Roger, based in downtown LA, recently added their motion graphics mojo to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards (tomorrow night 8pm) promos which star returning host Jack Black. Roger partnered up with Pick of Destiny writer/director Liam Lynch on this comedic AD/DC homage below, which includes seamlessly composited live-action, 3D animation, hand-drawn and Flash-animated work. Stick around for an interview after the video….

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AARON SIMPSON: What was the overall design concept for the promotional pieces?

TEAM ROGER: The design concept came from this year’s KCA slogan of When Hollywood meets slime! We took iconic Hollywood elements and tried to represent what would happen if the Nickelodeon brand crashed into them. We knew we wanted something gooey and organic that would fit well with Nickelodeon’s style.

Liam Lynch (Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic) directed the live action shoot. He provided a rough animatic which a had a general direction for the storyline. From there, we begin designing panoramic storyboards of the cityscape and main environments. After editing the footage, we designed storyboards full of details of the execution of every shot. Next we created an animatic that included audio, footage, and storyboards. Finally, we put our animation team into full production.

AARON: Which artists created the look?

TEAM ROGER: The look was created in a collaborative effort between Nickelodeon, Liam Lynch and Roger. Our design team included Brian Gossett (lead designer) and Jake Portman (Art Director) as well as the (3) Creative Directors of Roger, lead by Terence Lee.

AARON: How was Flash a part of the production pipeline?

TEAM ROGER: Flash was used to animate specific elements we wanted to have a hand drawn feel.

AARON: Which elements of the spots were created in Flash?

TEAM ROGER: The Flash animations include the Splat type as Jack jumps out of the plane in the first shot, the letters Jack is Back throughout the motorcycle scene, and the birds circling Jack’s head on the end shot.

AARON: Did artists draw directly into the program, or were pencil sketches scanned into the software?

TEAM ROGER: For the Splat animation, we first created the type in Illustrator and worked backwards, re-drawing each frame with the onionskin feature until each letter was complete. In the point of the animation where the type turns into one big glob, we drew each frame in individually until it fell off frame.

AARON: We used the same technique for the Jack is Back letters: starting with vector type and re-drawing each frame with the onionskin feature.

TEAM ROGER: The birds began with a simple 3d bird animation as a guide. After illustrating the bird, we did a quick pencil sketch of the body and head then moved to the wing movements. From there we cleaned up the bird and drew it in frame by frame using a Wacom tablet.

PROJECT CREDITS:

Client: Nickelodeon
VP/Creative Director, On Air and Movie Promotions: Jay Schmalholz
Director of Production, On Air Promotions: Christina Augustinos
Supervising Producer, On Air Promotions: Mike Tricario

Production Company: Ignition Films
Live Action Director: Liam Lynch

Animation/Design Production: Roger
Creative Directors: Terence Lee, Vasil Hnatiuk, Mark Yamamoto
Art Director: Jake Portman
Lead Designer: Brian Gossett
Compositor: Erin Bosworth
Animators: Zack Nederlander, David Lewandowski, Jose Acosta
Lead Flash Animator: Kenneth Macy
Executive Producer: Sarah Cole
Producer: Elaina Porter
Sound design & Mix: Mike Barrett from Creative Bubble

Gabe Swarr, a Spumco-trained Flash-animator and a director on Nickelodeon’s El Tigre, has managed to find time on the side to produce a few shorts. Aside from the Donkey Kong clip we featured here last month, Swarr has also produced a Mario Bros. short titled What the Shell?!, which he submitted to the Nintendo Short Cuts Showcase contest. He produced the entire short in a weekend along with help from Tony Mora, who supplied the background paintings.

Swarr also produced an intro video for I Am 8-Bit, Jon Gibson’s video game focused media company.

This past Friday, my wife and I attended the 35th Annual Annie Awards, which were held on the UCLA campus for the first time. As you may have read here a few months back, it was a proud night for Flash animation.

The big winner at Royce Hall was undeniably Pixar’s feature film Ratatouille - which wrapped up 10 awards. On the TV side, two series took home a pair of trophies - Robot Chicken and Nickelodeon’s Flash-animated series El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. The show, which was created by Jorge Gutierrez and his wife Sandra Equihua, walked away with awards for Best Animated Television Production for Children and Character Design in an Animated Television Production, a category Gutierrez was nominated for two years ago. Congrats to Dave Thomas, Tim Yoon, Gabe Swarr, Roman Laney and the crews at Boulder Media and Six Point Harness. [read Cold Hard Flash interviews with Gutierrez and Yoon]

El Tigre was also nominated in two other categories:

• Monica Kennedy for Character Animation in a Television Production
• Shawn Patterson for Music in an Animated Television Production

Below is one of the El Tigre clips Patterson submitted for the awards. Its from episode 9, titled Yellow Pantera.

Sadly, it looks like this award-winning show will be ending this year, but it will surely go out on a high-note. Nickelodeon hasn’t picked up the second season, and as Patterson put it on his MySpace page “all great things come to an end.”In the Best Animated Television Commercial category, Acme Filmworks’ Powershares spot, titled Escape Average, took top honors. This weekend, I asked Dave Wasson, the director of the commercial, about the ceremony and production experience:

When Patrick Warburton announced that our Powershares spot had won I was completely caught off guard. At past Annie Awards, I’d been nominated quite a few times, but had ever won. So I had sort of given up on the idea of taking home a trophy. I tried to get Ron Diamond and Gwynn Adik to join me on stage but they wouldn’t budge (they’d decide to give me “my moment in the sun”). I hadn’t written anything down so I gave a short, rambling thank you speech and staggered off stage.

