Jerry Beck, one half of Cartoonbrew.com, posted an 8-minute clip from G4’s show The Lab with Leo Laporte which features an interview with Kevin Gamble and Jayson Thiessen, two of the creative minds behind the new George of the Jungle series. The series is animated in Flash by Studio B Productions in Canada, where Gamble is producing and Thiessen is directing.

Beck went easy on the show this time around, whereas back in the summer of ‘06 the concept got drilled. But today, Beck need not sharpen his quill - the comments are shrill and filled with disdain over this retread of this classic Jay Ward series from 1967 - and particularly over the show’s use of Flash animation.

I find this all rather amusing. When Jay Ward first debuted Crusader Rabbit, a defining ‘limited animation’ series, I can only imagine the hubbub about how he was ruining animation. Almost two decades later, Ward had perfected his signature style, and he was onto George of the Jungle. The layouts, poses, color palette and overall humor of the original George of the Jungle series are all things I can appreciate, but I wouldn’t call this a beautifully animated show. It’s closer to an animatic - jumping pose to pose.

Don’t we all see the irony here? Flash is helping usher in a new era of limited animation, something Jay Ward helped instigate. Beyond that, the animation in these new series is far better than what Ward and his team could manage on those smaller budgets. Technology has advanced, but it appears that our standards have as well.

Crusader Rabbit

George of the Jungle
Thanks to Justin Weg for the story tip.

The Brothers McLeod show no signs of letting up this year. Having burst onto the YouTube scene only weeks ago with their front-page hit Spamland, they’ve returned with two more clips well worth watching.

First up is a music video for the alternative band Breezer out of the UK. Greg and Myles offer up a re-telling of the Brothers Grimm tale The Elves and the Shoemaker. The song title is I’m Just Badly Misplaced.

Second is what Greg calls “an advert for a doctor who cures sureal and nonsensical ailments.” It’s called Dr. Fish, and it was recently picked up by G4TV here in the states.

Aaron Augenblick, who was recently interviewed here at Cold, Hard Flash, recently appeared on G4’s ‘Attack of the Show.’ He was interviewed by host Kevin Pereira, with topics ranging from MTV2’s ‘Wonder Showzen,’ to Richie Rich and 3D animation. But the topic of Flash animation seemed to dominate the conversation. Lucky us! You can watch a Quicktime of the interview here, and I’ve typed up a few snippets from interview for your pleasure:

KEVIN PEREIRA: You went from traditional animation into the world of Flash. Now why make that jump? Isn’t that sacrilidgeous?

AARON AUGENBLICK: A lot of people were pretty critical of the fact that we were doing stuff in Flash, especially in its infancy when we were first doing it. I mean, there was so much crap being made in Flash…. What I like about Flash, that’s sort of good and bad, is that anyone, like a housewife in Nebraska, can make a cartoon. And animators hate that, because animators like to be able to have their own proprietary system.

KEVIN: But you’re not concerned with traditional animators losing their jobs over the Flash animation revolution. You still think it takes a tradtional animator to make good Flash.

AARON: Absolutely. I always look for traditional people. I don’t necessarily gravitate towards people who have only ever done Flash. Because personally, the stuff I like is traditional classic animation.