there. But I was surprised to find the very inner story of the game to be a very naive and Disney-esque maniqueism.
AARON: Do you storyboard the shots before animating?
NACHO: No, I feel all that planning suffocates my creativity. However, it all depends on the kind of work. In other projects strong planning is needed, indeed, great creativity goes in the planning. But Mr. Coo has grown liquid and without bounds, and I’d like to keep it that way.
AARON: Tell us about the score in Mr. Coo and how you create it.
NACHO: I searched a lot through the web and through open music libraries, and mixed with care. However, I’m considering having new custom music composed for Mr. Coo. Maybe I’ll find a jazz or rock band interested in a collaboration.
AARON: Can you offer any audio production secrets for our audience?
NACHO: I often use Adobe Audition, but much of the mixing can be done within Flash. Despite the unfriendly interface (that scroll and zoom are a drag), you can cut and paste and tweak the volume until the track fits your needs. It’s also quite easy to merge two tracks (in two layers of the timeline) with nice results.
There are plenty of sites with sound effects and loops. It’s a good idea to keep filling your own database (I have it stored as an external Flash library). Sometimes the best way to find a sound is to Google “sproing.wav”, or just record it yourself with a microphone. At first, searching for music and sounds can be hard work, that’s all I can say.
And there’s always the option of looking for a collaboration with a band: they play your music, you animate their videoclip. I’d like to do that king of trade some day.
AARON: When did you come up with the Mr. Coo character?
NACHO: I didn’t really come up with it, rather I found myself drawing it recursively. I realised it when I was 15 or so. Later I realised it was greatly inspired by Pink Panther’s sidekick, the big-nosed white man. Also, it turned out to be very similar to La Linea, a character by Osvaldo Cavandoli, but I hadn’t seen this beforehand. After all, it’s an easy character to draw, and that ‘nose style’ is well known from 50’s animation. I just had to give him a name. That always hurts me, because Mr. Coo isn’t really Mr. Coo, and it cannot be contained into any name. So I tried to give him one that sounded void and ridiculous.
AARON: So if Mr. Coo isn’t Mr. Coo - what is he?
NACHO: Creativity can be defined as giving form to something which doesn’t have form, so Mr. Coo is the formless reality which inspired Mr. Coo. But since these are words, and words are heavy forms, it’s all bullshit. Blah blah blah.
AARON: Let’s look at some of your Mr. Coo artwork. Click on a thumbnail image to begin viewing:
AARON: How would you say the series has evolved over the course of the 4 shorts?
NACHO: Same as me, the first episodes were “lighter,” and the story grows dramatic in a way, more solid. I can see my own evolution reflected in this series, which started back in 2004. Also, it started very experimental, and at the end I gave more importance to the content… the meaning, that is. But I never stopped experimenting, I always try to do things I don’t know how to do, rather than staying in the known, safe area.
AARON: Do you rely on feedback from anyone during your creative process?
NACHO: Not much, really. My stories are too personal, and most ideas I receive push toward that mainstream “dullification” I try to avoid. For the same reason, a side of me is too egoic, so I also remind myself to keep my ears open to anything different.
One person from whom I always receive very insightful feedback is my girlfriend, Cecilia, who is a great illustrator and has just opened her own blog.
AARON: Do you have plans for more episodes of Mr. Coo?
NACHO: I have in mind a big story about Mazinger-like super robots, and we started developing it with Aniboom. But we didn’t find the perfect format and script for it, so now it’s kind of paused. But I’m still in contact with Aniboom, who are great collaborators. I’m sure there’ll be more Mr. Coo, just maybe the next steps will be smaller clips.
AARON: Several of your projects are produced without dialog. Is this intentional? And if so, why?
NACHO: Yes, I said before, I don’t like words much… it seems to me that each one spoken is a lie. As I read recently, “where does your fist go when you open your hand?” I find reality contradicts itself constantly, and every word is like trying to put the ocean inside a box. So, it seems words clarify things, but ambiguity is closer to reality. Blah blah blah, I’m getting philosophical, and talking too much.
AARON: I’ve read that you started animating at an early age with Autodesk Animator. How did you discover this software?
NACHO: A friend of my older brother brought it home one day (sounds so strange, that pre-internet era). The first thing I learned was the frustration of drawing 8 whole drawings, which wouldn’t fill a second of animation.
