I love cartoons. I always have. I won’t say I love them all- some really suck. I didn’t really notice the suckier ones until I got older.

Sometimes good writing can save bad animation or substandard artwork. Sometimes it is just bad all around and you wonder how the creators and voice actors can live with themselves (watch Frosty Returns– the sad sequel to Frosty the Snowman- and you will be scarred for life- I suggest a few beers first or if in Colorado, take a hard pull).

I have created exactly two animations in my life. The first was actually created digitally but performed analog-ly as a flip book animation. You know, relying on persistence of vision to achieve the illusion of continuous movement through a series of still pictures viewed in rapid succession. Yes, that. A friend had commissioned a short flip book animation to entertain his med school friends in a set of class notes. I, with nothing better to do with my life, obliged.

My second attempt at animation was messing around with Adobe Flash software, just to see if I could pull off animating an egg rolling across the screen. Apparently I did. View the Rolling Egg Show by clicking the link there a few words back. I added sound effects and everything.

I cannot show you my first animation in its origial format, because I was not a med student, and you are reading this on some kind of electronic device. But, through the magic of the digital equivalent of the flip book, that scourge of the internet known as the animated GIF, I present my first Animated Short, which I like to call Flip Book Animation for Ed.