If you’re like me, you first got to know Joel Trussell by way of his music videos. His viking-inspired video for Jason Forrest’s War Photographer put him on the animation map, and thanks to his Chinese Translation video, we’ve gotten to know a great new musical artist - M. Ward.

Joel continues his assault on the music video world with Enjoy the Ride, the first single from Morcheeba’s latest album Dive Deep, which released just last week.

Several folks in the Flash community have been making headlines in the last month or so.

Joel Trussell, the brilliant designer and artist from Tennessee was featured in the Metro Pulse, the Knoxville weekly. They discuss his recent short for Yo Gabba Gabba!, his rise to web fame with War Photographer, and his fear of Flash games. Click here to read.

Tom Neely, who was featured here in 2005 for his Muffs music video, has been having one helluva year. His graphic novel The Blot has found a great deal of critical success, then the Black Maria Gallery in Glendale put on a one-man show, titled Self Indulgent Werewolf, of his painting and sculptures. Even in his still work, Neely can’t help but animate. Click here to read his interview at the LAist.

Gene Fowler, the top dog at Fatkat, won BDC’s (Business Development Bank) Young Entrepreneur Award for New Brunswick. The press release features a brief interview with Fowler. Click here to read.

There’s also been some echoes of a Flash-related dust-up that started over at Cartoon Brew.

Pete Emslie continues to berate Flash as the cause of bad animation.

And John Kricfalusi posted a thoughtful reply to Emslie and claims that if it’s Overseas vs. Domestic Flash - he’ll take Flash any day.

The long-running, Flash-animated ad campaign for Esurance has added another director to the roster. W!LDBRAIN, the San Francisco-based animation studio, tapped Joel Trussell to oversee the animation of Erin Esurance’s latest adventure - B-Movie-Attack of the Over-Priced Auto Insurance Monster.

INTERspectacular, a concept, design and animation studio in New York City, has re-branded Nicktoons Network’s 3 Headed Monster block with new logos, graphics and animated bumpers. INTERspectacular’s Creative Directors Luis Blanco and Michael Uman teamed up with character designer Joel Trussell to create a 3-headed monster with distinct personalities: Friday, Saturday and Sunday (the block airs Fri-Sun from 7pm to 1am).

The design and animation team included Josh Pelzek, Devin Clark, Efrain Cintron, Euralis Weekes, Sybille Schenker, Alberto Cerriteno and Andrew Macfarlane. INTERspectacular Executive Producer Greg Babiuk tapped Blanco and Uman to voice the monsters. To see handfuls of animated bumpers, head over the INTERspectacular site and below is one titled Mirror.

Two music videos from Joel Trussell’s archive that never got their due…

Back in 2005, Trussell created a music video for Jason Forrest’s earth-shaking track War Photographer. Their collaboration continued last year and the result was Paris is On, Forrest’s remix of a Paul Brill track.

Trussell also knocked out a video for Coldcut last year. This Island Earth was actually a team effort - check that - more of a dream team: Mark Ackland, Darin Bendall, Gene Blakefield, Anton Bogaty, Jared Deal, Matthew Tamaru and Grant Sligh.

Last night at Cinespace in Hollywood, Fred Seibert held the first annual Channel Frederator Awards party. Seibert, the founder of Frederator and former President of Hanna-Barbera studios, attracted a mammoth crowd who enjoyed a continual cartoon screening, video interviews throughout the night and an A-list assembly from the kids animation world.

But the real stars of the night were the winners of the Channel Frederator Awards. Several of the award winning films were produced in Flash, including Jessica Borutski’s musical short I Like Pandas, which won Best Flash Film, and War Photographer by Joel Trussell which took home two awards - Best Music Video and The Producers’ Award. Jossie Malis’ Bendito Machine won for Best Design, Bernard Derriman’s immensely-viral Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me took home Funniest Film, and Ed Skudder’s Flash-animated short The New Guy walked away with the Joe Robot Award, for best use of a robot.

I also saw heaps of great people, including Melissa Wolfe, who not only works for Frederator but also created one of this year’s Random Cartoons (Sparkles and Gloom), Bill Bennett (who co-created Chalkzone), Kris Boban from Liquid Generation, the guys from Six Point Harness Studio and Animax Entertainment and Michael Uman and Luis Blanco from Interspectacular, the NYC shop who was written up here last December for the Discovery Channel work.

Great party, Frederator. I don’t think you have a choice on this one - you’re doing that again next year!

In case you missed it last week over on Cartoon Brew, Joel Trussell, the brilliant animator behind War Photographer, has created a new TV spot for GlaxoSmithKline. The ad promotes their nicotine replacement therapy products like Nicorette, and it brings to life the “beasts in your brain that won’t let you quit.” Gene Blakefield joined in the fun, helping Joel animate, as he did on both War Photographer and Chinese Translation.

To watch the other spots created for the campaign, head over to way2quit.com.

Also, don’t forget to vote for Joel in the Channel Frederator Awards.