I’m logging this post under ‘Not Sure If It’s Flash, But Posting It Anyway.’ A few weeks back, I wrote about the Maple Shorts website, and I’m sure glad I went back again to sniff around. I just watched ‘Yam Roll,’ an amazing short created by Jon Izen and Jono Howard for March Entertainment. It’s surely produced with some sort of vector animation software, and I know Jon Izen once animated on ‘Mucha Lucha,’ so it’s a good bet that this project was animated in Flash. ‘The Very Good Adventures of Yam Roll in Happy Kingdom’ (the full title) is one of the most unique shorts I’ve seen in a while, and I’m hoping March Entertainment agrees and finances a season or two.

First Nicktoons broadcasts a dozen Flash-animated shorts during the Nicktoons Film Festival, then YTV airs a mostly-Flash-animated film festival called Funpak. Now the Canadian audience is getting treated to CBC’s Maple Shorts animation festival, a Flash showcase for Canadian artists. The project premiered back in April, and is currently airing in half-hour blocks at 4:30pm on Wednesdays. A total of 40 shorts will air during the festival, but you, the lucky internet viewer, will be able to watch them all on the Maple Shorts website.

March Entertainment, the Toronto-based company behind the Flash-animated ‘Chilly Beach’ series, produced the festival, screening the submissions, editing if necessary and assembling the animated blocks.

I spotted a few familiar names in the contest, in particular Steve Whitehouse, whose ‘Mr. Man’ played during the 3rd week. I also spotted plenty of work by Paul Gill, who founded Zodiac Media, the Canadian company that once produced the Maple Shorts festival. Paul died two years ago, at the age of 28, but his legacy lives on through his shows, which are peppered throughout the festival - ‘Victor vs. Victor,’ ‘Suburban Samurai,’ ‘Max Soul’ and ‘Formula for Disaster.’

Best of luck to all in the competition, and for those in Canada, don’t forget to tune in Wednesdays at 4:30pm on CBC.

Breakthrough Animation, one of the fine companies behind the international Flash-animation hit ‘Atomic Betty,’ is rolling out a fresh new show. ‘Captain Flamingo,’ a 30-episode co-production with Heroic Film Company, Atomic Cartoons and PASI Animation, will be rolling out on Canada’s YTV in January 2006. The show centers on Milo Powell, a little boy with a terrycloth cape who fights for justice along with his next door neighbor Lizbeth. The property bowed at NATPE 2005, and expect a worldwide rollout to commence soon.

Habbo Hotel, the massively popular international online community, is expanding into linear animation. Habbo Hotel, for those who haven’t checked in yet, is much like The Sims Online, Puzzle Pirates, or Disney’s Toontown - it’s a virtual environment mainly targeted at the teenage market where individuals can meet up, play games and express themselves. Following a recent TV commercial effort, Sulake Labs, the Finish company behind Habbo Hotel, is embarking on an animation challenge. The project is being headed up by Dale Taylor, a YTV vet, who is currently accepting applications from animation studios, who will end up animating a total of 15 three-minute ‘Habbosodes,’ all animated in Flash. The first studio on board is Bardel Entertainment, a Canadian animation studio that worked on Warner Bros. Animation’s ‘Mucha Lucha.’ Their episode and the 14 others will eventually be compiled on DVD, which will be distributed online and at various retail outlets. Those interested in getting involved can read more here, or contact Dale - dale.taylor@sulake.com. Cold, Hard Flash will keep you in the loop as this project unfolds, so stay tuned!

The Flash/CG animated show, ‘Being Ian,’ which was recently picked up for a second season on Canada’s YTV, is now viewable on the Studio B website in the form of 4 quicktime clips. This is good news for those outside of Canada who haven’t had a chance to see this unique blend of Flash and 3D, which is now in production at Studio B’s Vancouver production facility.

CLIP 1: ‘Being Ian’ title sequence
CLIP 2: ‘Being Ian’ gets a visit from the punk band GOB
CLIP 3: Hockey star Trevor Linden gets green
CLIP 4: Global TV’s Tony Parsons joins the cast

Over the last few days, I’ve posted the first two parts of a three part interview with Arna Selznick and John van Bruggen, the creator’s ‘Coolman!’ which is currently airing on YTV’s Funpak block. In this final section, we discuss retakes, the ‘Coolman!’ soundtrack and what inspires this Toronto duo.

AARON SIMPSON: Tell us about how calling retakes worked throughout your production.
ARNA SELZNICK: Our friend, animator/director Jamie Whitney (’Peep,’ ‘Max & Ruby‘), gave us some great tips for Flash production such as using guide levels to communicate with our animators.

