A big congrats to Amy, series director Dave Wasson, and the entire Flash animation staff, including Aglaia Mortcheva, Shoshana Stolove and Rob Fendler (help me fill this out, gang). To help celebrate the launch of the TV series, Amy Winfrey, the creator of the show, has posted the title sequence on YouTube, which you can view below:

I attended the Comic-Con panel, and here is one of the (shaky) videos I shot. It’s Dave Wasson detailing the production:

The Nick.com website has also released the Making Fiends Fiend Creator, a Flash-based character generator that allows fans of the show to generate their own Clamburg residents.

And don’t miss the next episode, which airs this Saturday, October 18th at 11:30 AM ET (8:30 Pacific). Check the schedule for more air dates. If you’re looking to get your hands on the original Making Fiends web shorts, DVDs are for sale at Amy’s site. Lastly, back in 2007, we interiewed Winfrey on her jump from the web to TV.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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).

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.

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.