A new short is up over at weebls-stuff.com that’s worth a watch. ‘Crabs’ is yet another classic, looping short from the gang that brought us ‘Kenya’ and ‘Magical Trevor.’ If you’re new, Weebl is the brain behind ‘Weebl and Bob,’ who not only have their own DVD, but have been turned into 6″ tall plush, held together by Velcro.

A little over a week ago, the Design Week Awards (hosted by Design Week Magazine) were held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, where Airside Studios picked up a few wins for their Orange campaign. The agency on the project was Mother, and together they devised a series of 12 Flash-animated shorts dubbed the ‘Playlist’ ads. They were awarded the trophy in the TV/Film/Video Graphics category and Best of Show. Congrats all around.

Meet Steve Scott, animation director. He’s rep’d by London-based Not To Scale, and his work is simply stunning. Have a ganders at this little Flash-animated gem – it’s the music video for a song called ‘Suburban Harmony’ by Telemetry Orchestra.

Oh, by the way, you just met Steve Scott, musician. That’s right, Mr. Scott is IN Telemetry Orchesra. That’s his band. Reminds me of the talented folks in Lemon Jelly, who also make their own Flash-animated videos.

Steve has also done some work with the design and animation shop Sixty40, who were recently profiled here at CHF, and here you can see his VH1 spot that tries to clear up the mysteries behind some Led Zeppelin lyrics.

I got in touch with Steve, who actually spent a year working at Disney, and he explained his process:

Almost all of my projects were created using Flash, but always as part of a process. I usually use Illustrator for character design, then do animation in Flash and then, at some stage, chuck everything into After Effects for further grading.

Uli Meyer Studio’s biggest credit is probably ‘Space Jam.’ The London-based studio employed over a hundred artists for the Warner Bros. feature, and they are now one of the largest animation studios in Europe.

They’ve also opened a TV production wing, and they’ve since cracked the seal on several copies of Flash. The result is some very strong work, including their latest ‘Terrible Tim.’ A fart-filled 2-minute episode titled ‘On the Farm’ is now available for viewing in the ‘Flash’ section of the Uli Meyer website, where several other Flash-animated projects are also on display.

‘Terrible Tim’ was created for Nicktoons and Nickelodeon UK, and the series is the creation of Brian Boyle. His co-director on the project was Matt Jones, who also served as the Production Designer. In fact, I noticed that Matt Jones also designed the Uli Meyer Flash website. See how versatile us Flash folk are? Have a look at Matt Jones’ blog, where he’s posted a storyboard panel from ‘Terrible Tim.’

Cold, Hard Flash has given all too little attention to Jonti Picking. That nonsense stops here. If Jonti’s name doesn’t ring a bell, maybe you’re more familiar with his animated series ‘Weebl and Bob,’ which has aired on MTVUK under the name ‘Wobbl and Bob,’ due to an unfortunate coincidence with a Hasbro toy called Weeble. The egg-shaped duo is a massive success, and one that has also spawned a DVD release and a series of TV adverts for Anchor Butter. Picking, who often goes by the web-handle ‘Weebl,’ was animating from home while working at a web design firm in the UK when his personal work simply took off. It was his ‘Badgers’ short that started Jonti down the path to creative independence, and he has since started his own animation company, Sumo Dojo.

At the ripe old age of 28, Jonti is surely one of the most prolific creators of viral web shorts in the world. If you have email, it’s almost guaranteed that someone has sent you a link to one of his shorts – whether it’s ‘Scampi’ or ‘Badgers’ or my personal favorite ‘Magical Trevor.’ These shorts have been viewed millions of times on his site alone, and on site’s like b3ta.com have streamed his work equally as much if not more. Picking’s work was actually covered on this site a while back, when Jonti’s ‘Kenya’ short was named as a finalist in the Nicktoons Film Festival. For more info on Picking, check out this interactive interview with him on the Samsung website.