AARON: Had you animated traditionally prior to that?
NACHO: I was thirteen, and I had always been drawing, but I hadn’t started drawing comics yet, and far less traditional animation. In fact, I never studied traditional animation. I’m essentially self taught, by trial and error, and watching old cartoons.
AARON: What was the first project that you animated with Flash?
NACHO: My first experiments with Flash (both animated and interactive) are in my old website, but I’m afraid half of the links are broken. I liked the great potential of Flash, and tried a variety of styles and techniques. Later I focused on old-school animation.
AARON: What were your favorite projects when you worked for Animaticos.com and Salvamania?
NACHO: The Cuñas en coña series, a project that was a collaboration with some very funny radio comedians. I animated over the audio of their radio sketches. It was great fun, and allowed me to rejoice on sexually explicit graphic humour, which is almost a must to good cartoons. They’re all in Spanish I’m afraid.
AARON: If someone wants to teach themselves animation, where should they start?
NACHO: John Kricfalusi is giving valuable, daily lessons at his blog. It’s classic cartooning, and we should remember that there are many other animation styles (check the wonderful achievements of Russian animation, for instance). But the principles are the same. Like everything else, it can also be blandly copied and dulled. I’ve seen quite a few Kricfalusi imitators already.
My advice is to learn from everyone, but copy no one. Sometimes I watch very silly manga films, just to see their virtuous animation.
One can learn by himself through trial and error, but much practice and patience is required in this complex art. It’s almost a must to study some clips by viewing them frame by frame. It’s a good idea to start animating very simple characters, even stick figures, because if you get the structure right, the details will follow naturally. Remember that the source of movement is the spine.
I learned a lot of animation by practicing tai chi, especially with regards to weight, rhythm and balance. Observe real life until you can divide the movement you see into frames. That’s a great attention exercise. Draw your influences from many other fields. Music can teach you timing which is essential to animation. And of course, you need to know how to draw, especially human anatomy. Studying anatomy sounded boring when I started out, but later it allowed me to draw the wackiest poses.
If you want to animate, surely there’s something inside you that wants to flow; to come to life. Your task is to serve that energy. Don’t twist its path and end up making shit that doesn’t belong to you. Because everything starts with pure glitter which tends to fade away. Most importantly, remember and discover why you wanted to animate in the first place.
AARON: What type of freelance projects are you currently working on?
NACHO: I’ve worked on a variety of them, like online ads or animated intros for websites. I’m currently constructing a crazy Flash website. But I have a greater project, a TV series, pretty much in the direction of Cuñas en coña. I can’t give more details at the moment, but we expect to have the animations online too. I hope we can take Flash to TV without committing the same anti-animation sins we see in most of Flash productions: lifeless cardboard puppets. We seem to have forgotten that ‘animate’ means ‘inspire life.’
Flashforward Austin is not all that far away. 
Kicking off on Monday, September 11th, and running through Thursday the 14th, Flashforward will again host “the largest International Flash-related film festival on the planet,” according to the website. The event is 16th for the Lynda.com gang, who acquired full ownership of the event last year. It’s the first time the event will be held in Austin, and we’ll see if this great city can top the enormous turnout in Seattle - which boasted 1,500 attendees.
I’ll be speaking in Room 2 on Wednesday starting at 1:30pm. The session title is a mouthful - “Flash Animation: From One Computer to a Million Screens.” Here’s my attempt at writing in the third person:
JibJab’s Animation Producer, Aaron Simpson, explains how a small studio
or an independent animator can reach a global audience. See JibJab’s Flash®-animated shorts, and others from around the world, then hear their unique stories of viral distribution. Aaron, the editor of coldhardflash.com, will also illustrate popular techniques that are being used at animation studios, and demonstrate several plugins that are re-shaping the Flash animator’s workspace.
My friend and co-founder of JibJab Media, Evan Spiridellis, will also be on hand. He’ll kick off his session titled “Cut, Paste, Animate: Collage Animation” at 10:45am on Wednesday.
And don’t forget to nominate your favorite Flash project for the Flashforward Film Festival. It’s free to nominate and you’ve got until June 23rd.
