The episode, titled Damnesia Vu, premieres Thursday, March 19th (tomorrow!) at 12:15 am ET/PT. Below we ask him a few questions about the production, and his response includes a video tutorial detailing his one-man-band process. But first, here’s a :25 second clip from the 2:00 minute sequence he animated.

AARON SIMPSON: When did you produce this segment?

M. WARTELLA: The animation was done entirely by hand over the course of one month late last year. No assistants or in-betweeners or background artists or anything like that. Just cranked it out all myself, which isn’t too bad for a two-minute cartoon. I’d just come off a gig storyboarding the second season of Xavier, and I think the show’s directors, Vernon Chatman and John Lee, were inspired to try something different based on the illustrative style of the animatics I was doing. They asked if I’d be willing to animate a special segment, and of course I said yes.

SIMPSON: What type of creative direction were you given?

WARTELLA: Well, I had worked with John and Vernon on Wonder Showzen, so I already had a bit of insight into their particular brand of humor. The premise of this episode, Damnesia Vu, is that Xavier is kind of “Quantum Leaping” into different lives, sort of a reincarnation theme, and they had the idea that it would be a cool twist for Xavier, a CGI character, to jump into a flat 2D world. They wrote the script, and we just kind of developed it back and forth from there.

SIMPSON: What transpired during that back-and-forth?

WARTELLA: We actually ended up doing two different levels of animatics. The first pass was storyboarding the entire episode. I’d never worked on a CGI show before, so I was curious to see how my animatics would translate into CGI. But the animation house, Cinematico, did a great job and really took the basic boards and added some great 3D flourishes. The next step was going back in and doing a second animatic for just my 2D segment. The second animatic was even more detailed, and here the timing and action were finessed in even greater detail. I’d basically go frame-by-frame through each version with John and Vernon, and sometimes new ideas would come out right there and we’d work them in. Basically just refining and refining, adding more and more levels of detail each time, until it was dense enough and time to draw and animate the final art.

SIMPSON: How much Aztec reference did you pour over before your design style came together?

WARTELLA: A lot. I just spent a day digging online picking up everything I could. I’m into old books like Von Daniken‘s Gods From Outer Space and Landsburg’s In Search of Ancient Mysteries, so I had a few other references on my bookshelves. There’s a touch of Egyptian hieroglyphics in there, too. So it was basically comparing all these different images and then applying that look and color palette to my character designs. John and Vernon had this idea that Aztec art kind of looked like Looney Tunes stuff, so I think that was also an inspiration for the segment.

SIMPSON: Vernon Chatman described the show as a “warning… about the dangers of spirituality.” Your episode deals with false idolatry. Do you think the Adult Swim audience will pick up on these messages, amidst the comedy and bloodshed?

WARTELLA: Actually, I think so. I’ve skimmed over some of the discussion boards over on Adult Swim and you’d be surprised how much people pick up on. Personally, I believe that they aren’t nearly as nihilistic as a lot of people think, and that there is what David Lynch calls an “all-pervading happiness” that underlies their writing. But that’s something you’d have to ask them.

SIMPSON: How did the Cintiq change your process?

WARTELLA: Well, I’ve been working with the Wacom digitizer pads since the first PL model came out about ten years ago, and needless to say I can’t imagine working without one. Especially doing animation. The Cintiq is extra special because it gives you the luxury of a large drawing space. I just think it’s a great invention, as important a step forward as going from a typewriter to the first word processor. Now if the entire system were just portable….

SIMPSON: Tell us a little about this tutorial we’re going to watch.

WARTELLA: Well, I’ve spent so many years of trial and error trying to figure out the best way to make professional animation using Flash, and I just thought it’d be fun to share a few secrets with people who might be just starting out or doing animation in their spare time. I hope people will drop me a line and let me know if they found this useful. So in this video, I describe my basic process, as well as highlight a few “tricks of the trade” that were major stumbling blocks on my learning curve. It’s all jam-packed in there fast though, so take notes!

