COLD HARD FLASH
Flash Empowers
posted by aaron, 4.55 PM
filed Under: Adult, Animation, TV Series

Seth Kearsley, one of the Executive Producers of ABC Family’s Slacker Cats, has offered up a behind-the-scenes look at his character designs for the series. In these web-exclusive clips created for the website (created by Animax Entertainment), you see how various characters evolved during development. In this clip below, you see Tabitha, easily my favorite character in the show (voiced by Kiersten Warren), transform from a crack baby into her current design.


Seth, who has directed multiple Family Guy episodes, is also working on a new project that we hinted at back in September. Below is the final vlog clip for Adam, one of the leads. Soon he’ll be releasing another Flash-animated clip from the Eve character. Keep your eyes here for further info.

posted by aaron, 5.40 PM
filed Under: Animation

FOX’s Los Angeles-based KCOP news recently reported on 2D Animation Making a Comeback in a 3D World. In this clip below, reporter Hal Eisner takes a trip to Film Roman to take a look behind the scenes of The Simpsons Movie, which has now tallied up nearly a half billion dollars worldwide. Along the way he bumps into Slacker Cats artist Seth Kearsley, who whips together a quick Flash-animated animated scene staring Eisner (starts at 1:55).


And here’s the animatic Seth Kearsley created for the animation above.

posted by aaron, 5.45 PM
filed Under: Adult, Animation, Short

Seth Kearsley, who directed several episodes of Family Guy in the past few years, has posted a Flash-animated, rough, pose test for a new project. Kearsley was also the director of Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights and more recently, several episodes of Slacker Cats. I’d bet a Family Guy DVD that the voice in this test is Greg Pitts (”show my O-face”) of Office Space fame.

posted by aaron, 5.46 PM
filed Under: Adult, Animation, TV Series

Last week, the first promo clip from ABC Family’s new show Slacker Cats was posted here at CHF. In recent nights, a second promo of this Flash-animated series has been airing on ABC, which you can view below:


The Slacker Cats website (still a work in progress) was built by Animax Entertainment. And to handle the back-end stuff for the website they teamed with Almer/Blank - who also host the LA Flash User Group.

posted by aaron, 6.15 PM
filed Under: Adult, Animation, TV Series

Slacker Cats, a new Flash-animated comedy series, is set to premiere on ABC Family on August 13th 10/9c. The series was created by Kevin Cecil and Andy Riley, and the voice cast includes Dave Foley, Harland Williams, Sinbad and Emo Philips. The project is being produced out of Film Roman, and then outsourced to a variety of Flash studios. Here’s a promo that’s been airing on ABC:

posted by aaron, 5.05 PM
filed Under: News

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.