The new Happy Tree Friends project is officially live. It’s a spin-off project called KA-POW!, and it’s all-action, all the time. Okay, there’s comedy too… and blood. Lots of blood. The first episode is titled W.A.R. Journal Operation: Tiger Bomb and you are invited to watch:
The project is based out of Mondo Media in San Francisco, but for this new series they’ve invited the gang at Ghostbot to animate. These companies have teamed up before for projects like Mole in the City, but for KA-POW! we’re seeing some new takes on the art direction.
To learn more about that and other topics, we are now joined by the co-creator of Happy Tree Friends, Kenn Navarro, writers Warren Graff and Ken Pontac, and Brad Rau, who works at Ghostbot. I should mention that I’ve now started consulting for the team at Mondo, so read cautiously. I’m working from the inside now, and I’m not to be trusted.
AARON SIMPSON: As you now watch your creation spawn a spin-off series, it must be pretty thrilling. Did you have any idea your original short would grow into something this popular? Read the rest of this entry »
AN INTERVIEW WITH MICHEL GAGNE
An animator with decades of industry experience and credits on projects like The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille could easily continue to punch the clock and count the days until the next Pixar project starts up.
Michel’s Taste Visualizations from
Pixar’s Ratatouille
But for Michel Gagné, a graduate of Sheridan College, these experiences haven’t fully satisfied his dreams. Handfuls of successful book and comic releases brought him international acclaim, and by the Fall of 2004, Gagné was ready to get his latest independent animation off the ground. He teamed up with Flash-animation whiz Jayson Thiessen and brought his Insanely Twisted Shadow Puppets project to Nickelodeon. Mike Hogue, another Flash animator, joined the team, and 12 beautifully-animated interstitials were born and headed for Nickelodeon’s Halloween Shriekin Weekend in the Fall of 2005. This success led Gagné to even greater things that you’ll learn about below.
AARON SIMPSON: Were you a fan of shadow puppetry prior to conceiving this project?
MICHEL GAGNE: I’ve always been interested in silhouette drawings and they’ve been popping up in my work for years. I even made a book using silhouettes called, The Great Shadow Migration which was done a few years before I even thought of doing the shadow puppet shorts.
AARON: What made you choose Flash to produce this project?
MICHEL: I started seeing TV series and short films that were animated using the software and the quality was getting pretty impressive. I hooked up with Jayson Thiessen and we did a couple of tests and that gave me confidence that I should give Flash serious consideration. The fact that everything was done in silhouette really lent itself to the Flash process.
When I received financing to do the shorts, I was dealing with a very short schedule, so again, Flash seemed like a better option than hand-drawing the whole thing. In short, it was a matter of economy and time constraint that made Flash the prime candidate.
AARON: How did the production process work?
MICHEL: I sent Mike Hogue and Jayson Thiessen a series of detailed storyboards along with the final edit of the soundtrack. The storyboard served as art direction (each panel looked like a finished frame of the film) and as the pose test. From my layouts and notes, the animator did the first animation pass and sent me a Quicktime for review. I looked at the films and then called or emailed the animator with precise notes about timing and animation revisions. They did a second pass, and I gave more notes, then a third and so on. We worked back and forth until the short looked perfect to my eye. The animators sometime came up with incredible solutions to my difficult animation demands.
AARON: How did you come to know Jayson and Michael, the animators on ITSP?
MICHEL: I met Jayson while visiting Studio B in Vancouver, BC. He showed me some of his work and I was very impressed. A couple of weeks later, I gave him a call and asked him if he’d be interested in working with me on a project. He came to my house, we discussed the project and he was very enthused by it. For the following two weeks with put together a small animation demo to go along with the proposal. Once that was done, we both flew to LA and pitched the project to various studios. About 5 months later, I got a green light from Nickelodeon.
Once the financing came through, Jayson had become a director on the Pucca series and he no longer had the time to devote to the project. I had to find a replacement pronto if I was to meet my deadline. That’s when Mike Hogue came into the picture. I’d seen Mike’s work online and he’d emailed me a couple of times in the past. When I asked him if he’d be available to work on the project, he immediately agreed.
