Back in 2001, the internet was burning out and online entertainment was too. It was a sobering experience, but Aaron Augenblick decided to booze it up instead. He created Drunky, a Flash-animated film that rose above the clunky cartoons that the software had become synonymous for. It had style, smooth animation and a very memorable character. The original short, titled In Through the Out Door, was screened at Annecy and Slamdance, and became a signature piece in the Augenblick Studios library. Since then, Aaron’s studio has worked on variety of excellent projects, mostly aimed at the grown-up audience, including Golden Age, Superjail and a personal favorite: Wonder Showzen.

Now that web entertainment is back in full force, Drunky returns. Augenblick has resurrected Drunky for a new 11-minute pilot titled Fish House Punch. You’ll meet one of the most “colorful” grandmothers ever to walk into a bar, and to describe the overall tone of the piece I’ll borrow a phrase from the carnival boss - you’ll be “revolted in amazement.” Click below to watch an excerpt at the Augenblick website, which has been relaunched to include high-quality versions of the entire studio library.

[link]

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). Read the rest of this entry »

Aaron Augenblick, who was recently interviewed here at Cold, Hard Flash, recently appeared on G4’s ‘Attack of the Show.’ He was interviewed by host Kevin Pereira, with topics ranging from MTV2’s ‘Wonder Showzen,’ to Richie Rich and 3D animation. But the topic of Flash animation seemed to dominate the conversation. Lucky us! You can watch a Quicktime of the interview here, and I’ve typed up a few snippets from interview for your pleasure:

KEVIN PEREIRA: You went from traditional animation into the world of Flash. Now why make that jump? Isn’t that sacrilidgeous?

AARON AUGENBLICK: A lot of people were pretty critical of the fact that we were doing stuff in Flash, especially in its infancy when we were first doing it. I mean, there was so much crap being made in Flash…. What I like about Flash, that’s sort of good and bad, is that anyone, like a housewife in Nebraska, can make a cartoon. And animators hate that, because animators like to be able to have their own proprietary system.

KEVIN: But you’re not concerned with traditional animators losing their jobs over the Flash animation revolution. You still think it takes a tradtional animator to make good Flash.

AARON: Absolutely. I always look for traditional people. I don’t necessarily gravitate towards people who have only ever done Flash. Because personally, the stuff I like is traditional classic animation.