A couple of “celebrity” directors have turned to Flash animation over the years, and perhaps the two most notable were David Lynch and Tim Burton. In 2002, Lynch, who received instruction from Tony Candelaria at one point, produced Dumbland – an 8-episode Flash-animated series. Two years prior to that, Burton teamed up with Shockwave.com and Flinch Studio to create Stainboy, a character who first appeared in one of Burton’s books. Tony Grillo at Flinch recently unearthed the original source files from that production and began remastering. The new HD videos will be screened at an upcoming MoMA exhibit on Burton that opens on November 22nd. Grillo has detailed both this recent process and the original production over on his blog, and below is one of the newly restored episodes:

Alright – here we go again.

Last week, Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy and American Dad, was on The Howard Stern Show on Sirius Satellite Radio to promote The Cleveland Show. The conversation eventually steered towards Stern’s own latent cartoon ambitions. You see, back about 5 years ago, Stern was cooking up a series for Spike titled Howard Stern: The High School Years. Well into development, Howard ran into some budget problems. Spike reportedly wasn’t interested in paying $800,000 or a million per episode for traditional animation – ala Family Guy – so they started down the Flash route, or what Stern calls “cheap shit animation.” In last week’s interview, MacFarlane remarked on this production choice and subsequently pissed all over Flash (listen here – around 8:00):

There’s something so sanitized when they do it with Flash. There’s still no machine that can substitute for hand drawn. Some people like it. I have the same visceral reaction that you do. It just feels very cold.

To illustrate how ridiculous this comment is, I direct your attention to a Flash-animated project – one that MacFarlane may recognize:

How cold! How sanitized! The animators must have been replaced by robots! That was Up Late With Stewie & Brian, which was produced in Flash by Flinch, Zeek and Fatkat back in 2007.

There’s not accounting for taste, as it’s a personal thing, but Seth has bumbled into the same old mistake so many others have made – he blamed bad painting on the brush. It’s quite apparent that Seth hasn’t seen the volumes of excellent work produced with the Flash thoughtout the years. Go watch Superjail! or some of the work we highlighted in the Flash Animation 10, and you’ll agree it’s not the tool that’s sanitizing anything.

You can actually see the test Stern is referring to. In November of 2003, Mark Marek met with Stern and subsequently produced some animated tests, hoping to land the directing gig. He posted the results on his site, which don’t look all that bad to me.

Big thanks to Dave Redl (Family Pants) for the story tip.

You may have spotted a post over at Lineboil.com about a promising 6-year old animator. I recently come across a few other lads who got an early jump on their animation careers. First up is Louis McLeod, son of Greg McLeod (Fuggy Fuggy, M Man). 5-year old Louis did all of the drawings on paper, which were then scanned into Photoshop and animated in Flash. Beyond the charming voice-over, Louis also handled all of the sound effects in this short, which he titled Yellow No Monkey:

Tony Grillo’s 6-year old son harnessed the power of a Cintiq digital drawing tablet to create this short, which he titled The Bullet Car:

Four years ago, the boys at JibJab knocked out one of the most viral videos of all time – This Land. This Flash-animated parody blasted both Bush and Kerry, and then went on to set online records with over 80 million views. A few months later YouTube hit the scene, and now in this 2008 election season, we’re overrun by animated election parodies. The difference this year is almost all of them are one-sided, and in particular left-leaning (aside from JibJab’s nonpartisan Time For Some Campaignin’). As you watch the various Flash-animated samples below, question if JibJab’s nonpartisan approach is the key to millions of views.

John McCain & Straight Talk Express: Palin vs Lieberman is from the gang behind Lil’ Bush. Click here to for a behind the scenes video.

Oh, McCain by Charlie Fink. Directed by Tony Grillo.

Oliver Stone’s P. Trailer by Yehudi Mercado

Oh, we’re not done yet….

Another one directed by Tony Grillo – The Two McCains Episode 3: My Foreign Fallacy.

Palin’s Qualifications by Mike Keefe, Editorial Cartoonist for the Denver Post.

Obama on the Run by Howard Tiersky

Mark Fiore’s McCain Iraq 2008

Everybody Loves Palin by JABOK

Halin’ Palin by Shaun Reimers

And I didn’t even get into the games! Here’s one Flash-based game: 270: White House Defense.

The crew at Flinch Studio recently teamed up with California-based Chota Media to create this TV spot for an LA-based auto dealer. The commercial is for Irvine Auto Center, featuring their mascot Otto (get it?).