60-second D.I.Y. Animation Tutorial

The show takes place in what can only be described as an alternate universe, far removed from civilization in a monstrous lockdown called Superjail, which is run by a dandy known simply as Warden. Almost everything beyond that is downright weird – there’s a dutiful, levitating robo-worker named Jailbot who handles the dirty work, a booze-lusting operations chief, a pair of teleporting inmate twins (twinmates?) and then of course the talking vegetables. But it’s the playfulness in the animation that takes it into another realm – Warden can tie himself into a knot, ride to work on a rainbow or blast an inmate to the moon with the touch of a button. Inmates can be delivered to the prison in a giant bird’s egg, sent to their cell on a rip-roaring rollercoaster, or blown dry with a 20-foot tall hair drier. It’s the elasticity of Tex Avery, the madness of Ren and Stimpy and the trippiness of Yellow Submarine all baked into one bloody, animated pie.

For those of you paying attention to the first two episodes, you may have learned that each installment brings a new title sequence along with a fresh escape and incarceration for a recitative jailbird named Jackknife, but what else do we know? If you go watch the series pilot, Bunny Love, at adultswim.com, you can view a whole mess of commentary videos as well. In one, the creators discuss how each episode will feature some all-out madness – a no holds barred fight scene. It’s a legacy from Christy and Stephen’s short Barfight, which is boils down to the biggest, longest, most insane bar fight in this or any other galaxy. We also know there’s 10 11-minute episodes in the first season (all of which have been delivered), and that every frame of animation was produced in Brooklyn at Augenblick Studios. It ranks right up there with Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends and El Tigre as the most intense TV production ever attempted with Flash. Plus, Superjail! surely features the highest volume of “traditional” TV animation created on US soil in over a decade. That’s not what anyone would have predicted 10 years ago when Flash debuted as a fancy new tool that could make shapes dance on screen. It’s all the more impressive when you realize that Augenblick did it on an Adult Swim budget, which are known for being thrifty. You gotta hand it to the Augenblick team, who pulled off a real coup here.

Aaron, Christy and Stephen

Aaron was joined on the animation front by Chris Burns and Kristofer Wollinger, character layouts we handled by Christy Karacas and M. Wartella, while background layouts were delivered by Jeremy Jusay and Will Krause.

That’s about as much as we know, so let’s turn to the show creators to learn more. We’re first joined by Christy Karacas and Stephen Warbrick. Following that, we again meet with Aaron Augenblick, a producer and animation director on the series. Aaron joined us for a 2-part interview back in 2005.

AARON SIMPSON: Christy and Stephen – this psychedelic world is extremely unique and sadistically hysterical. How did the concept come about?

Barfight

STEPHEN WARBRICK: We tried to come up with a show that was somewhat unique but also interesting… conceptually and visually.

CHRISTY KARACAS: Our buddy Dave Hughes showed Barfight to Adult Swim and they were psyched so they asked if we wanted to pitch something. Stephen and I then kicked around some ideas. I had an old pitch about a jail show but it was more like a reality show parody, and we were like, “eh, that’s boring.” What if it was the craziest most insane, dangerous jail ever created run by a psychopath who was more ‘supervillan’ than ‘superhero?’ And it all kind of came out of that. A Charlie’s Chocolate Factory that was a jail instead. Kind of like a kids show except but not for kids. I think the world itself happened because we all like fun, weird stuff. Creating a world that had no rules that existed in its own special place also allowed us to have fun and make all these little worlds that existed inside the big world.

SIMPSON: Did you visit any jails for research purposes?

STEPHEN: No… not intentionally anyway.

CHRISTY: Hell no! Jail scares the crap out of me.

SIMPSON: In the first episode of Superjail! we return to the bar, where you staged Barfight. Do you have a favorite watering hole, and does it inspire your animation?

CHRISTY: Rosemary’s Greenpoint Tavern (GPT) in Williamsburg Brooklyn. 32. oz bud for $3.50 – can’t beat it. But I think it probably hurts my animation when I show up to work hung-over.

STEPHEN: When we were making Barfight we went there almost every night. Work our day jobs…work on Barfight till about 1am…. head to GPT.

SIMPSON: The two of you met at MTV. What project were you working on at the time?

Christy Karacas

CHRISTY: I was a BG designer on Daria and Steve was on Celebrity Deathmatch. We met there and did Barfight – which is how we got introduced to Adult Swim because they saw Barfight (which is hilarious because it got rejected from every festival we entered it into). Its funny because not only did me and Steve work at MTV, but Aaron Augenblick, George Fort (BG designer on Superjail!), and Tom Marsan (character layout on Superjail!) all worked at MTV too. NY animation is a small world – I’ve known all these people for almost 10 years.

