Bardel’s Christmas special The Christmas Orange has won the company many awards and fans. © The Christmas Orange Productions Inc.

Crown: The Mr. Dink Show was Bardel’s first proprietary Flash series and the Comedy Network aired them so we think they liked it. People like the character, they laugh. It ended up winning the Grand Jury Award for Animation at The New York International Film and Video Festival in 2002.

Then we animated a mini-series called Stories from the Seventh Fire with Storyteller Prods. and the CBC. The client trusted us with our choice to use Flash and we feel that the expectations were exceeded.

We also produced Flash animation for some specials like The Drew Carey Show and Bardel’s Christmas special called The Christmas Orange, which is a hybrid of hand-painted backgrounds, traditional animated bodies and Flash animated heads and faces. The Orange has already won four Leo Awards and was nominated for two Gemini awards in its first year of production, so I think people like it too.

Right now we are working on the Warner Bros. series ¡Mucha Lucha! I think it is one of the top rated shows in North America, so it is definitely being accepted by both our client and the public.

Howard: We only air one program produced with Flash and that is Kid Notorious. The public response to the show has been extremely positive. I continue to be amazed at how unique the show looks. There are limitations with Flash and our group of animators has found creative ways to overcome them.

We have an untitled show premiering on April 28, 2004 that will be done in Flash. We’ve ordered 13 episodes for that series. The show is being produced in New York by Eric Brown and Apostle. We also have a 2D traditional show called Drawn Together in production that we’ve picked up for eight episodes. Drawn Together will premiere on October 24, 2004.

John Hardman says ¡Mucha Lucha! is the start of more Flash series to come on Kids’ WB! Hardman © The WB/James Sorensen; ¡Mucha Lucha!, © 2003 Warner Bros. Animation.

Hardman: ¡Mucha Lucha! is Kids’ WB!’s only Flash series. It has had a great response on many levels: for the series’ irreverent, over-the-top comedy-adventure, the no-holds-barred comedy combining bold humor, exciting graphic designs and an original Latin-themed world that explores the Mexican phenomenon of “Lucha Libre.” This innovative and ethnically diverse series celebrates Latin culture and all cultures.

Siriol Prods. uses Flash to animate Bobinogs for the preschool set.

Chin & Mort: Flash enables us to streamline the whole process of production. When you compare it to the traditional animation system, what you have is a more efficient and creative way of producing animation. The whole show is in the computer from animatic to final product. There is no need for voice tracks to be broken down — Flash supports audio files, which can be directly animated to (in sync). In Flash, we can create libraries of drawn elements, which can be reused throughout the series, to keep characters on model and to cut back on redrawing time. Retakes are fast and easy — animation can be tweaked and modified up until the last minute and reviewed instantly. Basically, you can achieve quality animation in less time and with a smaller crew. The end product is vector-based, and so can be scaled and formatted for different platforms without any loss of quality.

Lyons: Our main production using Flash has been Bobinogs, a series [for infants] for BBC Wales, which has been sold to CBeebies [the BBC’s channel for preschoolers]. We’ve done two seasons of this, and hope to be starting a third season soon. We’re also working on a series for Tell-Tale Prods. This is something that is destined for the BBC. It is essentially service work.

The client appears to be delighted with Bobinogs. They keep recommissioning it. The viewers seem to like it, but they are extremely young... We’re also developing a couple of shows that use Flash, including a sketch show called Fun With Coal.