JOHN VAN BRUGGEN: The animators downloaded everything they needed, worked on a series of scenes, then uploaded them back onto Nelnet. Arna and I reviewed the scenes and, using Nelnet, posted our reshoot requests. We often added a guide level to the FLA for visual notes, refieldings and retimings. After that, we reloaded the scenes to Nelnet where the animator could retrieve them. The animators often revised their scenes in less than 24 hours.

ARNA: We sometimes adjusted timing ourselves for immediate results without having to send scenes back. Flash is great that way — there’s no waiting for revisions to go through the traditional 2D pipeline.

AARON: The backgrounds in Coolman are amazing. Who was your designer, and how were they made?
JOHN: We really owe the look of the show to our BG artists, Kellie de Vries and Joseph Sherman. They did an amazing job, considering what they were up against. Our BG schedule was especially tight and we were forced to skip the layout stage. Kellie and Joe worked from Arna’s preliminary designs, a few BG keys for visual suggestions and finally, from the storyboard panels themselves. They also brought their own design sensibilities to ‘Coolman!’ Joe made wonderful and subtle use of gradations in Flash, especially in Lester’s world. Kellie has a great colour sense and really took advantage of Photoshop-generated textures.

AARON: Did you have any technical issues with Flash along the way?
ARNA: The paisley designs on the sub in ‘Deep Sea Blues’ caused a little trouble at first. All of those paisley ’subgroups’ (no pun intended) made Flash run veerrrrrry slooooowly. Steve had to break the design and regroup it as one symbol before we could make it move without crashing Flash.

JOHN: The same thing happened the first time we tried panning our underwater scenes. Kellie created a nifty sand texture in Flash for the sea bed, with many sand grains. It was a memory hog and caused the pans to chug. We had to loose the sand grains even though they looked cool.

AARON: For your jazzy soundtrack, did you record live instrumentation or score digitally?
JOHN: I always imagined having a ‘live’ acoustic jazz score for ‘Coolman.’ And, we always had Tom Szczesniak and Ray Parker in mind for our composers. They both play jazz and know many of the great players in Toronto. Tom and Ray are animation veterans, so they knew how to accommodate our schedule and budget. In the case of the ‘Sappy Song,’ Ray and Tom generated a scratch (mostly synth) temp track for our Miss Dee, Emilie-Claire Barlow, to sing along with. Our animators worked to a track which combined the temp track with Emilie-Claire’s final vocals. The ‘real’ music for that song, recorded a few months later with live musicians, eventually replaced the scratch track. The band sounded great on the floor, especially during the long ‘Gene Krupa‘ style piece for Coolman’s climactic robot showdown in the ‘Tennis’ show.

AARON: What animated shows do you watch regularly?
JOHN: Lately, we’ve been too busy to watch very much animation on television! Oh, except for ‘Funpak!’ We’re more likely to watch animation at the theatre, or on DVD, especially anything by Pixar or (Hayao) Miyazaki. I still catch ‘South Park‘ once in a while; I’m a big fan of Eric Cartman. I did most of my cartoon watching when I was a kid. I loved ‘Tom Terrific’ and all the early Hanna Barbera stuff, like ‘Ruff and Reddy.’

ARNA: I’m looking forward to seeing ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’.

AARON: Do you two share similar artist tastes?
JOHN: We do share similar tastes in art, although Arna is more interested in sculpture. I’ll walk through a gallery looking at the paintings and completely miss the amazing (and amazingly large) ‘Henry Moore‘ smack dab in the middle of the room.

AARON: What illustrators or painters inspire you?
JOHN: I basically learned how to draw from cartoons and comic books. In grade school, I wrote and illustrated original stories based on the old ‘Beatles’ cartoon show. In my angst-ridden teen years, I emulated Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh. These days I admire the work of (Hayao) Miyazaki and the Ghibli Studio.

ARNA: I’m a fan of mid-twentieth century kids’ books such as ‘Blueberries For Sal‘ and ‘Make Way For Ducklings‘ by Robert McCloskie. Also, ‘A Snowy Day‘ by Ezra Jack Keats, and anything by J. P. Miller.

When John and I were in Amsterdam we picked up postcards by Fiep Westerdorp. I love her stuff. Plus, I’m inspired by the work of my son, the illustrator and comic artist Salgood Sam.

Also…today I saw some cool sculpture by Ernesto Neto.

AARON: Do you have any career advice for animation artists and writers graduating this spring?
ARNA: Stay open to influences around you as your art develops, but keep in touch with your own artistic voice. And don’t listen to too much advice…

AARON: Are there any more collaborations in the works from you two?
ARNA: Oh yes…ideas for more short subjects and a few longer form stories, too!