SIMPSON: The Warden has been described as “a sadistic Willy Wonka.” Is the original Wilder film a favorite of yours?

STEPHEN: Yes. The film still seems magical even as an adult. Gene Wilder was amazing in the movie. The remake…not so much.

CHRISTY: Yea, its a great film and I also love Wilder in Stir Crazy. If we get another season, I actually think we need to make the warden even MORE sadistic… maybe going into a ‘Heath Ledger Joker’ territory. Also, after we started Superjail! I saw The 5000 fingers of Dr. T, which is also totally insane. Its got a Warden character who has imprisoned all these kids so they can play a giant piano. It was written and designed by Dr. Seuss, another huge influence of Superjail!. It’s definitely something you should check out if you like Superjail/psychedelic/fun/weird type stuff.

SIMPSON: With a half-submerged Statue of Liberty in the opening credits, are we to assume Superjail! takes place far in the future?

STEPHEN: Maybe.

CHRISTY: Never assume anything in the world of Superjail!. And no its not far in the future.

SIMPSON: What is Jailbot’s job at Superjail?

STEPHEN: He is like the Warden’s gopher. The Warden designed him so he has a few bugs.

CHRISTY: To bust through walls, abuse prisoners and make a mess. Jailbot’s like a red-headed stepchild. The Warden built him but doesn’t show him any love. Its something that is touched on but we’d love to explore more in the future.

SIMPSON: The twins appear to have magical powers. Will we ever learn how they gained these powers?

CHRISTY: You will definitely learn more about them, but I can’t comment further on that one.

SIMPSON: Having produced traditional animation in the past, what’s your take on the Flash or digital 2D approach to production?

CHRISTY: My personal favorite stuff is hand-drawn, gritty stuff like you’d see on Sesame Street or School House Rocks (my favorite!). But we don’t see this much these days, and that’s why we went with Aaron’s studio, because Augenblick makes some of the most amazing looking stuff with Flash I’ve ever seen. I think Aaron’s studio had the knowledge/taste/experience to make Superjail! look as traditionally hand-drawn as we could. When I tell people it’s done in Flash, they often don’t believe me! So my take is pretty positive.

Stephen Warbrick

STEPHEN: Like Christy said, even though Superjail! was produced in Flash, there is nothing “untraditional” about it. Each episode is completely hand drawn.

SIMPSON: Stephen – your production experience has included work in both 2D and CGI production (Beavis and Butthead, Celebrity Deathmatch, Daria, Ice Age 2, Horton Hears a Who). Does a particular medium help or hurt comedy, or is it simply another tool?

STEPHEN: No. I don’t think the medium hurts the comedy. I think the oversaturation and the retelling of the same story does.

SIMPSON: Christy, aside from the theme song, will you band Cheeseburger’s music be featured in future episodes?

CHRISTY: We might turn up again. You can also hear it for a second when Jackknife carjacks the car in the pilot.

SIMPSON: What illustrators, shows and animators inspired the look of Superjail!?

CHRISTY: Dr. Seuss, Gary Panter, Crumb, Sally Cruikshank, Mad Magazine, Vince Collins, Looney Tunes, the Fleischer brothers, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, School House Rocks, Sesame Street, Itchy and Scratchy, kids art, Muppets, outsider art, underground comics add Pee Wee’s Playhouse!

SIMPSON: What animated TV do you both watch regularly?

STEPHEN: No too much. Some Simpsons and some South Park.

Quiet Please

CHRISTY: I don’t really watch any animated shows regularly. My favorite things right now are Tim and Eric and I just saw Mike Grimshaw’s Quiet Please [not safe for work] which made my stomach hurt. I think the stuff I watch would be old Looney Tunes, weird stuff on YouTube and Popeye. I like anything that’s fun, gross, retarded, weird or awesome.

SIMPSON: Awesome. We now welcome Aaron Augenblick, founder of Augenblick Studios. Aaron, How did you and your studio first come to be involved with Superjail!?

