Yesterday evening was our seventeenth Flashforward Film Festival awards ceremony, and if you’ve already perused the finalist works, you can guess how amazing and inspirational the show was.

Thanks once again to all the finalists, especially those who were able to join us in person last night; to the judges; and to everyone who submitted a nomination for the festival.

Here are the winners:

Art: Creep
Cartoon: Congo Windfall
Commerce: Nike Air
Experience: Get the Glass
Game: CDX
Instructional: BrainPOP
Motion Graphics: Adobe: The Creative Mind
Narrative: NFB – Filmmaker in Residence
Navigation: Lab | Mathieu Badimon
Online Application: Try on a Floor
Original Sound: Move the Crowd
Technical Merit: Finetune Player Collection
3D: Papervision3D
Typography: Javier Ferrer Vidal
Video: Toyota Yaris Virtual Test Drive
People’s Choice: 30 Shorts in 30 Days

Complete credits for these works and the other finalists will be posted in the coming days. Congratulations to all the winners!

Thirty-three judges spent four weeks examining over two thousand nominations in fifteen categories to select the sixty finalists for the seventeenth Flashforward Film Festival!

As always, the finalists represent a fascinating snapshot of the state of Flash design and development around the world. They hail from a dozen countries, and include several new names alongside the best new work from award-winning teams you already know.

We’ll profile a selection of the finalists on the Flashforward Blog in the coming weeks, but the best way to experience the work is to view it, poke, prod, interact, and uncover the nuances that captured the judges’ votes.

The four finalists in each category will be showcased during the live awards ceremony on Wednesday, September 19, 2007, when we also announce the winners and award their well-deserved Big Rubber Arrows.

In addition to the fifteen category awards determined by the judges, there is a sixteenth award decided by you! Vote for your favorite of the sixty finalists as your People’s Choice. Only one vote per person, but feel free to rally support for your favorite nominee–or for your own site! The deadline is August 30, so vote now.

We hope you’ll join us in celebrating the finalists, and congratulate them in person next month in Boston!

Category: Game

Finalist: Guardians of Altarris

URL: www.shockwave.com/gamelanding/guardians.jsp

Creators: Original Concept, Engineering and Character Art by Scott Stoddard, World Art by Adam Ford, Music by Ethan Halvorsen

Artist’s Statement: Inspired by classic arcade brawler gameplay and Judeo-Christian themes with a Fantasy / Sci-FI flavor, “Guardians of Altarris - The Sinless Blade” is the first chapter in an epic Sci-Fi Flash game.

We set out to produce a Flash based game with unprecidented polish and gameplay. The production for this first chapter included the creation of a Flash based engine and took about 6 months to complete. Each episode will be playable for free and generate advertising revenue while the remaining chapters are completed.

This staggered process generates revenue before the game is completed and also enables us to respond to users more effectively in the design of new game elements in later chapters. The forth chapter will be sold in a package with the first 3 chapters as a complete game and allow fans to download the game to their hard drive.

The graphics where created using a combination of methods. The characters where created and animated in 3D then rendered out to toon shaded sprites and imported into the Flash environment. The worlds were created using a combination of 3D models and traditional painting with 3 layers of paralax.

The music was digitally composed with midi software. Most of the particle effects, cinematic frames and menus where created with vectors in Flash. The first chapter has demonstrated substantial popularity and we are excited to continue the series in coming months.

Category: Cartoon

Finalist: The YuYu

URL: www.biteycastle.com/theYuyu.html

Creators: The YuYu was written, directed and animated by ‘Brackenwood’ series creator Adam Phillips. The music was created especially for the movie by Spider Stacy (www.pogues.com) and James Walbourne.

Artist’s Statement: I’ve always been a fan of Irish music and I take much inspiration from the music of ‘The Pogues’. I thought it might be nice if I could get one or more of The Pogues guys to create some music for my Brackenwood series… just 20 or 30 seconds of intro music that would be used at the start of each episode.

I managed to get in touch with Spider Stacy, the whistle player from The Pogues. He liked my online works and agreed to get some friends together and record a tune for Brackenwood. When Spider sent back the finished music it was 3 minutes long… not just intro music, but an entire song! I loved it, but I couldn’t use it as intro music, and there’s no way I could bring myself to cut it short.

So I decided to create a kind of music video, with the story and animation inspired and written especially for the music. The result was The YuYu. This movie is a sequel… as it ties in with the end of my earlier Brackenwood movie, and last year’s Flash Forward Cartoon Category Winner LittleFoot.

Category: Art

Finalist: DQ Books

URL: www.dqbooks.com

Creator: Art Direction: Pierrick Calvez, 1H05, Paris, France

Artist’s Statement: Special Thanks to all the participants that made this collaborative project ALIVE!
My personal website: www.1h05.com
The “Days in Day” project (Flashforward winner in Art, NYC 2003): www.daysinaday.com