The Flash-animated feature film Los Campeones de la Lucha Libre continues to move through production, and this summer movie-goers in Mexico will get a glimpse at the short teaser for the film.

A longer, more elaborate trailer will be coming out sometime down the road, but in the meantime, consider yourself teased…

For more info, head over to the Fwak blog.

Eddie Mort and Lili Chin, the creators of one of the first Flash-animated TV series ¡Mucha Lucha!, have embarked on an independent feature. Los Campeones de la Lucha is also being animated in Flash, and the team is now churning out the animatic. Below are three clips which Eddie and Lili recently released on their blog.

storyboard drawings by Eddie Mort

Sorpresa vs Abuela Extremo from Act 3
storyboard drawings by Rafael Navarro

Meeting Rayo X from Act 1
storyboard drawings by Eddie Mort

Eddie shared a few thoughts with me this week on the making of the film.

AARON SIMPSON: What have you and Lili learned through the process of making Los Campeones?
EDDIE MORT: Los Campeones shows that you don’t necessarily have to go the traditional US broadcast way to get your ideas into production. Of course it means we work with an ‘independent movie’ size budget, but it has also allowed us to have total freedom in all aspects of the design, script and story content. The film is being financed by TV Azteca in Mexico, for their new Features division. The plan is to first release and establish the film theatrically in Mexico, with other countries to follow.

AARON: What’s your crew like?
EDDIE: It’s a skeleton! Lili Chin is taking care of designs, turnarounds, character poses, color styling, animatics, etc etc etc. I’m doing designs, storyboards, BG Layouts, animatics, script editing, voice direction, film direction, some music. The rest were freelancers - Rafael Navarro did storyboards for Act 3, Jake Bauming did storyboards for Act 2, Monkey Paw Media have been doing BG keys and Evan Newby did some additional designs. And we have DJ/Composer Phofo as Music Supervisor.

AARON: Who is animating the film?
EDDIE: We will be taking care of some of the actual animation ourselves, but using another studio for the majority of the film.

As reported back in June, the duo behind ‘Mucha Lucha,’ Eddie Mort and Lili Chin, are currently in producion on a Flash-animated feature - ‘Los Campeones de La Lucha.’

Eddie recently uploaded some storyboard examples from the production over on his blog. The unique thing here is that he’s using Flash to create the storyboard panels. He says:

The advantage is that I get to make the storyboards more like mini-layouts, and also get to use existing character models. It’s a more time consuming process, but I figure it will make for a better animatic, and really make things easier for animators when it comes time for that stage of the production. Anyone else use this method?

See more over at the Fwak blog and in the CHF message boards.

Eddie Mort and Lili Chin, while still young and vibrant, could almost be called grandparents of Flash animation on TV. The medium was already booming on the web when they created ‘¡Mucha Lucha!’ for KidsWB! but they were one of the first few teams to take the Flash plunge on a TV production.

After ‘Mucha’ wrapped, Eddie and Lili kept Fwak! Animation together, and have since partnered with BouncyNet to produce a Flash-animated feature for TV Azteca in Mexico. It’s called ‘Los Campeones de La Lucha,’ and while it’s feature-length, Eddie adds that “this ain’t no Over The Hedge. More like Under The Boardwalk; we have no major production studio backing us, and this is gonna be a maverick production in the truest sense.” That’s the indie spirit! Get’s my blood going just typing about it.

Several still images have been published on the project’s official MySpace page, and Eddie and Lili have written up their efforts on their own blog in several posts: here, here and here.

Eddie’s a member of these boards, so perhaps we can get a few more thoughts from him over in the Features section of the message boards.