Aaron Augenblick

AARON AUGENBLICK: We were working on Golden Age when Christy and Steve called me out of the blue. I met Christy years ago at a festival, and we were touring around with our thesis films after graduation; he was screening Space War and I was showing Midnight Carnival. Then in the late 90s, Christy, Steve and I all worked together at MTV Animation. Years later when they approached us, they had just been greenlit to make a pilot for Superjail! and were looking for a studio to produce it. I had always been a huge fan of Christy’s animation, so it was a very exciting project to take on. My regular Augenblick crew all jumped on the production. I had just worked on The Ten with David Wain and suggested him for the voice of the Warden, which ended up being great. So a lot of things fell into place in a short amount of time.

SIMPSON: When did Augenblick Studios start production on the series?

AUGENBLICK: Everyone was pretty excited about the pilot, so we were greenlit for a series order pretty fast. We started in October 2007. But that included writing, audio recording, and a lot of things that came before full animation production. I am proud to say that every stage of the animation process occurred right here in our studio in Brooklyn; nothing was sent overseas.

SIMPSON: Do you work off a tight script, or does some of the storyline and dialog come out of the storyboarding process?

AUGENBLICK: I set up the production in a different way than most current animated productions (I think). We started with brainstorming meetings in which a small group of us got together and hatched the loose plots for every episode. After that (before scripting) Christy would create thumbnails for the entire episode. At that point we had a scriptwriter write the script using the thumbnails as the direction for the story. This was very important because it allowed the visuals to dictate the direction of the show, rather than the dialogue. After that, in every stage of production we encouraged the artists to add their own visual gags wherever they could. All of these areas of creative input added to the mind-numbing avalanche of information you can find in every episode.

SIMPSON: Has your team completed the initial order?

AUGENBLICK: Yes! We have finished 10 episodes, which have left many of our artists in comas.

SIMPSON: Long hours on this one?

AUGENBLICK: We have a relatively small team and every artist is given a great deal of creative freedom. Unfortunately, with that creativity comes an overwhelming workload. Most people told me they were working harder, longer hours than they ever had in their life, but it was worth it because it was so much fun.

SIMPSON: There doesn’t appear to be much re-use in this series. Was Flash still a useful tool for your team?

AUGENBLICK: We approached Superjail! knowing that we wouldn’t be doing a lot of reuse, because we wanted the show to be very organic, and not worry about staying on model with anything. We wanted to avoid the same locations and character animation if we could help it. All that being said, we couldn’t have created this show without Flash. Flash is not merely an animation tool for libraries and motion tweening. It also allows for a platform where the artist can draw directly into the program (no scanning) and where ink and paint are very easy. We approached the animation in a completely traditional way, except that we were doing everything in Flash.

SIMPSON: Who’s a bigger drunk – Drunky or Jared?

AUGENBLICK: I don’t believe in labeling people.

SIMPSON: Can you tell us anything about the shorts you produced for Yo Gabba Gabba‘s 2nd season?

AUGENBLICK: The people at Yo Gabba contacted me because they were fans of our work, especially Wonder Showzen. They asked us to do some cartoons for their show and it was really fun. They were super cool and let us do whatever we wanted. They have a great show; the closest thing to a modern day Sesame Street. We did three cartoons: Wear Your Glasses, Cloudie, and Cover Your Mouth.

SIMPSON: What original projects are coming down the pike at Augenblick?

AUGENBLICK: We are now producing our own signature coffee, cell phones, and clothing line for the coming year. A lot of exciting things are happening at Augenblick Studios!

In October of 2007, CHF featured M. Wartella’s psychedelic music video for The Go’s track You Go Bangin’ On. He joins us today for a very insightful interview into his process, his past music videos and his recent work on Adult Swim’s upcoming series Superjail.

AARON SIMPSON: How did the You Go Bangin’ On music video land on your plate?

Go watch M. Wartella’s music video
You Go Bangin’ On

M. WARTELLA: Well, we’ve been friends with and following The Go since their Sub Pop days. We try to catch their shows when they come through town (New York City), you know, hang out, drink their beer, and over the years we’ve just kind of become friends. Since they were looking to do something different for their latest record, they asked me to do the album art. Of course, as soon as I heard the new tracks, I was happy to oblige because I think this is their best release to date, and the critics seem to agree so far. But basically, the band decided they wanted to have an animated music video too, so that is how it came about.

