Last week Viacom’s MTVN Entertainment Group relaunched AtomFilms.com as Atom.com, which will aim to “provoke, break rules and uncover talent much as
Comedy Central did at its inception on cable.” Several Flash-animated series live in the Atom Originals section, including….

…Samurai Love God, which was created by Eric Mahoney, and animated at Jordan-based Crazy Piranha.

And here is Window Seat, a series animated at Radical Axis.

And here’s the crudely-animated series from Scrubs-writer Ryan Levin, Benny, Escaped Convict:

January 20, Adult Swim’s Flash-animated series Squidbillies returned with an all-new 3rd season of episodes. The series, which is produced by the Atlanta-based Williams Street studio and physically animated by Radical Axis, kicked off a 20-episode order with Webnecks, and then they released Tween Steam which you can watch below.

Adult Swim is set to unveil several new pilots on May 13th, but they’ve given us a tease today on the website. Two of the 5 new series are animated in Flash, That Crook’d ‘Sipp (animated by Turner Studios) and Superjail (animated by Augenblick Studios).

Superjail

That Crook’d ‘Sipp

That Crook’d ‘Sipp was created by Jacob Escobedo, Nick Weidenfeld, and Mike Weiss. Superjail, set to debut in 2008, was ceated by Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick and Ben Gruber.

Craig Hartin at Radical Axis recently introduced me to Adam Fuchs, an animator who worked on 2 seasons of ‘Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.’ Since, he’s been working on a new Adult Swim project called ‘That Crook’d ‘Sip,’ a Flash-animated series that was announced back in March of this year. A short sneak preview is now available:

Adam also found time to work on a music video for the Georgia-based band Maserati. Fuchs added Flash-animation on top of live-action video. The song is titled ‘This is a Sight we had one day from the High Mountain’ off Maserati’s new album ‘Inventions for the New Season.’

‘Freak Show,’ the new Flash-animated series created by David Cross (’Arrested Development’ and ‘Mr. Show’) and Jon Benjamin, premiered last week on Comedy Central. In the coveted slot right after ‘South Park,’ ‘Freak Show’ airs at 10:30pm ET/ 9:30pm CST.

The animation is being produced by Radical Axis, the studio behind ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force’ and ‘Squidbillies,’ another Flash-animated show.

Below, Craig Hartin, Animation Director/Producer & Radical Axis, answered a few questions for CHF, but first, a clip!

AARON SIMPSON: The initial order is for 7 episodes. How far along is the team?
CRAIG HARTIN: Currently we have turned in 4 of the 7 episodes. The turn around is fast on the shows. We will have the final episode turned in by the first week in November.

AARON: Was their an un-aired pilot produced?
CRAIG: We did create a pilot. It was about ten minutes in length. A lot of what is in episode 1 is seen in the pilot. We made some minor adjustments to the files but the overall look and feel of the show was created during the pilot.

AARON: Do you storyboard first, then record, or vice versa?
CRAIG: We often have many things happening simultaneously due to the production schedule. We wait until we get the record version of the script and then start boarding based on it. A lot of times we will have designs of backgrounds and characters ready to take with us to the record for David and Jon to look over and approve.

AARON: Who designed the characters?
CRAIG: Todd Redner and Eric Cerda, based on notes from Scott Fry, RADICAL AXIS CEO, and direction from myself Craig Hartin, Animation Director/Producer Radical Axis, designed the freaks. After that we took all the combined drawings and made them into model sheets and sent them off for approval.

AARON: Where David Cross and Jon Benjamin involved in the look of the show?
CRAIG: We had a lot of conversations with David and Jon on the feel for the show and the look that they were going for. So most of the influence was from these conversations with them.

AARON: How much paper is used in the production?
CRAIG: Both Scott Fry and I are big on brainstorming before we send anything off. So we did a lot of paper drawings of characters and backgrounds, then went into the meeting room with them, put them on the wall and marked them all up. This helped us nail the look a lot quicker than sending every rough drawing that we came up with. Aside from that the entire production is created in the computer.

AARON: What was the biggest hurdle the production team faced in creating the first episode?
CRAIG: The biggest issue that we ran into was what software to use. Be began looking very seriously at Harmony, who was very helpful, but the big issue there was the learning curve and our start date for production. We had to begin production almost immediately after being told that the show was picked up, which meant that we had less time to experiment with other software.

AARON: How involved are David Cross and Jon Benjamin in the oversight of the animation?
CRAIG: Both David and Jon are very hands on with this show. Both very hard workers. They want to see the animation getting better and better just as we do. They are also understanding of the limitations of animation.

AARON: Besides Flash, what software is incorporated into the production pipeline?
CRAIG: We begin with building the radioplay in Final Cut as well as the animatic. After that we will kick out the digital animatic to the Flash animators. Once animation is complete we move animation out to the compositors for composite in After Effects. We have also been using Illustrator for some of the backgrounds. All mixing on the show is done through Pro Tools.

