The LA Weekly, the alternative weekly newspaper, features Stefan Bucher’s monsters on the cover this week, but inside readers will find a famous Flash-animator. Amy Winfrey is the topic in Making Fiends: Amy Windrey’s Animated Vendetta, a favorable article by Gendy Alimurung about the upcoming Nickelodeon series Making Fiends, which started out as a web series. Congrats to Winfrey on the immenent series launch - we’re all pulling for you.

In related news, this same topic was posted at CartoonBrew.com last week, and I have yet to read one cross comment about Flash. Perhaps it’s because few folks know the series is produced in Flash (the LA Weekly article doesn’t mention Flash), but I’d like to believe that the software is starting to catch a break or two. Getting really tired of defending Flash, aren’t you?

Pascal Campion, like many of us, is headed off to Comic-con today. In honor of his departure, he created a short Flash animation, which you can see over at his website.

I’m also heading down today as well, and if anyone wants to meet up, I’ll be attending the Making Fiends panel at 5pm on Friday in room Room 7AB. I’ll be wearing my trusty brown CHF tshirt and sitting in the back right of the room. See you in San Diego!

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Back in 2006, Amy Winfrey’s Flash-animated web series Making Fiends was discovered by the Nickelodeon gang and promptly placed onto their online video site, Turbonick. After the Nick audience fell in love with Clamburg’s Charlotte and her unlikely pal Vendetta, the network ordered a full season of TV episodes. The premiere date has yet to be announced, but a few promo clips have surfaced at the Nickelodeon website, as well as a behind-the-scenes sneak preview which you can see below. The clip is hosted by Chris Hardwick, the voice behind Otis on Nick’s Back at the Barnyard, and we meet the series creator Amy Winfrey, the voice of Vendetta, Aglaia Mortcheva, and Supervising Producer, Dave Wasson, who created Cartoon Network’s Time Squad.

Whew! I thought LA had traffic, but I believe the Comic-Con crush takes the cake. I often stood in the same place for minutes at a time, waiting for the surge of people to thin out and move forward.

Human pinball aside, I always look forward to Comic-Con - its where I often meet Flash animation gurus who I’ve only shared email exchanges with. I spent several hours chatting with Shad Petosky and Julia Vickerman from Puny Entertainment, talking about the up-and-coming Minneapolis studio. They introduced me to Yo Gabba Gabba’s Kevin Lee, and we talked about upcoming premiere on Nick Jr.

Speaking of Nick - I also spotted a banner for Making Fiends, Amy Winfrey’s Flash animated series scheduled to launch on Nickelodeon. From what I’ve heard, a significant portion of production has wrapped, so the premiere can’t be far off.

Like last year, I bumped into Tom Fulp who heads up Newgrounds.com. I picked up a t-shirt and discussed some new figurines they’re planning to release, their upcoming game Castle Crashers, and Tom’s commitment to getting his hands dirty on the games and animation produced out his Philadelphia office. But I met someone new at the booth - John Baez, one of the founders of The Behemoth, the game studio behind Alien Hominid. Baez and Fulp have teamed up on this venture, which has received a great deal of press and awards.

I scheduled some time to meet up with Ghostbot crew, who I’d only shared emails with, dating back to the CHF interview in 2005. But first I dropped in on their autograph session, where Alan Lau, Brad Rau and Roque Ballesteros were busy inking some of their signature characters for waiting fans. Afterwards we talked Flash animation, series development and some recent work for Warner Bros. I’m planning on writing up before long.

Six Point Harness artists Saharat Tantivaranyoo tipped me off about 8fish, a relatively new Flash animation studio based in Sandy, Utam. They were showing off 3 original series concepts and screening samples of their work.

Just walking the floor, I also spotted a banner for ABC Family’s new Flash-animated series Slacker Cats. The primetime series has been touched by several LA-based studios, including Film Roman, Six Point Harness, Renegade and Animax and it is schedule to premiere on August 13th.

Lastly, I happened by the College University booth, which sat adjacent to Newgrounds and the Behemoth. I talked with Mike Parker, swapped stickers and had a look at their latest DVD release, which features season 2 of College University. Mike and his brother Andy have also been hard at work on Clock Suckers, which airs on collegehumor.com.