AARON: Did you “pitch” your animation concept to the band before starting?
M. WARTELLA: At first, we wanted the whole video to be animated, kind of like a Yellow Submarine or Josie & The Pussycats thing where the band is drawn as cartoon characters. But as I started thinking more about it, I realized that most people, especially the band’s fans, would probably want to see real pictures of the group, not my drawings. So we started playing around with more of a Terry Gilliam/Monty Python paper cut-out approach. Of course, I realized that this was going to involve a photo shoot, and once I knew we were gonna have to do a shoot, I decided that we should just film the band “live” against a black backdrop, and then superimpose a “psych-out” style animation on top of them, like an old Jefferson Airplane or The Strawberry Alarm Clock type thing (below).

AARON: Explain the process behind creating the video.
M. WARTELLA: Well, we shot all the live footage last July 4th out in Williamsburg, when the band was swinging through New York on tour. Lighting is key to getting good video footage, so we really took our time and set it up right and we used the biggest, hottest lights we could get. Since this was a real low-budget thing, I went down to Chinatown and had a huge black felt backdrop made. We hung that in a friend’s silk-screen studio, and then it was just a matter of getting the band there. Always tell the band to get there earlier then you’re gonna need them, because they’re always late. And with make-up people and the video crew all on the clock, every second counts. Of course the whole band did finally arrive, which was a major accomplishment since Marc, the drummer, ripped his hand open the night before when we were all trying to jump a chain link fence after drinking at the bar. He had to go to the hospital and get stitches and everything. Probably didn’t get much sleep, but he still made it and did a great job. If you look close you can see his hand is bandaged in a few shots.

AARON: And the actual animated elements of the video?
M. WARTELLA: Well, it was actually really easy to set up. First I did a tight edit of the footage, and then I imported the Quicktime into Flash, and just started working right on top of the video, drawing, sketching and experimenting right there in Flash. All the shots were already set up and the cuts were in place, so that provided my structure, and then it was just a matter of finding cool optical effects to accent the band. I spent about one month off and on doing the drawings, watching old psych-out footage and picking up the tricks, that sort of thing. At the end, I exported the Flash files as .swfs and composited them onto the video using After Effects and Photoshop. There isn’t really any blending or blur on the artwork… my goal was to make it as electric and vibrant as possible. Pure electricity. Just something that would completely bug your eyes out. The crazy thing is, the first few times I watched the video it had that effect, but after working on it so long, it just seems normal to me now!

AARON: Song lyrics can often be suggestive or downright abstract. Do you feel the need to tell a literal story with your animation?

M. Wartella on the stage of the
You Go Bangin’ On shoot

M. WARTELLA: I think that would have to be a case by case basis, and it would depend on what you were trying to accomplish with your video. With The Go, some of the lines I decided to illustrate in a very literal way, but it is almost impossible to do that for every line. So that is where the artist’s own sensibilities come into play, and hopefully your style jives up with that of the band.

AARON: When compared to a traditional narrative short, is the storytelling process different for a music video?
M. WARTELLA: I think the secret to a good music video is the constant build. You always have to be out-doing yourself, and that is the approach I took with You Go Bangin’ On. Each verse or chorus has to up the visual ante from the one before. Just build, build, build, build until you get to the end and it is just about to explode and then the viewers are like, “Wow… I gotta see that again!”

AARON: You have so many creative outlets – comics, animation, illustration. Do you have a favorite?
M. WARTELLA: I would definitely place animation at the top of that list. I’ve always been lucky enough to be able to make money off of my art, ever since I was a kid, so I really do enjoy all the various outlets and opportunities that’ve come my way. Of course, I still get a thrill seeing my work in print, like I’ve been contributing to Arthur magazine lately, and doing packaging is creatively a lot of fun given the right project, but animation and video is definitely where I have my sights set. It’s a medium that can be amazingly captivating — especially when music is involved — and now with the web finally at that level where the average joe can download a clip in real time, I think we are at an unprecedented point in it’s history.

AARON: You’ve been working as a professional artist since the early 90s. When did you make the digital transition?

