On October 4th, Nicktoons debuted a new Flash-animated series Making Fiends. Long in development, the series is one of the few projects to have successfully jumped from the web to TV, joining series like Happy Tree Friends, Yam Roll, The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers, Queer Duck, Pucca and 30-Second Bunnies Theatre. The Nicktoons brass is surely taking advantage of the series’ darker edge – and hoping to use this Halloween season to catapult the show to ratings success.

A big congrats to Amy, series director Dave Wasson, and the entire Flash animation staff, including Aglaia Mortcheva, Shoshana Stolove and Rob Fendler (help me fill this out, gang). To help celebrate the launch of the TV series, Amy Winfrey, the creator of the show, has posted the title sequence on YouTube, which you can view below:

I attended the Comic-Con panel, and here is one of the (shaky) videos I shot. It’s Dave Wasson detailing the production:

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

The Nick.com website has also released the Making Fiends Fiend Creator, a Flash-based character generator that allows fans of the show to generate their own Clamburg residents.

And don’t miss the next episode, which airs this Saturday, October 18th at 11:30 AM ET (8:30 Pacific). Check the schedule for more air dates. If you’re looking to get your hands on the original Making Fiends web shorts, DVDs are for sale at Amy’s site. Lastly, back in 2007, we interiewed Winfrey on her jump from the web to TV.

Animation Collective and Fatkat Studios have teamed up to deliver a new Flash-animated series for Nicktoons Network. The 26-episode order of Three Delivery premieres this Friday at 7:30, and it’s also slated for YTV and the BBC.

The show, which features 3 Kung-Fu teens who deliver fresh food and fists of fury, features a traditionally animated look, which isn’t the common approach for TV series produced in Flash.

Here’s short clip from an episode:

These clips below are selected action and effect shots from the production, animated by folks like Jon Lambe, Melanie Albert, Matt Taylor, Jeff Davis and Neven Nesic, and overseen by Robert Keith Anderson, one of the animation supervisors.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Click on the thumbnails below so see some background layouts from the series production:

Lastly, let’s hear from some of the artists and production staff who worked out of the Miramichi-based studio:

It’s a rare occurrence to be able to animate in a traditional style in Canada in a Flash environment, and I find that it forces me to apply all the art and animation techniques I’ve learned over the years.
-Tavis Silbernagel – Director, Three Delivery, Fatkat

Anything worth doing in life is hard and this show is no exception. Long days, cold nights, the hard but worthwhile fights. At the end of the day it all comes together with final picture and sound and you pick yourself up off of the dirty floor and shake off the discarded candy wrappers that you used as a blanket and say, “yes, that’s the show we wanted to make.”
-Robbie Anderson – VP of Production, Fatkat

Three Delivery has been one of the best opportunities I’ve had in the animation business to do something truly different. The characters are believable and easy to sympathize with and the artwork doesn’t follow the usual rules of geometric shapes and bright colors.
-Alan Foreman, Art Director, Three Delivery, Animation Collective

Three Delivery is proof that you can traditionally animate an entire long format series in flash, and that you can do it here in North America with studios like AC and Fatkat.
-Gene Fowler, President, Fatkat

Back in early 2006, CHF posted about The Mustache Contest, a Flash-animated short that wound up playing a The HBO Aspen Comedy Festival, the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival and the grandaddy of them all – Annecy.

Mike Hollingsworth, the animator and director of the short, recently teamed up with Fuel TV (Fox’s action sports network) to deliver a new animated series. Low Tide aired on Fuel TV’s Stupidface block, an hour-long collection of cartoons, parodies and sketch comedy. Here’s an episode titled Prom Dates.

Head over to MySpace to watch more episodes.

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.

Wrapping up Student Week here at Cold, Hard Flash, I’d like to introduce you to Shaun Bakkem-Reimers, a Flash animator up in Portland, Oregon. He’s attending Oregon State University, and his recent music video for the Portland’s The Punk Group has been gaining praise (and surely a few cold stares). According to an article in The Daily Barometer, Shaun started creating the video for ‘Fat Girls on Bicycles’ back in March of 2005. It’s not his first widely seen Flash project. A little over a year ago, Shaun added his ‘Bobby the Lizard Boy’ short to the growing list of Flash projects on the Nicktoons network.