Here’s a tip - start planning for next year - as I’m sure hotel rooms are already getting booked up.

No matter which TV studio you talk to these days, the new-media plan is fairly consistent: “we’re launching shows on our web platform in hopes of identifying which ones are ripe for TV development.” This model isn’t new, but it’s finally beginning to bear fruit. Some shows are tested by networks on the web first, while others find their own legs independently and then the networks come calling.

• Yam Roll - won the Maple Shorts online competition and went to TV series in 2006
• 30 Second Bunnies Theatre - started as popular web shorts and now air on Starz!
• Dr. Shroud - a web series that now airs on Fangoria TV
• Happy Tree Friends - probably the biggest success story in this category - now airs all over the world
• Low Morale - recently acquired by MTV
• Pucca - this South Korean series began on the web as quick internet shorts, and now airs on Jetix
• Queer Duck - spawned from Icebox.com in 2000, Queer Duck ended up on Showtime then as a Direct to Video feature

Now it’s Amy Winfrey’s turn. She’s been hard at work on her independent, Flash-animated series Making Fiends since 2003. The series centers on two characters who couldn’t be more opposite. Vendetta is sinister, and possessed with the power to create other evil beings - or fiends. Charlotte is as sweet as can be, and never sees Vendetta’s evil tactics as ill will, and typically considers her a friend. This dynamic between the two lead characters is what gives the show such creative range and humor. And now, with 20 episodes in the bank, Winfrey has some exciting news to crow about. Making Fiends is not only jumping to TV, but it’s going all the way to the top - Nickelodeon, the cable network with the top 10 shows for children 2 to 11, according to the New York Times.

Winfrey shared this with me in a recent exchange, “I think fans of the web series are going to be very pleased with the show. I’ll be the executive producer AND the voice of Charlotte!”

It’s a smart bet for Nick, who now know exactly how the audience responds to the characters and storylines. Winfrey even hosted a Making Fiends Art Contest last year, and she watched over 250 entries pour in from fans ages 4 to 28. Plus, the Nick brass surely riffled through the demographics of the site’s visitors, so there shouldn’t be any surprises. Then, of course, there’s Winfrey herself, who carries quite a nice, little pedigree. Versed in both 3D and 2D animation, she won a silver medal in the Student Academy Awards in 2000, and went on to animate for a little show called South Park. So with all of the typical new series question marks removed, you might wonder why all cable and network shows aren’t “brewed” this way. Well consider the fact that Amy’s been tirelessly working on her show for 4 years. Patience of that magnitude is hard to come by at almost any studio.

Amy recently shared some time with Cold Hard Flash to unravel exactly how this all came to be.

AARON SIMPSON: How did your relationship with Nickelodeon begin?
AMY WINFREY: A Nickelodeon employee had a daughter that was a fan of Making Fiends. He showed my site around at work and the Nickelodeon folks contacted me to see if I might be interested in bringing Making Fiends to television.

AARON: Can you tell us about the upcoming Nickelodeon series?
AMY: It will be super fiendy! I’ve expanded the Making Fiends universe to include some new characters (many of them fiends) and I’ve added a whole fiend filled town for Vendetta to terrorize. It has been a lot of fun coming up with new stories - especially since I know that I will not have to animate everything on my own.

AARON: Are you looking forward to having some help on the productions? That’s gotta be a ton of work!
AMY: Yes! Yes! Yes! I’ve greatly enjoyed making my own films, but having more people help will allow me to focus on the things I like best: writing good stories and songs, designing fiendier fiends and working on voices.

AARON: How did you learn animation?
AMY: I took an animation class on a whim while I was an undergraduate English major at UCLA. I made a fifteen second film. It was a lot of work but fun. I made two more films while getting my English degree, and then applied to the UCLA MFA film program. While attending my first year at grad school, I also worked as an animator for South Park. Both school and work taught me a lot about animation.