M. Wartella’s Ackxhpaez

M. WARTELLA: Well, I’ve actually been working as a published artist since the 80s! When I was a kid, about ten years old, I sold my first weekly comic strip to a small local newspaper in Pennsylvania. I did that for about a year and a half — never missed a deadline either! So that was my first taste of cartooning and getting a little of that recognition of having your friends see your work in print. By the time I was in college in the early to mid 90s, I started doing stuff for campus publications, and eventually started a daily comic strip called Ackxhpaez. That in turn got picked up by the editor of the alt-weekly paper in town, who had come across some of my work and hired me to do weekly strips for them. By the time I moved to New York and really started working “professionally”, I already had a good portfolio together and it all grew from there.

My first computer was a Commodore 64 in the 80s, but my art was limited to making little sprite-type animations or the equivalent of ASCII text drawings. Around 1994, I started working on a Mac, and did a few crude animations using their old HyperCard program. Then Macromedia came out with Director and Shockwave which was great. I had no official animation training, but I just kind of intuitively started picking it up. The final key was being introduced on a job to the Wacom on-screen drawing tablets, I call ‘em “digitizer pads”. This was basically like moving up to a Word Processor if you’d only ever used an old typewriter. It just made digitizing your art so much easier and I still use the Wacom screen tablet to this day… nearly ten years now. Coincidently, it was on that job that I met Aaron Augenblick, who would later go on to start a full-fledged animation studio using the same technology.

Front Row (from L to R): Jeremy Jusay, Kevin Lofton, Aaron
Augenblick, Jared Deal, Lou Solis
Back Row (from L to R): M. Wartella, Kimson Albert, Ed Hawkins III,
Peter Browngardt, Lynda Nettleship, Kris Wollinger, Joy Kolitsky, Ian
Zucchino

AARON: The buzz on Adult Swim’s Superjail is bubbling. Tell us about your experience on this new series.
M. WARTELLA: Well, Superjail is a great project and a lot of fun. Aaron Augenblick, the show’s director, and Christy Karacas, the show’s creator, are both really creative individuals, so the entire process was very laid-back and entertaining. Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts I wasn’t able to be as involved with the actual drawing of the show as I was with the pilot, so I’m just as excited to see the episodes as you are. The final writing for the series was done by John Lee of Wonder Showzen fame, who I am coincidentally working with on the Adult Swim show Xavier: Renegade Angel doing animatic storyboards.

But with Superjail, every episode would start out as a rough nugget of an idea from Christy. Aaron came up with a really cool way to work, where we’d get all the artists together and actually write the show as a group. That worked out great, everybody throwing out ideas in a roundtable environment, and that really gave me the opportunity to flourish because working with Aaron I’d always be coming up with ideas of little gags to hide in the background, or just little improvements I’d think of on the spot.

M. Wartella’s design for the Adult Swim
series Superjail

But it was a great experience to actually shape a show like Superjail because the writing is where it all starts. And with everyone all together, you just get swept up in the imagination of it all, acting out the different characters and just making jokes up off the top of your head. And I’m really into plot structures, like with movies and all, so for me, developing a script is kind of like putting a puzzle together, when to reveal what pieces of information so as to keep up the suspense or whatever. I can’t say enough good things about working with those guys and the experience, really.

AARON: Do you find feedback important during the creation process?

Cover art for the book
Chew On This

M. WARTELLA: Feedback is extremely important for me, which is one of the most frustrating things about being a cartoonist, because there isn’t that instantaneous reaction like if you were a musician or actor on stage. Oftentimes, you’ll draw something and you’re lucky to get a few emails about it down the line. But that’s why contact is so important, and I always try to write to artists whose work I come across and like. Just a few words to an artist in an email can really create an incredible catharsis.

AARON: What is on your plate ahead? More music videos?
M. WARTELLA: Well, we are in pre-production on another music video for The Go – for a new song of their’s called Puzzle People. You can imagine what the visuals on that one’ll be like. I love working with bands whose music I’m into. I’ve been trying to talk Christy into doing one for his band Cheeseburger — you know, like with a giant claymation cheeseburger chasing the band down the street or something.

But I do think it is important to have that connection to the music… I don’t think I could make a very good video for Ashlee Simpson or Josh Groban. But there are a lot of great bands and artists in New York right now, it’d be great to build on that.

