Since launching on YouTube about a year ago, Future Thought’s animated Crime Time series has tallied a few million views. They’ve reportedly embarked on 92 new episodes, half of which will be penned by Nassos Vakalis. He is the director of the series, but his day job finds him storyboarding on Monsters vs. Aliens – the upcoming DreamWorks animated feature. Here’s a new episode of Crime Time titled Midnight Lover.

Nassos Vakalis’ online series Crime Time has hit the big time. The Flash-animated episode titled Electro-Phobia, which was animated by Mumbai-based Future Thought Productions, has tallied up nearly a quarter of a million views on YouTube.

Nassos Vakalis, an Emmy Award winning artist in Los Angeles, has teamed up with Future Thought Productions to create Crime Time. The series, produced out of Mumbai, India, follows the adventures of Shifty, “a pint-sized pilferer with lofty ambitions and limited brainpower.” Vakalis directs and designed the characters, which draw inspiration from the classic UPA shorts. Future Thought utilized Flash and SoftImage in producing the series. Below is an episode titled Paint Job:

I just spotted a link to the new ‘The Buzz on Maggie’ website while browsing the ‘Animation Nation’ message boards. ‘Maggie’ is a new Flash-animated show from Disney that’s now set to bow on The Disney Channel in June, and the website is currently hosting 8 20-30 second clips from the show. It looks great, especially the ‘Mr. Pesky’ clip.

Maggie is described as “the funky fly girl with an extreme taste in music! She lives in the fly metropolis of Stickyfeet with her fun family and with her sassy best friend Rayna at her wing, Maggie’s life is a little wild and totally out of the ordianry — just the way she likes it!”

The show is being written by the always funny Bill Motz and Bob Roth, who I believe are also producers on the show. The director is Dave Wasson, the creator of ‘Time Squad’ who is also producing, and it’s being animated at Future Thought Productions (Bombay) and Bardel Entertainment (Vancouver).

I’m expecting great things from this show, as I know how talented the crew is. Jorge Gutierrez, Sandra Equihua and Katie Rice are splitting the character design effort, and the storyboards are under the supervision of Spumco-grad Gabe Swarr. And the list continues – Roman Laney is handling BG design and Ricky Garduno storyboarded several episodes. Ray Morelli, another Spumco-vet also chipped in with board revisions. Can’t wait!

Indian animation studio Dawsen Infotech is getting set to deliver the 85th episode of their Flash-animated series ‘Thakurmar Jhuli,’ which translates roughly to ‘Grandmother’s Bag of Stories.’ The show has been running since late 2003, and it’s based on a book of the same name, written by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder. It features well-known ‘Bangla fiction’ stories that have been passed down from one generation to the next. From what I can tell, the show is a regional presentation, running on Zee Telefilms ‘Alpha Bangla’ network, which makes it’s long run even more impressive.

The production studio, Dawsen Infotech (I can’t help but think of Initech from the live-action feature ‘Office Space’), is mostly known for a few dozen CD-ROM titles, like ‘Toon Tutor’ and ‘Word Wizard,’ all presumably animated in Flash. After viewing a few samples of Dawsen’s animation on their site, I can’t imagine that the quality of this show is very high, but their success touches on a bigger point – Indian Flash animation is on the rise.

According to a recent study, the Indian animation industry as a whole should grow by 30% through the year 2008, at which time it will be a $15 billion industry. Rediff, an Indian newspaper, ran an article last week offering three reasons why:

1) India has a vast base of English speaking workforce
2) the presence of good studios and
3) the low cost of animation services

I think we can assume that the later is the primary reason, which is supported by this quote from the same article, “The total cost for making a full-length animated film in America is estimated to be $100 million to $175 million. In India, it can be made for $15 million to $25 million.”

The recent financial collapse of Bangalore-based jadooWorks and an impending talent-shortage offer a sobering footnote to this shooting-star story. But even this incident shouldn’t diminish the rapid rise of studios like UTV Toons, DQ Entertainment and Future Thought Productions, all Flash animation producers.

But through all of this, Dawsen Infotech continues to churn out episodes of ‘Thakurmar Jhuli,’ as well as a new Flash property titled, ‘Tuntuni.’ Whether it’s local content like these shows, or service work for French or American studios, it seems like India will be a home to Flash animation for years to come.