AARON: Your UCLA film The Bad Plant landed you a Silver Medal at the 2000 Student Academy Awards. Tell us about that night.
AMY: The Academy planned a whole week of activities for Student Academy Award winners so I had already met all of the other award winners before that night. It was fun to see everyone receive their awards. The films were amazing. One student’s film ended up also winning a (non-student) Academy Award. I tied for silver with a fellow student from UCLA, J.J. Martinez. Later, he returned to Spain and directed an animated television show and I ended up writing for the show. (note: Todd Polson, who won the Gold in 2000, is helping out with backgrounds for a new Flash-animated series coming to Nick next month - El Tigre - The Adventures of Manny Rivera)

AARON: Back at UCLA, you were working in 3D Studio Max, and to great results. Was it a conscious choice to switch over to 2D?
AMY: While making The Bad Plant I was also making a website for another class. My film might have won awards, but my silly little website had a much wider audience. I was getting e-mail from around the world. I decided to start making web cartoons. There was really no easy way to distribute 3D animation on the web at the time, so I returned to working in 2D.

AARON: What are the benefits of 2D over 3D?
AMY: 2D is faster, cheaper and much more fantastically flat.

AARON: How many South Park episodes did you work on?
AMY: I worked on the first fifteen episodes of South Park and South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut.

AARON: How would you compare animating for South Park and animating on your own projects?
AMY: I use some of the techniques of replacement animation that I learned at South Park on my own projects. However, animating for myself is of course more fun AND I don’t end up with delightful songs like Uncle F**KA stuck in my head for months before anybody has ever heard of them.

AARON: Do you have any projects lined up that might find you back to work in 3D?
AMY: It’s possible that I will return to 3D at some point soon.

AARON: Was Flash being taught at UCLA while you attended?
AMY: At the time I attended, only a tiny bit was taught in my interactive animation class. I think that might have been Flash 1 or 2… it was still in its infancy. Now, UCLA teaches a great deal more of it. I actually taught an interactive class at UCLA last Fall.

AARON: How did your panel go this year at Comic-Con?
AMY: It was fun to see one of my shorts with an audience. Everyone laughed. Yay!

AARON: Did you get to watch any other panels while you were at the ‘Con?
AMY: No. But I did manage to see about twenty Princess Leias.

AARON: You teamed up with Doug Liman’s Nibblebox back during the original dotcom upswing. Was it frustrating to watch the subsequent merger with Hypnotic.com and its eventual eventual collapse?
AMY: This was a surprising turn of events. I originally planned to make ten episodes of Big Bunny, but after the merger Hypnotic wanted to stop production after episode six. Hypnotic eventually agreed to allow me to make one final episode to wrap the series up. After this happened, I decided to make a new web series that I would try to keep independent for as long as possible.

AARON: How would say the current market for online animation compares to 2000?
AMY: The market has definitely changed. Now I get contacted by people wanting to put my shorts on cell phones and iPods instead of on entertainment websites.

AARON: How has your animation production method changed since 2000?
AMY: I try to think up new ideas to speed up production all the time. I am definitely a faster and more efficient Flash animator now.

AARON: How big is your production team?
AMY: When I first started making web cartoons I did all the drawing and animation on my own. Now, I occasionally have two or three people helping me with the animation. Most are former South Park animators and friends from UCLA. In addition, I often utilize the fine voice talents of Peter Merryman and Aglaia Mortcheva.

AARON: Do you create animatics for each episode in Flash?
AMY: No. I sometimes do some storyboards if I need to plan out a shot, but most of the time I just set things up and animate them without a full animatic.

AARON: How do you learn new Flash animation tricks?
AMY: I don’t really… I hope I’m not missing anything!

AARON: Are you more like Vendetta or Charlotte?
AMY: Hmmm. That’s hard. I’m a lot like both.

AARON: How long would it typically take to produce an online episode of Making Fiends?
AMY: An episode would take about three weeks.

AARON: Have you licensed any of your characters out to manufacturers?
AMY: No.

AARON: Do you have any plans to resurrect Big Bunny anytime soon?
AMY: Maybe! I recently re-acquired the rights to Big Bunny. It might take a while though - I’m pretty busy with Nickelodeon right now.

AARON: Will you be able to sell Making Fiends merchandise off your website when the show launches?
AMY: No. I will no longer be able to sell merchandise if a Making Fiends pilot goes in to production. However, I will continue to offer Big Bunny and MuffinFilms merchandise.

AARON: What’s the average amount of visitors you get each day to makingfiends.com?
AMY: For all three of my sites together, I get over 20,000 hits per day.