With the first and second editions of Cold Hard Council behind us, it’s time for… the thrilling third edition:

Name one 3rd-party plug-in you’d love to see built for Flash.

Non-vector style brushes would be my number 1. It would again help deflate the “flash” look and cut down on all the hassles of importing Photoshop
or Painter files when needed.
–Mike Geiger, Animation Director, ‘Yam Roll’

Not really a plug-in as much as I would like to see a true alpha channel quicktime exports. Beauty and mattes are fine but one less step would be great.
–Craig Hartin - Animation Supervisor, Radical Axis, ‘Squidbillies’

Some sort of camera I guess. I just want the damn instance box to hold more then two numbers!! They should integrate Toon Titan though, that’s a fantastic tool for colour.
–Gene Fowler, King of the Litter Box, Fatkat Animation Studios

Our animators would love to have certain things happen inside the software. We would like to be able to see the frame numbers in the timeline in real time while scrubbing dialogue. As it is now, you have to stop scrubbing to see which frame you are on. Another improvement we would like to see is the ability to click into symbols and still be on the same frame you were on outside of the symbol. We would rather see more initiative taken by Adobe/Macromedia to develop arrays of plug-ins that would tailor Flash to specific tasks. Even if offered for sale, they could give more functionality to people who had specific uses of the software whether it would be animation or web development.
–Brendan Burch & Dave Vamos, Founders, Six Point Harness Studios

Better brushes/drawing tools like in Illustrator. Better exporting tools for broadcast. Better color picker. A built-in sound editing tool. Better library/asset organization. Oh wait…that’s not just one….
–Roque Ballesteros, Founder, Ghostbot

I’d like to see various MPEG encoders built in as export functions.
–Sandro Corsaro, Creative Director, Crest Digital
–Co-Author, Hollywood 2D Digital Animation

The ‘Flash Plug-ins’ section of the boards have become the most active, and it’s this very topic that’s driving the attention.

We’re back with the second edition of Cold Hard Council. The first focused on Flash’s reputation in the industry and today, we’re asking…

Have you or your studio made the move to Flash 8?

We use 7.2, but not by any choice of mine. With it’s new undo function it’s probably my most unliked version of the bunch. For my projects I use 4. It feels the most comfortable and animator friendly to me.
–Mike Geiger, Animation Director, ‘Yam Roll’

We have not. We usually wait until the software has had time to flood the market and all of the kinks get worked out. I am looking forward to having it in our studio.
–Craig Hartin - Animation Supervisor, Radical Axis, ‘Squidbillies’

Yes we have. I initially played around with the Flash 8 demo and found it lackluster. Feeling disappointed that after all the feelers that were put out into the industry by Macromedia to get feedback from artists and animators that our suggestions were completely ignored. Having now worked in Flash 8 for several months, I still feel the same way, but have grown to enjoy some of the new features as I’ve appled them into our projects. For example all the layer blending modes make for some neato “photoshop-esque” backgrounds as you can see a music video for Microsoft, produced by Tony Grillo of Flinch Studio and Fatkat Animation Studios.
–Gene Fowler, King of the Litter Box, Fatkat Animation Studios

We have moved to Flash 8. It’s a definite improvement from MX2004 and there are a few more artist friendly features. Video capabilties have gotten way better and I’m already looking forward to Flash 9!
–Evan Spiridellis, Head Art Guy, JibJab Media Inc.

No, I use Flash MX.
–Matt Clark, Founder, Manbaby Studios

Yes and it was a big dissapointment.
–Jorge Gutierrez, Creator, ‘El Tigre’ (Nickelodeon 2007)

We have not made the jump to Flash 8. A couple of the guys have downloaded the trials and we have seen little bugs that resemble all early releases of Flash. For example - when bringing in artwork from Illustrator, some fills will fall out, and drops certain custom brush strokes. In addition, some of our projects require collaboration with freelance artists or occasionally overseas studios. We must be sure that everybody we collaborate with is able to work with us without losing a beat due to software incompatibility.
–Brendan Burch & Dave Vamos, Founders, Six Point Harness Studios

We’re still hanging on to Flash MX like fools. Creatures of habit, I guess. We sadly have our unopened boxes of Flash 8 collecting dust in our supply bin.
–Roque Ballesteros, Founder, Ghostbot

Yes, we made the move. As we find ourselves getting into a lot of emerging digital media, Flash has become a very malleable tool. I think it’s crucial to stay current with the program. Skipping versions is like cramming for a test. You don’t want to be working on a deadline and all of a sudden learning new tools.
–Sandro Corsaro, Creative Director, Crest Digital
–Co-Author, Hollywood 2D Digital Animation