Well that’s it for my interview with Arna Selznick and John van Bruggen, the creators of ‘Coolman!’ Don’t forget to watch their latest episode ‘Hootchy Kootchy Haiku’ at 7:30pm on Thursday, March 10th on YTV’s Funpak block. Then go to the site and vote!

In the meantime, check out this Quicktime clip from ‘Coolman!’

I recently posted the first part of a three part inteview with Arna Selznick and John van Bruggen, the creator’s ‘Coolman!’ which is currently airing on YTV’s Funpak block. In this second section, we explore their Flash production method and how their three animation teams worked together.

AARON SIMPSON: After Steve Whitehouse joined your team, did the project change to fit the Flash production method?
JOHN VAN BRUGGEN: Definitely. Steve pointed out that we had to revise our schedule so that character design (and breaking) occurred upfront. From experience, he knew that the design for Flash would take longer than the animation; that most of the real planning would be done at the early stage of production.

Steve took our original hand-drawn designs and translated them into Flash. As we approved the line drawings, he picked colors (with our input) and ‘broke’ the final designs. He also rotated each main character, animated walk cycles and did mouth charts.

AARON: Did working in Flash somehow limit the fulfillment of your vision of the show?
ARNA SELZNICK: When we pitched this concept to the folks at Nelvana in 2003, we knew that we’d need to do it in Flash to keep control of the budget; with Flash we could be hands-on through almost every step of the creative process.

Our show was animated on 2’s to get the benefit of Flash’s snappy timing, except for some of the camera moves which we converted to 1’s. So I think that working in Flash was an asset rather than a limitation.

JOHN: We were warned by the techies that Flash didn’t always handle camera moves very well. With no time to ’shoot’ tests, we worried that the ‘memory hog’ Photoshop files would strobe and boil during camera moves. As such, we decided to create our backgrounds in Flash to avoid going too heavily into Photoshop-generated artwork. We used some PNG textures, but very sparingly. In the long run, we probably got a more original look by going the Flash BG route.

AARON: During the development and production of an animated show, what can’t or shouldn’t be done in the computer?
JOHN: The computer is really just a tool. As much as I sometimes miss designing on paper or painting ‘real’ backgrounds, I have no qualms about working up an idea from the original concept right through to the final product on the computer. It only becomes frustrating when a file corrupts or colours change mysteriously or a network goes down…and you find yourself at the mercy of the computer gods.

AARON: You’re both very familiar with traditional animation development and production. Now having completed 5 Flash shows from end to end, what future do you see for this type of production method?
JOHN: I’d be happy to do a whole series in Flash. The key is to create a show concept which is Flash-friendly and really takes advantage of what the medium has to offer. And to make sure that you spend the time upfront on planning, designs and breaking before the animators begin!

AARON: Tell us about your 3 animation teams.
ARNA: Technically, we had three excellent teams and a one-man powerhouse; Steve Whitehouse created all the animation for the episode ‘Deep Sea Blues,’ setting the ‘Coolman!’ style.

Jens Pindal, Daniela Strijleva and James Roberston animated our show ‘Hootchy Kootchy Haiku.’ Daniela and James also worked with Matt Ferguson on another nifty Funpak show, ‘Harold Rosenbaum, Chartered Accountant Extreme.’

Campbell Bryer and John Mahovlich (Nelvana animators) teamed up to animate our ‘this is how the show works’ episode entitled ‘A Daydream In The Life.’

We connected with Nitrogen Studios in Vancouver who did a great job on two of our shows: ‘Jazz-Matazz’ and ‘Tennis Any1010111?’

AARON: Re-use is one of the biggest benefits of working with Macromedia’s Flash software. Was it a challenge to ensure that your 3 teams benefited from the work of the others?
JOHN: Nelvana’s online network (Nelnet) came in very handy for reuse. Our animators, no matter where they were, or what time of the day or night it was, could share and reuse bits of animation (or make use of stock animation previously generated by Steve). Of course, they had to be sure that any scene they ‘borrowed’ from was approved by us first!

AARON: You’ve produced five 5-minute episodes of Coolman. How long did the animation take?
ARNA & JOHN: Our animators worked fast! All animation took a total of six and a half weeks. We had enough teams that all five shows could be animated concurrently. The trick for us was to keep up with scene approval and retakes!

Check back soon for the last part of this three part interview with Arna Selznick and John van Bruggen, the creators of ‘Coolman!’ And don’t forget to watch their latest episode ‘Hootchy Kootchy Haiku’ at 7:30pm on Thursday, March 10th on YTV’s Funpak block. Then go to the site and vote!

In the meantime, check out these Quicktime clips from two ‘Coolman!’ episodes.