The schedule on this spot was crazy; three weeks total from the time I got the outline from the agency until the day we delivered the finished spot. That said, of all of the projects I’ve directed, it was actually one of the most fun. I really clicked with the agency creatives right from the start, and they were completely open to me taking their idea and running with it (incidentally, in case any agency executives are reading this, this is the best recipe for good commercials - I’m just sayin’). Dave Knott and I completed the storyboard in two days. The following day I made the animatic. Using Flash I was able to create the character designs and backgrounds in record time.

Even though our crew was small, they were super talented, which made it all the more enjoyable. I contacted Brendan Burch at Six Point Harness Studios and he hooked us up with a couple of his best guys. Saharat Tantivaranyoo did a beautiful job with the character layouts, and James Krenske’s animation is kick ass! Back at Acme Filmworks, I worked with Nic Mermet on After Effects to composite all the elements together and add all of the multi-plane parallax. All in all, it was really a great experience.

[Watch Wasson’s Powershares commercial here at Cold Hard Flash]

Back at the Annie Awards, Flash animation continued to echo throughout the night. The creators of Flash, Jonathan Gay, Gary Grossman and Robert Tatsumi, were honored with the Ub Iwerks Award, which highlights excellence in technical achievement. I won’t go into much more detail on this, as a we’ll be posting a lengthy interview with all three guys tomorrow.

But in the meantime, here’s a clip that played just prior to their award. It’s a collage of various Flash-animated projects from the last 10 years. Antran Manoogian, the president of ASIFA-Hollywood, asked me to assemble the clip, and I was happy to oblige. It’s simply a hint at all of the great Flash animation out there - we surely left out some incredible projects. Thanks to Antran for the invitation, and to Les Perkins for helping me put this together.

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Alongside John Canemaker and Glen Keane, John Kricfalusi accepted his Winsor McCay Award, which honors “career contributions to the art of animation.” John K’s The Ren and Stimpy Show was credited with “reinvigorated television animation,” but he was also noted for his pioneering work on the internet’s first cartoon series - The Goddamn George Liquor Program, which was animated entirely in Flash.

There were also a handful of nominees on Friday representing Flash-animated projects:

BEST ANIMATED SHORT SUBJECT
Chip Wass’ short Mascot Prep – part of Disney’s Shorty McShorts’ Shorts project - animated at Boulder Media

ANIMATION PRODUCTION ARTIST
Natasha Liberman – Growing Up Creepie - Discovery Kids

BEST ANIMATED TELEVISION COMMERCIAL
Esurance Homeowners spot – W!LDBRAIN

BEST ANIMATED TELEVISION PRODUCTION FOR CHILDREN
Little Einsteins – Disney Channel
Peep and the Big Wide World – Discovery Kids

Lastly, I’d like to congratulate my cousin, Elizabeth Harvatine, for her nomination in the Character Animation in a Television Production category. She was honored for her stop-motion animation on Adult Swim’s Morel Orel, and her pal Eric Towner took home the trophy for his work on another stop-motion project - Robot Chicken. (inset photo credit - Tennessee Reid Norton)

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.

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The 35th Annual Annie Awards will likely be a big night for Ratatouille, Surf’s Up and Persepolis, but February 8th, 2008 will also be a night to celebrate Flash animation. The Annie Awards, for those unfamiliar, are what some Americans consider the “Oscars” of animation, and the nominees were announced today.

El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera, a Flash-animated show that airs on Nickelodeon, leads all TV series with 4 nominations, including a nod for Best Animated Television Production and an individual nomination for Jorge R. Gutierrez, the co-creator of the series. It should also be noted that 2 of the other 4 nominees in the Best Production category are also Flash-produced - Peep and the Big Wide World and Little Einsteins (which also utilizes After Effects).

Next, John Kricfalusi, a true pioneer in online Flash animation, will be receiving a Windsor McCay Award for his series The Ren & Stimpy Show and “use of artist-driven Flash animation.”

Lastly, Jonathan Gay, Gary Grossman and Robert Tatsumi, the creators of Flash, will receive the Ub Iwerks technical achievement award.

I’ve already marked my calendar - and can’t wait to trumpet Flash at stateside animation’s biggest night.

Unrelated to Flash news - my cousin, Elizabeth Harvatine, was nominated in the Character Animation category for her stop-motion work on Moral Orel. Go Liz!

On the eve of Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, there is some sad news to report from the Flash animation front. El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera has been canceled. While I haven’t seen any official news yet, I spotted two RIP notes on a pair of blogs, including one where I grabbed this image.

This series, created by Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua, featured an all-star crew that included Roman Laney, Dave Thomas, Gabe Swarr, Ben Jones, Ricky Garduno, Fred Osmond, Luke Cormican, Tod Polson, Katie Rice, Ray Morelli, Gerald De Jesus, Aaron Horvarth, Katrien Verbiest, Eddie Trigueros, Chris Battle, Sean Szeles, Steve Lambe, Tim Yoon and many others. From what I’ve heard, the crew has been plowing forward on a short 2nd season order, but it looks like the axe has fallen. The series pushed the boundaries of what Flash is capable of - with heaps of action scenes and kinetic, lush environments. Heck, it was perhaps the first Flash-animated series to get high marks from Cartoon Brew’s notoriously tough-critic Amid Amidi.

In keeping with Day of the Dead tradition, we shouldn’t mourn the end of the road, but instead celebrate a fantastic series. I’d love to read comments from fans and friends of the crew - as I’m sure you agree with me: El Tigre is an exceptional series. Congratulations to the entire team.

Okay, Sean Szeles is officially the Flash artist of the week. In his second appearance on CHF in five days, Sean stars in an on-air El Tigre promo on Nickelodeon. Sean wrote up the experience over on his blog, and below you can see the :30 assembly of a storyboard pitch he led in front of his team. Keep your eyes peeled for show creators Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua in the clip along with other El Tigre team members like Gabe Swarr.