Michel’s Prelude to Eden
AARON: You’ve used the digital animation software Animo on a number of projects including Prelude to Eden and your Ratatouille segment. How does this compare to Flash?
MICHEL: Animo is based on the more traditional animation procedure. When I use Animo, most of the time I still draw the animation on paper. I use Animo for scanning, ink & paint, color model, compositing, etc. I’m very familiar with Animo because I was part of the team that helped test and design the software when it was being created. A lot of my input went into it. With the way my brain is wired, Animo is completely intuitive and easy to use. I’ve been using Animo for about 15 years and it still remains my favorite animation software.
The PC video game from Fuel Cell Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
MICHEL: We’re working hard on the game and we hope to have a release date announced in the coming months. The thing is, we started this game as a simple side-scroller, but it has evolved into something a lot more sophisticated and ambitious. I’d love to show you some of the game-play we screen-captured to show investors, if only I could. It would blow your mind!
AARON: Is the game a mix of 3D animation and 2D?
MICHEL: Yes it is, although the final look is definitely 2D.
AARON: Explain your process for animating elements for the game.
MICHEL: First, I hand-draw the animation. Then, I use Animo to scan, ink & paint, composite, etc. Once the animation looks the way I want it, I render it as a series of tiff files, making sure that the background color is set as alpha-channel. Once this is done, we import the elements into the game engine. After that, the programmers work their magic.
AARON: With the game, you’ve landed your “Insanely Twisted” label onto 3 mediums, a book (Rabbits), TV (Shadow Puppets) and now a video game. Was this your plan all along?
MICHEL: No, I never look that far into the future. I just keep doing what I’m doing and everything always seems to fall into place.
A few shorts to share related to a common theme (wink) that relates to a yearly event (wink) that happens this time every year (wink). Here’s the latest episode from Eric Pringle’s series Prophet Buddy titled You Called It.
Sadly, there are not more Prophet Buddy episodes until May. We’re still hoping this is an April Fools joke.
And, as promised, Jayson Thiessen’s series is back for a second week of Mr. Obtuse.
Jayson Thiessen, the creator of one of my favorite Flash-animated shorts Chubby Dee, has launched a new animated series. Mr. Obtuse brings his digi-voice humor to the web every Tuesday - now known as “Obtuesday” (Jayson’s joke, wish I could take credit). Here’s episode 1:
Jayson Thiessen, the creator of Chubby Dee, is thinking ahead with his latest animated series creation. Musseloom! is slated for production of a few simple shorts, but Thiessen has already finished the prototype for the stuffed toy.
He’s throwing out this short below and the plush photos to test the waters - and see if its working so far. If you’ve got a second, drop a comment in and let him know what you’re thinking. It’s hard to tell where this series about fungus people is headed from the short, but I can say with certainty that the short was created in Flash and the plush doll was made with ultra velour and felt.
Jayson Thiessen has been discussing the benefits of Flash-competitor Anime Studio on his blog Super Saiko. He’s now putting his stylus to the test, animating a short walk cycle for his character Chubby Dee.
Here’s the original Chubby Dee short, Stale Sale, which was animated in Flash.
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.
MICHEL GAGNE: I’ve always been interested in silhouette drawings and they’ve been popping up in my work for years. I even made a book using silhouettes called, 
When I received financing to do the shorts, I was dealing with a very short schedule, so again, Flash seemed like a better option than hand-drawing the whole thing. In short, it was a matter of economy and time constraint that made Flash the prime candidate.
I looked at the films and then called or emailed the animator with precise notes about timing and animation revisions. They did a second pass, and I gave more notes, then a third and so on. We worked back and forth until the short looked perfect to my eye. The animators sometime came up with incredible solutions to my difficult animation demands.
He came to my house, we discussed the project and he was very enthused by it. For the following two weeks with put together a small animation demo to go along with the proposal. Once that was done, we both flew to LA and pitched the project to various studios. About 5 months later, I got a green light from 
Jayson Thiessen has been discussing the benefits of Flash-competitor 
Jerry Beck, one half of 
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.