Album cover art for
The GO’s album Howl On The Haunted
Beat You Ride

I’d personally love to do a video for Awesome Color or collaborate with someone like Ryan Adams who is a cool visual artist in his own right.

AARON: Do you have a favorite animated music video?
M. WARTELLA: I have fond memories of the “Sledgehammer” video, though I’m not particularly a fan of Peter Gabriel. Or maybe “TV Dinners” by Z.Z. Top. I dunno about MC Skat Cat. What is he a scatological cat? That’s dirty. I really like those bad 80s animated music movies, like Rock & Rule and Heavy Metal. And of course Fantastic Planet (below). Though that isn’t technically a music video, music plays a big role in creating the feel of that film.

AARON: Anything else?
M. WARTELLA: I guess that’s it. Over and out. Thank you!

In the run-up to the millennium, Aaron Augenblick was still in college and he was furiously creating independent animated shorts. It paid off in 2000 when his short ‘Midnight Carnival’ was chosen to play at the Slamdance Film Festival. Since then, Augenblick Studios has been producing a mixture of excellent work-for-hire projects, home-grown shorts and co-productions. They started with three networking tutorials for Cisco Systems in 1999, and followed those with two original ideas, ‘Ramblin’ Man’ in 2000 and ‘Drunky – In Through the Out Door’ in 2001, which both received critical praise and festival nods. Then Gettosake Entertainment hired Augenblick Studios to design and animate 7 trailers for their urban-themed comic properties, including ‘Venus Kincade’ which is currently set up at Fox 2000 with a live-action feature script in the works. The list continues – Patrick ‘Transfatty’ O’Brien and Augenblick studios teamed up on a series of shorts with perhaps the longest title in modern history – ‘The Man with the Smallest Penis in Existence and the Electron Microscope Technician Who Loved Him.’ And throughout this blossoming period, Aaron refined his look and continued to experiment with unique styles. And by ‘unique,’ I mean he blends Max Fleischer, David Lynch and Mad Magazine into a devilishly entertaining brew.

And let’s not forget that Aaron and the gang have also been on the vanguard of the Flash animation revolution. They were amongst the first, along with John K’s Spumco team and Renegade Animation, to make Flash look like it wasn’t made on a Fisher-Price ‘My First Animation’ toy. They shoved armfuls of drawings into the program, added timing, comic book shading, extremely progressive music by Bradford Reed and out popped shorts like ‘Plugs McGinness,’ an adults-only romp through Bumtown with a boozy, bong-hitting dog and his clueless, blind master.

This takes us up to 2002, about the time Augenblick went big-time. Since then, Augenblick Studios has been working on animated shows for Nickelodeon (‘Moomie’s Garage’), Comedy Central (‘Shorties Watchin’ Shorties’) and MTV2, who now host the demented, guilty-pleasure show that I can’t stop watching called ‘Wonder Showzen.’ The show is mostly live-action puppetry, but for my money, the Augenblick Studios’ animated segments are the reason it’s become an underground hit. The spot-on parodies of ‘Jonny Quest,’ ‘The Care Bears‘ and ‘Bratz‘ show an extreme attention to detail as everything from the timing to the color palette are faithful to the original period and piece. It’s work any studio would kill for, and Aaron is now capitalizing on the experience and extending his relationship with MTV Networks. MTV’s LOGO network aimed at gays and lesbians, which bows this summer, will be airing an interstitial animated promo produced by Augenblick Studios. So it’s safe to say the rent is being paid out in Brooklyn.

But don’t think for one second that Aaron has forgotten about what started it all. As I write this, he’s hard at work on more original projects than you can shake a stick at. Aaron has surrounded himself with talent like Kevin Lofton, Joy Kolitsky, Jeremy Jusay, Jared Deal and M. Wartella, which never hurts when you’re building an empire. So don’t be surprised when you read about an original animated TV show (or 3) emanating from a relatively small shop out of Brooklyn.

