The Upstate Four is an 11-minute Flash-animated pilot that was co-created by brothers Fran and Will Krause. It boasts a refreshing look, a high-drawing count and a big award – namely the Best Animation for Children honor at this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival. Fran, a graduate of RISD, directed, animated and co-wrote it along with brother Will. The production turned to Bunko Studios for animation, where Sean McBride, Chris Seimasko, Jessica Plummer, Frank Suarez, Lizzi Akana, Kristen Chaippone, David Concepcion, Otis Braboy, Naree Song, Sarah Ramert and Adrienne Smith joined the animation effort. Have a watch:

PART 1

PART 2

Adult Swim and the indie record label Ghostly International have teamed up to bring 19 free downloads to the web. The first and last track of this compilition were then animated in a video called City Suckers staring BoyCatBird, which was directed by Jessica Milazzo and Daniel Garcia. Backgrounds were done by Liz Artinian, and the Flash animation team included Chris Siemasko, Nick Bertonazzi, Dan Forgione, Dave Haines and Anne Witbeck.

[link] – see the video link in the lower right column

Tek Jansen, the animated series spawned by The Colbert Report, is back with the first new episode since the writer’s strike. This episode, titled For each great master was once a lowly student in a school of them, is the second chapter of the second series. Production was handled by Flickerlab, who are reportedly in production on six additional episodes.

Creative Director Harold Moss oversaw the design and animation team, which included Phil Lockerby, Simon Ampel, David Michael Friend, Frank Digregorio, Max Porter, Craig Wilson, Micah Cohen, Pedro Davies, Will Pittas, Jeff Lee, Anand Duncan and Rachel Hoffman.

Thanks to Christopher Siemasko for the tip.

The American Heart Association is dishing out healthy eating facts by way of a Flash animated short. The Bad Fat Brothers was conceived by the DC-based ad agency Porter Novelli, and they handed over the script to FlickerLab, who brought it life.

The New York animation and design studio utilized Flash, Photoshop and After Effects, and Apple Final Cut Pro in producing this short about the pitfalls of eating trans fats and saturated fats.

The Flash animation team included Nikolay Nachev, Phil Lockerby, Nicholas Bertonazzi, Frank Digregorio, Anand Nunnally-Duncan, Simon Ampel, Tom Smolenski and Chris Siemasko.

Siemasko has been mentioned several times here before, and most recently as the co-creator of My Adventures With Cloe. Smolenski is no stranger to CHF either, having been mentioned for his animation work on Pale Force. Ampel animated on Queer Duck: The Movie.

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Fatkat Animation is on a tear. Last year they booked their biggest gig ever – fistfulls of Happy Tree Friends episodes. They’ve also been pushing hard on the original series front and beatin’ the bushes at the various TV and media conferences; cutting deals and selling shows.

My Adventures With Cloe is a new animated series aimed at adults created by Buddy Bolton and Chris Siemasko (this duo also created the series Boy Sheriff with the Fatkat gang). Cloe is a “pleasantly violent parody of a Saturday morning cartoon,” and while the animation isn’t the finest in town, the script really delivers the goods. The Fatkat team, based in New Brunswick, Canada, recently boarded a plane for Las Vegas for the NATPE event. Having just signed a distribution deal with the Just For Laughs group, they unfurled their new trade show booth and the My Adventures With Cloe pilot. They impressed the head writer for The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, and next they’re on to KidScreen in New York. So, settle in and enjoy the full 12-minute pilot episode (language NSFW).

To read more about My Adventures With Cloe, check out the series blog. and for more on Fatkat, check out the CHF interview with Gene Fowler, the founder of the studio.