Cold Hard Flash: Flash Animation News, Videos and Links » Flinch

Bowen and Burton Squeeze Out Goodwin vs. Badwin

aaron — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:31:22 +0000

Over on the Mondo YouTube channel, we’ve just given birth to a brand-new series titled Goodwin vs. Badwin. We meet a pair of just-hatched twins who, beyond a mother, share very little in common. It was created by Joshua Bowen and Peter Burton, and directed by Tony Grillo from Flinch. New episodes due out every other week – welcome to the world, GvB! Here’s episode 1: Premature Evacuation.

Flinch Dials In For TalkTones Project

aaron — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:48:32 +0000

Flinch Studio has produced a number of spots for TalkTones, and new, custom-greeting application for mobile phones. The Loogaroo team animated the project, and character design was handled by Gene Fowler. Here’s an episode that illustrates how the application might work to salvage a shaky relationship:

Flinch Remasters Stainboy For MoMA Burton Exhibit

aaron — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:57:40 +0000

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:

Howard Stern and Seth MacFarlane Trash Flash

aaron — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:22:52 +0000

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.

Flash Fathers Start ‘Em Young

aaron — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:49:14 +0000

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:

2008 Election Animation Round-up

aaron — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:28:45 +0000

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.

Flinch in Driver’s Seat For Irvine Auto Center Spot

aaron — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:42:38 +0000

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?).

Flinch and Fatkat Join the Family

aaron — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:30:00 +0000

An exclusive, Flash-animated Family Guy webisode titled Up Late With Stewie & Brian went live this past Sunday on MySpace, the massive social networking website. The 10-minute talkshow parody was animated by Flinch Studio Animation, Zeek Interactive and Fatkat Animation.

There’s a list of TV series I always name as shows that could be produced with Flash. The Powerpuff Girls, The Simpsons, South Park, Futurama and almost any Hanna Barbera show are on this list. Family Guy is on there too, and now Flinch, Zeek and Fatkat have gone and proved the point.

Up Late With Stewie and Brian was actually created to help promote a new live-action series coming to Fox. The Winner, created by former Family Guy writer/creator Ricky Blitt, begins airing March 4 at 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm, but full episodes are currently available at Fox.com. The show stars The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry and it is produced by Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy.

16th Flashforward Film Festival

admin — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 14:53:00 +0000

The 16th Flashforward Film Festival is complete. I just returned from the event in Austin, where Lynda Weinman handed out an armful of orange arrow trophies. Below are some of the winners that featured outstanding Flash character animation.

CARTOON
No surprise here. Adam Phillips, the winner of the past 3 ‘Cartoon’ awards, took home the hardware for ‘The YuYu.’ For a full write-up, head over to my review earlier this year.

INSTRUCTIONAL
In the ‘Instructional’ category, GeeGuides snagged the top prize. This elaborate educational experience features a great deal of 3D animation, but also a fair amount of Flash animation, which was overseen by Tony Grillo’s Flinch Studios.

MOTION GRAPHICS
In the ‘Motion Graphics’ category, M5 took the top spot, but Comcastic’s exceptional, keyboard-controlled puppet application.

NARRATIVE
‘The Ball of Bastards‘ walked away with the orange arrow in ‘Narrative,’ but ‘Cinema Rules‘ is well-deserving of the nomination.

Congrats to all the winners and nominees!

Microsoft Taps Flinch and Fatkat

admin — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:05:00 +0000

Microsoft recently asked Tony Grillo of Flinch Animation to help the general public better understand the difficult topic of software architecture. Tony wrote the song, developed the animatic and then brought in Fatkat Animation Studios to help flesh out the animation. According to Tony, this worked so well, there’s already more in the pipeline. You can also watch this video over at skyscrapr.net.