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In 2004, I was working at Warner Bros. TV Animation, hoping to convince the senior management that Flash was a viable TV production tool. Flash was already in use for TV (¡Mucha Lucha!, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Atomic Betty), but we had some convincing to do internally. So I started collecting the data, in the form of a blog (first post was super geeky!), hosted by blogspot, but then I bought coldhardflash.com a month later.
Then I started making my case. A post titled ‘Flashing the Studios’ was the centerpiece of my argument. Until that post, there wasn’t much certainty about what series were using Flash, but after some digging and emailing, I’d compiled a fairly impressive list. A year later, I was producing Coconut Fred’s Fruit Salad Island in Flash for WB, and I’d produced the pilot of Johnny Test, also with Flash, which continues on until this day.
Over time, focus of the site shifted, aiming more at independent productions, shorts from students and even feature films. But the interviews were my favorite. I only have an undergraduate degree, but I feel like the dozens of interviews I conducted with animators around the world constitute my Masters thesis. Favorites were John K (Ren & Stimpy), The Brothers Chaps (Homestar Runner), Evan and Gregg Spiridellis (JibJab), Tom Fulp (Newgrounds), Adam Phillips, Jorge Gutierrez (El Tigre, The Book of Life), Todd Kauffman (Grojband), and Jonathan Gay, the co-creator of Flash.
I would do hours of prep work, crafting detailed questions, sometimes emailing them, and occassionally interviewing over the phone. I asked questions my audience would want to hear, but more importantly I asked what I wanted to learn. Then, a funny thing happened along the way, I ended up working with or for many of these teams I’d interview for the site. It was some sort of wish fulfillment. If you look at the list of most common tags used on the site (see below), you can see the proof. I now work out of Six Point Harness Studios, for Mondo Media, who bought CHF a few years back! I just helped the Weebl team release their digital video collection and I’m producing a TV series with SuperNews! creator Josh Faure-Brac. It wasn’t intentional, but it all makes sense now, looking back.
Huge thanks to our sponsors throughout the years, guest bloggers, designers, tech support and of course, the readers. Here’s to the next 10 years!
TOP TEN TAGS IN TEN YEARS