Jayson Thiessen, the talented animator behind Chubby Dee (MOV), spent much of 2006 co-directing Pucca at Studio B for Jetix Europe. The title sequence for the Flash-animated series was storyboarded by Thiessen and Tim Packford and then brought to life by Jos Humphrey. Over on Thiessen’s blog, he posted an animatic-to-animation comparison, which we’ll recreate below:

The Animatic

Toronto-based Blueprint Entertainment has teamed up with Jetix Europe to release a new Flash-animated series titled Iggy Arbuckle. The series is aimed at the 6-to-11 year old crowd, and was a produced along with National Geographic Kids and C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures. According to Oasis International, the series “is a fast paced animated, buddy-comedy series that doesn’t just explore the wonders of the natural world, it burrows right down and rolls around in it like a piggy in the mud!” Last year, the series also saw orders from Canada’a Teletoon network. Head over to the Oasis website to see a short teaser clip.

Had a chance to catch an episode of Pucca yet? We here at CHF have been sorrowfully quiet about this new Flash-animated series so far, but we’ll catch up today.

Pucca currently airs in the Jetix block on Toon Disney, but it originated as an online series. The Korean studios VOOZ created the super-short shorts, and they were tight right from the start. They must’ve jacked-up the frame rate to 60fps, because those shorts just zipped along, but the blur effects and tight timing surely helped. I’ve gotta give credit to Eric Pringle and Matt Danner (The Go! Go! Moba Boy! duo) for turning me onto this great series.

Now the TV series is produced by Studio B Productions, and the show looks excellent. Here’s a few clips to get you started:

Kevin Long, part of the creative team behind Pucca, recently found himself working on a show of his own creation at Studio B Productions. The project is called Super Villian (Quicktime - 41mb), and it centers on a character who, after devoting his life to fighting good, “has been forced to leave his secret lair and live in a split-level in the suburban town of Pleasantville.”

The two studio chiefs, Chris Bartleman and Blair Peters, funded the pilot, which is part of their B-Hive.tv online animation effort. The storyboard team consisted of Dallas Parker, Greg Sullivan and well-known Flash animation pro Jayson Thiessen. The Flash animation team included Greg Adams, Sophia Lee, Denny Lu, Mario Macaryan, Antony Madani, Charlie McKenna, Ishi Rudell and Johnny Tesoro who all did a bang-up job.

According to Animation Magazine, Super Villian was “well received” at MIPCOM Junior late last year.

Been lots of Flash animated series activity in recent months, and I’ve been slowly pulling together a list.

PBS KIDS GO! just started running The Amazing Colossal Adventures of WordGirl, a Flash-animated series of 2-minute shorts that run been episodes of Maya & Miguel. The series was created by Soup2Nuts, which is part of Scholastic Media.

Animax Entertainment and ESPN just launched the third season Off-Mikes with a new episode titled Casting Slouch. The Flash-animated series takes audio from the Mike & Mike radio show and re-imagines them as animated moments. Off-Mikes recently won the Spots Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Content for Non-Traditional Platform.

26-episodes of Edgar & Ellen, the Flash-animated series produced by Star Farm Productions, has been acquired by Nickelodeon channels in France, Italy and 7 other markets. The series, which started in book-form, also has a 6-book series in place with 14 international publishers.

As announced in Animation Magazine, Lola and Virginia, a Flash-animated series co-produced by Icon Animation & Millimages, has launched on the Animania HD channel. The 12-minute episodes follow Lola and Virginia, who live in the same neighborhood, but have vastly different lifestyles.

Pucca, the Flash-animated series produced by Studio B Productions, has received a second season order by Jetix Europe. The series is based on characters created by Vooz out of Korea. Pucca also airs in the US on Jetix blocks on Toon Disney.

Cartoon Network Europe has announced a new Flash-animated series for January 2008 - Best Ed. It’s aimed at the 8-12 market, and it’s being developed by Teletoon and Cartoon Network UK and animated by 9 Story Entertainment. The story centers on the unlikely relationship between a dog named Ed and his friend Buddy, a squirrel.

Studio B in Vancouver have been hard at work readying ‘Pucca’ for its debut on Jetix. According to the gang over at Stash, the studio also produced a series of very clever, fast-moving broadcast IDs, that can be seen below.

The official Pucca website is now live too, where they’re pitching the series with this line “It doesn’t make any sense - but what do you expect?” Oooookay! If you’re using IE (boooo!), you can view a short promo hyping the series.

A bit of history on this series - it was originally created by a company called Vooz in Seoul, South Korea, and has since been green-lit for 78 episodes, all produced in Flash.

I spotted this story over at Gil Crows blog.

I spent two days at Comic-con in San Diego this past weekend, and witnessed one of most intense people-crushes I’ve ever seen. Ticket sales were actually halted on Saturday, with attendance estimates ranging from 125,000 to 150,000, up from 104,000 last year. As you can see in the photo below, the concept of a ‘personal space bubble’ was hard to come by.

I was hunting down as many Flash animation names as I could, and using this event as a barometer, I can safely say Flash animation is a healthy industry. I met:

- One of the founders of independent animation company Net Hat Co
- the two chiefs of Titmouse Studio, Chris and Shannon Prynoski who premiered Metalocalypse
- Bob Boyle, who showed an episode of upcoming Jetix show ‘Yin Yang Yo!’
- George Elliott, founder of Elliott Animation, who are animating ‘Yin Yang Yo!’
- Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua, the creators of Nickelodeon’s ‘El Tigre’
- Tom Fulp (photo) of Newgrounds and The Behemoth, who was showing of his new 2D platform game ‘Castle Crashers’
- Brooke Burgess, whose ‘Broken Saints’ series is out on DVD August 1st
- The guys behind ‘College University’ and ‘Dr. Shroud’

I’ve also posted about 20 photos from my San Diego adventure over in the Message Boards.