AARON: What was the inspiration behind the Making Fiends Art Contest?
AMY: Fiend fans often sent me drawings and I loved it! I wanted to see more of their fiendish creations. I received entries from around the world, and the results are now posted on the Making Fiends website.

AARON: What type of advice do you have for animators currently studying the craft at school?
AMY: Don’t over-think things. Some people spend so much time laboring over concepts, researching equipment and worrying about tiny details that they never actually end up completing their films. Start small and cheap. Audiences are forgiving - especially if you make them laugh!

Turbonick, Nickelodeon’s new broadband video platform, launched with a programming package that includes two Flash-animated titles. Turbonick is one of MTV Digital’s new broadband networks; the others being MTV Overdrive, VH1’s V-Spot and Comedy Central’s Motherload.

‘Making Fiends’ is now playing on Turbonick in the ‘Nicksclusives’ section, and you can find Klasky Csupo’s ‘Schmutz’ in the ‘Nicktoons Shorties’ channel.

‘Making Fiends’ is a series of Flash-animated shorts by the prolific Amy Winfrey. Her previous series ‘Big Bunny’ might be familiar to some, but it’s ‘Making Fiends’ that’s garnered Amy so much attention. Staring the impossibly sweet Charlotte and her nemesis Vendetta, ‘Making Fiends’ is in it’s 20th episode, and Amy has hinted on her website that her show may soon be a full series on Nickelodeon. Amy, a UCLA grad, currently lives in Los Angeles, and once worked as an animator on ‘South Park.’

‘Schumtz’ is a series of shorts emanating out of the once-mighty Klasky Csupo studio. ‘Schmutz’ is about a hairball and a wad of gum who live in a hotel, and these 1-minute shorts were animated by my good friends at Six Point Harness Studios.

Tonight, I’ll be joining a panel discussion at Cartoon Network
Studios in Burbank, California called ‘The Evolution of Flash.’ Joining me on the panel will be Flash animator Alx Meza; author, Producer and Director Clifford J. Parrott; Renegade Animation Executive Producer Ashley Postlewaite and JibJab co-founder Evan Spiridellis.

In thinking about tonight’s discussion, I figured it might be a good time to look at where Flash stands in the TV animation world. I’ve broken the list down into three categories - 1) Flash shows that are currently on the air and also in production, 2) Flash shows that are in pre-production or production and will be airing within the next year and 3) Flash shows that have completed their production runs and are currently on the air. This list is certainly incomplete, as I’m sure your emails will prove, so please send along anything I’ve missed or reported incorrectly. And let’s remind ourselves that this list is TV-centric, telling only half the story. Web-only projects like ‘College University,’ ‘Making Fiends’ or ‘Ninjai;’ or DVD/Internet shows like ‘Mr. Wong‘ or ‘Broken Saints‘ - these shows are almost more important, because they represent the new models of delivery.

And as we celebrate the rapid emergence of Flash animation production, let’s also remember that this amazing software is but a tool - and the real story here is the creativity, inspiration and vision that brings us armfuls of fun shows to work on and watch.

IN PRODUCTION AND CURRENTLY AIRING
01) Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi Show - Cartoon Network
02) Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends - Cartoon Network
03) Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law - Adult Swim
04) Atomic Betty - Cartoon Network
05) Bruno and the Banana Bunch - Nickelodeon
06) Being Ian - YTV
07) BB3B - BBC
08) Happy Tree Friends - MTV Int’l

IN PRODUCTION AND AIRING SOON
09) Coconut Fred’s Fruit Salad Island - Kids’WB!
10) Wubby Widget & Walden - Nick Jr.
11) Squidbillies - Adult Swim
12) Shuriken School - Nicktoons
13) Kappa Mikey - Nicktoons
14) Princess Natasha - Cartoon Network
15) The Wumblers - 4Kids TV
16) Captain Flamingo - YTV
17) George of the Jungle - Teletoon
18) Katbot - Disney
19) Omega Dome - Fox Sports Net
20) The Buzz On Maggie - Disney TV Animation

CURRENTLY AIRING
21) Mucha Lucha - Kids’WB! & Cartoon Network
22) Incredible Crash Dummies - 4Kids TV
23) Yakkity Yak - YTV