AARON SIMPSON: You’re a well-known connoisseur of classic animation from the likes of Ub Iwerks and Fleischer Studios. Your work on MTV2′s ‘Wonder Showzen’ nods to so many sources from animation history – was this a dream opportunity for you?
AARON AUGENBLICK: Absolutely. I have always loved classic cartoons and ripped them off endlessly in my personal and professional work through the years. In ‘Shorties’ we got a taste of experimenting with different styles and eras in several segments we did, but it was anchored by the overall style of the show. In ‘Wonder Showzen,’ we wanted to create authentic looking cartoons that could possibly fool the audience into thinking they were watching an old animation. The show has a good deal of actual archival footage, so I knew that if something looked modern and phony it would stick out like a sore thumb. So we dove headfirst into replicating the exact look and style of whatever era the cartoon called for.

SIMPSON: In your ‘Wonder Showzen’ research of various animation styles, did you come across any new sources of inspiration that inspire you?
AUGENBLICK: We had to do a fairly realistic ‘Jonny Quest’ style for the ‘DOGOBGYN’ segment – that it took me by surprise. I was a little nervous about trying to draw that heroically, as it was never a style I was ever really into. But once I started, I really got into it. Especially the super-realistic dog. That was fun. I had no idea I could draw like that.

SIMPSON: Do you use After Effects in your animation pipeline?
AUGENBLICK: Yeah. It really helps to do your final tweeking in after-effect. Anything to avoid the cold, vector look of Flash.

SIMPSON: Can you explain the animation process your team employs on the ‘Wonder Showzen’ shorts?
AUGENBLICK: We try to keep it very simple and personalized. We draw all of our artwork directly in Flash with Wacom tablets. We start the process by having our storyboard artist create an animatic with the dialogue track for the segment. After the animatic is complete, the background artist lays out all the backgrounds and props. Then, the key character poses are drawn by the character artist. Then, the animator takes all of the character and background elements and animates them. The animator has an animation assistant who does a lot of traditional inbetweening, clean-up, and animation. Lastly, we bring the entire project into After Effects where we fine tune the visuals, add effects, and lay in the final audio. We usually have two teams working concurrently.

SIMPSON: Do you have a favorite ‘Wonder Showzen’ animated segment?
AUGENBLICK: Well, the 1940s Fleischer influenced ‘Mr. Bible’ was an obvious favorite. Really jumping into that era and tearing it apart was a blast. I also find it really funny. Integrating the cartoon Ginger Bread Man into the historical footage was really difficult, and I was happy with the finished product.

SIMPSON: The first ‘Drunky’ short was simply amazing, and the awards it picked up were surely well deserved. What can you tell us about ‘Fish House Punch,’ the second installment in the series?
AUGENBLICK: ‘Fish House Punch’ follows Drunky’s rise to fame as a sideshow geek in a traveling carnival. Geeks were the drunks they kept in cages, biting the heads off of live chickens for free booze and shelter. It’s quite an epic; longer than our usual shorts with a full original score by Bradford Reed. I wrote the script about two years ago, but production has been impeded by all the recent freelance work. I swear it will be finished this year.

SIMPSON: Do you have more ‘Drunky’ shorts in mind after this one?
AUGENBLICK: I have a book of hundreds of ideas for ‘Drunky’ stories. Some are fully written scripts, and some are gags and ideas.

SIMPSON: Where does ‘Bitz and Pieces’ currently stand at Cartoon Network?
AUGENBLICK: ‘Bitz and Pieces’ has been in development hell for the past year. It’s been hard, but I’m still confident that we will get the concept to a point where we can go into production on the pilot very soon.

SIMPSON: What happened to ‘Shorties Watchin’ Shorties?’
AUGENBLICK: ‘Shorties’ has been officially cancelled. I admit the show was pretty bad, which I blame on the usual network bullshit. The creator of the show, Eric Brown is a brilliant, talented guy who got really screwed. We had a great time making it, and created some segments I’m very proud of. I spit on the grave of those two babies.

SIMPSON: You mentioned that your team didn’t use traditional model sheets on that show – is this because there were so few re-occurring characters?
AUGENBLICK: ‘Shorties’ had thousands of characters, so designing each one would have added too much time and money to our schedule. The characters and backgrounds were designed in the storyboards. However, ‘Wonder Showzen’ had their own in-house designer who usually sent us an overall design sketch for each segment. On personal projects, I spend a lot of time designing my characters.

That’s it for now – check back soon for the 2nd half of the Cold, Hard Flash interview with animation guru Aaron Augenblick.