Dave Wolfe has taken matters into his own hands. Dave is an LA-based Flash animator whose gone and created three Flash extensions, or custom commands, that he’s offering to the Flash community for free. After spending some time last week at Flashforward, it’s become all too clear that the Dave Wolfe’s and the Warren Fuller’s of the world are going to advance the software for our community FAR more than the guys at Adobe/Macromedia. That’s not to say that the advances in Flash 8 aren’t interesting and somewhat useful, but we’re just never going to get the type of detailed animation-specific tools from a development team that’s more focused on interactive websites.
So with that said, here’s Dave’s extensions. You’ll need to have Macromedia’s Extension Manager 1.6 or later to install (which comes with Flash 8, but earlier versions need to download). Once you download these, you just double-click the mxp files (the three below) in Extension Manager and off you go. Dave recommends that you tinker with your keyboard shortcuts once you install, because there’s a bug in Flash that screws these up when you install custom commands. Just open the keyboard shortcut panel and click ‘OK.’ The shortcuts should go back to their proper places.
(right-click or control-click on these and ’save as’)1. LayerColor - This will let you change the outline color for selected layers all at the same time instead of changing the color one at a time in the layer properties panel.
2. NewAnimClip - This will create a new empty symbol on a new layer, registered to the stage. If you have an animation clip for a character and you decide you want to nest it inside a symbol, the old way would be to copy all the frames, insert a new symbol, paste the frames, then drag that symbol onto the stage and try to line it up. With this extension, all you have to do is copy or cut the frames, run the NewAnimClip command, and then paste the frames. The symbol is already on the stage and correctly registered.
3. Tween2Keys - This works like ‘convert to keyframes,’ but it does it on two’s instead of one’s. You have to be careful with this one, as Dave tried to come up with a way to make it actually create keyframes on every other frame, but each way he came up with to do that ruined the motion tween. So what this actually does is use Flash’s convert to keyframes command first, then it removes any tweens, then it clears every other keyframe. Since you’re physically removing keyframes there is the potential to accidentally clear a keyframe that you want, so make sure that any of the selected frames do not have keyframes on 1’s or they will get cleared. To convert your tween to two’s, select the first keyframe and last keyframe in the motion tween (this will work for multiple layers) and run the command. For large amounts of frames it may take a few seconds for the script.
These are all accessed from the Commands menu in Flash MX 2004 or 8, and you can assign a keyboard shortcut to them from the Edit menu.
Great work, Dave. I’m assuming the audience will have plenty of ideas for your next batch of extensions. Evan Spiridellis and I recently challenged the Macromedia team to create a Warp Symbol tool (might work like a ‘Smart Object’ in Photoshop CS2), but perhaps that can happen by way of an extension. Or what about a global color palette that would allow for asset-specific color. Or the ability to build custom line types - so many Flash teams do this stuff in Illustrator, and I hear it’s possible to build these right into Flash itself. Anyone else?
Last week, Evan Spiridellis and I spoke at the 2006 Flashforward Conference, an event produced by Lynda.com. The title of our session was JibJab’s Animation Process and How a Small Studio Can Reach a Big Audience, and we spoke for just over an hour. Evan walked the audience through the JibJab animation process - from animatic to animation to finished product. I presented several animators and small teams that are reaching big audiences, first which was JibJab, who had over 80 million people watch ‘This Land‘ and ‘Good to be in DC!‘ during the 2004 election. Here’s the slides from my presentation detailing JibJab’s recent successes.
Back then, it was really 2 guys doing it all, and this is the story I repeated many times over during the night.
Next I spoke about Jennifer Shiman and her ‘30 Second Bunnies Theatre,’ the Flash-animated series currently airing on Starz! on Demand. As many of you know from reading the CHF interview with Jennifer, she pretty much a one-woman band, writing, animating, and directing alone, and she gets over 1.8 million unique views a month at her angryalien.com site.
Amanita Design was the next studio featured. This 2-man shop out of Brno, Czech Republic is creating viral click-along games like Samorost 2 and linear music videos with a very small team. Jakub Dvorsky, the founder, gets over 500,000 unique views a month at his site.
Weebls-stuff.com is the playground for Weebl, the British animator. He and a small cadre of animators create ‘Weebl & Bob’ and other funny series like ‘Magical Trevor.’ They get a staggering number of cartoon views every month - over 5 million!
