Cold Hard Flash: Flash Animation News, Videos and Links » G4

AOTS and Titmouse Attend Slasher School

aaron — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:53:30 +0000

G4′s hit series Attack of the Show (weeknights 7pm ET) has been featuring a fair amount of animation these days. New episodes of Baman Piderman premiere about every other week on the live show, and on Monday the AOTS team premiered an original series. Slasher School, once a live action series, was a group effort by the AOTS producing team, but it was written by Blair Butler, a longtime G4 member who is often on-screen, but she also writes and produces. Butler, along with fellow hosts Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn, provided the voices, and then Jody Schaeffer (co-creator of Megas XLR) at Titmouse Inc. took over to bring it to life. Schaeffer first turned to Dave Johnson, who designed the characters, and then he and Kevin Hand (DJ & the Fro) animated the episodes along with assists from Shiloe Swisher, Gary Doodles and Eliot Sperl. Here’s the first 2 Flash-animated episodes, and the third is up at G4TV.com.

Baman Piderman Make Da Cards

aaron — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:41:06 +0000

Episode 6 of Baman Piderman, Make Da Cards, premiered on G4′s Attack of the Show last night, after which host Kevin Perera exclaimed that his ringtone is the Baman Piderman theme song. I believe we’ve discovered the show’s #1 fan.

Spaceballs – Battle of the Galactic Orbs

aaron — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:18:17 +0000

Wait a minute. When did Spaceballs become a porno? In this promo below, G4 is employing the “stiffy-strategy” to promote their new Flash-animated series, a show based on Mel Brooks’ 1987 Star Wars parody feature of the same name. I mean, the original film had its fair share of sexual innuendos, but it’s more hoots than hooters. The new project starts on September 21st at 3pm ET (the original feature first, then the series premiere).

[MEDIA=110]

The series is being animated at Fantasy Prone. This other promo is infused with far less Viagra.

George’s Second Term

aaron — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:58:00 +0000

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.

Brothers McLeod Meet Brothers Grimm

aaron — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 16:38:00 +0000

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.

Attack of the Showzen

aaron — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 13:55:00 +0000

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.