This past Friday, my wife and I attended the 35th Annual Annie Awards, which were held on the UCLA campus for the first time. As you may have read here a few months back, it was a proud night for Flash animation.

The big winner at Royce Hall was undeniably Pixar’s feature film Ratatouille - which wrapped up 10 awards. On the TV side, two series took home a pair of trophies - Robot Chicken and Nickelodeon’s Flash-animated series El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. The show, which was created by Jorge Gutierrez and his wife Sandra Equihua, walked away with awards for Best Animated Television Production for Children and Character Design in an Animated Television Production, a category Gutierrez was nominated for two years ago. Congrats to Dave Thomas, Tim Yoon, Gabe Swarr, Roman Laney and the crews at Boulder Media and Six Point Harness. [read Cold Hard Flash interviews with Gutierrez and Yoon]

El Tigre was also nominated in two other categories:

• Monica Kennedy for Character Animation in a Television Production
• Shawn Patterson for Music in an Animated Television Production

Below is one of the El Tigre clips Patterson submitted for the awards. Its from episode 9, titled Yellow Pantera.

Sadly, it looks like this award-winning show will be ending this year, but it will surely go out on a high-note. Nickelodeon hasn’t picked up the second season, and as Patterson put it on his MySpace page “all great things come to an end.”In the Best Animated Television Commercial category, Acme Filmworks’ Powershares spot, titled Escape Average, took top honors. This weekend, I asked Dave Wasson, the director of the commercial, about the ceremony and production experience:

When Patrick Warburton announced that our Powershares spot had won I was completely caught off guard. At past Annie Awards, I’d been nominated quite a few times, but had ever won. So I had sort of given up on the idea of taking home a trophy. I tried to get Ron Diamond and Gwynn Adik to join me on stage but they wouldn’t budge (they’d decide to give me “my moment in the sun”). I hadn’t written anything down so I gave a short, rambling thank you speech and staggered off stage.

The schedule on this spot was crazy; three weeks total from the time I got the outline from the agency until the day we delivered the finished spot. That said, of all of the projects I’ve directed, it was actually one of the most fun. I really clicked with the agency creatives right from the start, and they were completely open to me taking their idea and running with it (incidentally, in case any agency executives are reading this, this is the best recipe for good commercials - I’m just sayin’). Dave Knott and I completed the storyboard in two days. The following day I made the animatic. Using Flash I was able to create the character designs and backgrounds in record time.

Even though our crew was small, they were super talented, which made it all the more enjoyable. I contacted Brendan Burch at Six Point Harness Studios and he hooked us up with a couple of his best guys. Saharat Tantivaranyoo did a beautiful job with the character layouts, and James Krenske’s animation is kick ass! Back at Acme Filmworks, I worked with Nic Mermet on After Effects to composite all the elements together and add all of the multi-plane parallax. All in all, it was really a great experience.

[Watch Wasson's Powershares commercial here at Cold Hard Flash]

Back at the Annie Awards, Flash animation continued to echo throughout the night. The creators of Flash, Jonathan Gay, Gary Grossman and Robert Tatsumi, were honored with the Ub Iwerks Award, which highlights excellence in technical achievement. I won’t go into much more detail on this, as a we’ll be posting a lengthy interview with all three guys tomorrow.

But in the meantime, here’s a clip that played just prior to their award. It’s a collage of various Flash-animated projects from the last 10 years. Antran Manoogian, the president of ASIFA-Hollywood, asked me to assemble the clip, and I was happy to oblige. It’s simply a hint at all of the great Flash animation out there - we surely left out some incredible projects. Thanks to Antran for the invitation, and to Les Perkins for helping me put this together.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Alongside John Canemaker and Glen Keane, John Kricfalusi accepted his Winsor McCay Award, which honors “career contributions to the art of animation.” John K’s The Ren and Stimpy Show was credited with “reinvigorated television animation,” but he was also noted for his pioneering work on the internet’s first cartoon series - The Goddamn George Liquor Program, which was animated entirely in Flash.