Bernard Derriman animated the music video for TISM’s ‘Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me,’ which went on to become a hugely viral video. He animates alone, and he gets over 50,000 unique visitors to his site, arjandpoopy.com, every month. I completely missed posting about Bernard’s holiday ‘Arj and Poopy’ episode, but you can still see it here.
Adam Phillips, who happens to be an old working buddy of Bernard’s, won his 3rd Flashforward festival trophy for his Flash-animated short ‘littleFoot.’ He too is a one-man Flash army, writing, directing and barely sleeping while crafting his Brackenwood series. In a good month, he gets over 300,000 unique visitors to his site.
James Farr, the creator of ‘Xombie,’ is currently in production on a direct-to-DVD feature version of his Flash-animated series. All by his lonesome, deep in the heart of Tulsa, Oklahoma, James has written, animated and produced 7 online ‘Xombie’ shorts, and now he’s teamed up with Wetsand animation to create the long-form version. He has over 1 million subscribers to his ‘Xombie’ mailing list.
Laith Bahrani’s ‘Low Morale’ series brought down the house during our presentation. We screened episode 9, and the crowd went nuts. Very funny stuff. Laith is the sole animator on his shorts, and he’s welcomed over 800,000 visitors to his site since 2004.
And last, but not least, we talked about ‘Queer Duck: The Movie’ which is due to wrap production sometime soon. It’s a Flash-animated feature project penned by Mike Reiss, a Simpsons writer, and Xeth Feinberg is heading up the animation effort. He’s working with a team that’s usually smaller than 10, and he’s been in production since last summer.
While it’s not always about the size of the audience, it’s still impressive to see so few reaching so many. Thanks to everyone for contributing to our presentation, and to Lynda Weinman (of Lynda.com) for hosting us up in Seattle.
The finalists in the Cartoon competition have been announced for the 14th Flash Film Festival, an online competition. The awards are part of Flashforward2005, and the big winner will be crowned on July 7th in The New Yorker Hotel. The four films in the competition are:
Learn Self Defense
by Chris Harding
Chris is a Cold, Hard Flash regular, and his career and techniques were chronicled back in February of this year. Chris offers this synopsis of the 5-minute ‘Learn Self Defense’ on his website - “After being brutally attacked in an alley, George decides he must learn to protect himself. A cocksure narrator walks him through five practical lessons of self-defense for the citizen on the go– or nation-state on the rampage!” This short is not available on the web, but Chris gave me an opportunity to watch the film and it’s simply excellent. ‘Learn Self Defence’ is slick, stylized and irreverently funny. Check out clips on Chris’ site, and while you’re there Coming into the Flash Film Festival, Chris is on a roll, having just won the Best of the Fest award at the 2005 Kansas City Filmmakers’ Jubilee.
The Adventures of Mr. Coo
by Nacho Rodriguez
Nacho lives in Barcelona, Spain, and he’s animated one of the most entertaining Flash shorts in recent memory. Mr. Coo, a large-nosed, shape-shifting blob, finds himself being chases by his own paper airplane, a savage chair and a toilet that acts more like a xerox machine. There’s an enormously high drawing count in ‘The Adventures of Mr. Coo,’ and it’s almost hard to believe it was all animated by one man. The 25-year old Rodriguez also has extremely strong timing and imagination - he’s essentially Spain’s answer to animation autuers like Don Hertzfeldt and Bill Plympton. I simply love this short, and I can’t wait to see the next in the series, which is reportedly under way.
Manege Frei
by Dyrdee
‘Manege Frei’ is a contemplative Flash short that acts as a metaphor for what we want and what we actually end up doing to get it. ‘Manege Frei’ was animated at the German Urban Design and Communicatiosn company Dyrdee. It’s beautifully designed, and animated quite elaborately. The painted bitmap grass texture adds a nice touch, and the linework is gorgeous. The lighting, the shadows, the color palette - there’s so much to love, I recommend you just stop reading this now and watch.
Taggerz
by Jamie Cason
‘Taggerz’ is an episodic Flash-animated project that follows the Ruffneck Crew, a group of UK graffiti artists. The website offers the following tag - “When your crew is your family, you better hope they’ve got your back.” ‘Taggerz’ is behind a firewall on the BBC site, but it only takes a minute to sign-up, and a working email doesn’t seem to be neccessary.
Now that you’ve watched them all, head on over to the Flash Film Festival site and vote on your favorite. Best of luck to all in the competition.