There were also a handful of nominees on Friday representing Flash-animated projects:

BEST ANIMATED SHORT SUBJECT
Chip Wass’ short Mascot Prep – part of Disney’s Shorty McShorts’ Shorts project - animated at Boulder Media

ANIMATION PRODUCTION ARTIST
Natasha Liberman – Growing Up Creepie - Discovery Kids

BEST ANIMATED TELEVISION COMMERCIAL
Esurance Homeowners spot – W!LDBRAIN

BEST ANIMATED TELEVISION PRODUCTION FOR CHILDREN
Little Einsteins – Disney Channel
Peep and the Big Wide World – Discovery Kids

Lastly, I’d like to congratulate my cousin, Elizabeth Harvatine, for her nomination in the Character Animation in a Television Production category. She was honored for her stop-motion animation on Adult Swim’s Morel Orel, and her pal Eric Towner took home the trophy for his work on another stop-motion project - Robot Chicken. (inset photo credit - Tennessee Reid Norton)

Back in 2006, Amy Winfrey’s Flash-animated web series Making Fiends was discovered by the Nickelodeon gang and promptly placed onto their online video site, Turbonick. After the Nick audience fell in love with Clamburg’s Charlotte and her unlikely pal Vendetta, the network ordered a full season of TV episodes. The premiere date has yet to be announced, but a few promo clips have surfaced at the Nickelodeon website, as well as a behind-the-scenes sneak preview which you can see below. The clip is hosted by Chris Hardwick, the voice behind Otis on Nick’s Back at the Barnyard, and we meet the series creator Amy Winfrey, the voice of Vendetta, Aglaia Mortcheva, and Supervising Producer, Dave Wasson, who created Cartoon Network’s Time Squad.

Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.

Dave Wasson, the creator of Time Squad, recently produced a TV spot for PowerShares titled Escape Average. The commercial was produced through Acme Filmworks for Euro RSCG McConnaughy Tatham, Chicago.

Below, Dave details the exceptionally quick production.

The whole spot was created in three weeks believe it or not! The client had already purchased air time for it even before the idea was conceived so the schedule built to hit that air date. That was certainly the fastest I have ever had to pull together something of this scale. Dave Knott and I did the storyboard over two days (some of it drawn directly in Flash, some of it drawn traditionally and then scanned).Then I built the animatic in Flash. After that was approved and the timing was locked, I did the final character designs in Flash. Then the guys at Six Point Harness took care of the character animation while I designed all of the backgrounds in Flash. Finally we composited the whole thing together in After Effects.

An all-star team of Los Angeles animation artists have teamed up for a Nabisco TV spot for Roasted Vegetable Ritz. The commercial was overseen by ACME Filmworks and directed by Dave Wasson. Dave was joined by Gabe Swarr, who provided storyboards and Sean Szeles who added layouts and animation. Sean posted a great write-up on the spot over at his blog, and included some stills and an animatic clip.

This isn’t the first or even second time Ritz spots have been discussed here. The most recent post came in September of ‘06, when Devin Roth’s work was on display (again with direction from Wasson).

Nate Pacheco, a world-class animator over at Renegade Animation in Glendale California, recently teamed up again with his buddy Dave Wasson to create the title sequence for Fox’s upcoming live-action series ‘Happy Hour.’ The series is from the producers and writers of ‘That 70’s Show,’ and the title sequence is short and snappy.

Read Nate’s quick blurb over on his blog.

***** UPDATE ******
The YouTube video of the title sequence has been taken offline, at the request of the network. As an aside, after one episode on the air, this show is now ‘on haitus’ with a reported return date of November. As the web entertainment paradigm unfurls, complete with a real revenue model, I think this one-and-done roll-out scheme will become a thing of the past. I’m not saying ‘Happy Hour’ is worth fighting for, but with hindsight, this model will seem downright silly in a few years. Let the damn thing breathe for a couple seconds before you pull the plug!

If you’re still wondering what the Flash-animated title sequence looked like, you can see portions in this 5-minute clip reel.

Back in February, Nate Pacheco was featured here on CHF, where some of his recent work for Renegade Animation was featured. He’s since produced what he calls a ‘little spot’ with the amazingly talented Dave Wasson, who recently directed and produced Disney’s Flash-animated ‘The Buzz on Maggie.’ You can watch the Quicktime of the short over at the Renegade site, and then go browse through his great blog.

Nate’s done a fair amount of work on ‘Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi,’ and I want to pass on a few more links for your browsing pleasure. There’s the ‘official’ crew blog, and then Rob Lilly’s blog that features some of his Puffy work.

‘The Buzz on Maggie,’ a Flash-animated original from Disney Television Animation is set to premiere. Tomorrow night, June 17th, at 8pm/7c we get to see the newest Flash show on the Disney Channel. Congrats to the cast and crew - including Jorge Gutierrez, Sandra Equihua, Roman Laney, Gabe Swarr, Ricky Garduno, Ray Morelli, Tim Yoon and the director and Executive Producer, Dave Wasson.