Get to Know the Super Flash Bros. - 05/31/2006 Author: Tawl | Interviewee: The-Super-Flash-Bros As artists continue to animate, one would assume they would get increasingly better. One such team is the Super Flash Bros, made up of Dim and Tom Vian. While Tom is more into coding and making games, Dim is the animator. Recently I was fortuante to get a chance to talk with Dim and ask him all those probing questions about his work. First of all Dim, thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Let’s start with the basics. Tell us about yourself, how old are you, when did you get Flash, what made you get started with Flash, what Flash program do you use, etc? Hey there. My name is Adam Vian, I’m an 18 year old ‘student’ from Kent in England. I finished school a few weeks ago, so I’ve got some exams, and then after the Summer I’m going to an art college. I got Flash when I was like... 13? Tom was playing around with it and I watched for the most part. Nowadays I use Flash 8. On the same note explain how you got the nickname Dim. It comes from the ‘dam’ in Adam. For some reason my friends changed all the vowels in our names to ‘i’s one day (when we were like, 10, 11) and it’s stuck ever since. Crazy, no? Indeed, very crazy. So how did the Super Flash Bros form and get their name? Like I said, I was watching Tom play with Flash and then one day we were shown LegendaryFrog’s Chocobo Mix movie. We were like, “we can totally make something like that.” So we went and made “Metal Gear Mayhem.” We named ourselves SFB because we liked Super Smash Bros, and we were brothers who did Flash! Originally we used the SSBM image for ourselves. Our original website looked like the SSBM menus. So apart from Tom, have you got any other siblings? I have a sister, Maddy. She’s an artist too. For the more inquisitive, what do you use to draw in Flash? Do you use your mouse, the pen or pencil tool, or have you got a graphics tablet? I use a mixture of stuff. For AD it’s the tablet, and for Decline it’s a bit of everything. Let’s move on to your animations. You have two successful series, Another Day and Decline of Video Gaming. What was your inspiration behind each respective series? Another Day started as an experiment with my graphics tablet. The wobbling style was inspired by LegendaryFrog’s Kerrigan and the Muffin backgrounds. (wow I really owe a lot to Joey…) Decline began as a Devil May Cry parody, but then Dan and I decided that we should expand it to feature many different games. ‘Another Day’ can be interpreted in many different ways. What is your own personal interpretation of the series? Well, the idea of AD is that each person takes their own interpretation. Originally it wasn’t supposed to have any meanings – but the NG public gave some in their reviews and so that theme was born. The only one that has a specific interpretation is AD4, and that’s a little personal story, with the vase and the train station and stuff. Do you plan on continuing ‘Another Day’ on another day? (*Cringe* Lame pun) Yeah, I’m working on AD8 right now. I should have some more original music, and its sort of a “back to basics” narrative. Moving on to Decline, which I think is safe to say is the more popular of the two. In Decline 1 the Flash seems to be made mainly by Double Helix. Why is this? Double Helix originally featured me. I created it with my friends so we could make funny Flash cartoons. When I realised how good Decline 1 was, I changed it to incorporate the Super Flash Bros. name as well, which of course meant that Double Helix became just Dan and JT. That’s why later Decline episodes are more obviously SFB + DH. And while we're on the subject, for those you don’t know who is Double Helix? Double Helix consists of Dan and Jonny (JT). They’re my friends from school, and we write the scripts together, and do voice recording and stuff. JT began some of his own Flash projects, but they never got finished. Decline 1 is set in the year 2059, yet Decline 2-3 are set in the present day. Any particular reason for this time change? Um... Decline 1 was basically a stream of gaming parodies, so we set it in the future to focus on the specific ‘decline’ of games. Decline 2 was set around a real event in the real world, (E3) and Decline 3 had all the same characters so it had to be in the present day, right? Hey, fair enough, Decline 2 is set around E3. Have you actually been? No... Would you like to? Yeah I’d love to, someday. I have a few online friends who have been though, they tell me about it. Egoraptor does most of your voice work for Decline. How did you manage to rope him into the production? Do you know him personally? Not like, in real life. When I was looking for an American voice to do the intro to Decline 1, I went to LegendaryFrog and asked him. He had a go, but suggested that Ego could do a better job. Ego has been helping with the voices ever since, and the Decline series owes a lot to him. I suppose I have to ask this. Where did the catch phrase ‘OHMYGODIMONFIRE!!’ used by Tom come from? I told him to say something in the scene where he gets set on fire. He made it up on the spot, first time recording! What’s up with the blatant advertising of Randy Solem’s VGDC on your t-shirt? Randy gave me a plug on the front page of VGDC, so in thanks, I wore a VGDC t-shirt all through Decline 2. We picked up on it in later episodes... that’s about it. Your three main characters in Decline (Yourself, Dan & JT) all have different characterisations. You’re in the middle, Dan is incredibly sensible while JT is the stupid one. Are these reflecting how you are in real life? Its sort of like exaggerated forms of our real life personalities. JT isn’t stupid by any means, but he is perhaps the one most likely to have an extreme opinion, or attempt something really ridiculous. From what I can tell, Decline is animated using motion tweening while Another Day is all frame by frame. Which do you prefer to use? I like them both, but like I said, I reached my limit with tweening in Decline 3. I’ve still got a lot to learn with FBF, so I’m continuing that. Now if you look at Decline 1, 2 & 3 back to back, as well as all the Another Day animations, you have a style change almost every time. Have you settled on a style yet or are you still changing as you improve? I don’t think I could animate anything better than the tweening in Decline 3. If I did more tweened comedy, it would probably look a lot like that. AD keeps improving, and AD8 looks quite different to the other ones. With the release of the next generation consoles many people think they are owed another Decline. Do you plan on continuing the franchise? A lot of people do think we should do anther Decline. As of now, I still have no plans to produce one. There are a number of reasons for this, a few I’ve already specified. Thanks to all the fans for their support and I’m sorry if you were looking forward to a Decline 4, but its not going to happen for now. You can however look forward to “There’s Something About Halo 2” (sequel to TSAH) – my part in that is kinda Decline-like (tweened parodies of video games!!) Well I’m pretty much out of questions so thanks for taking the time for this interview, Dim. That’s cool. Any last words or advice to aspiring Flash authors before I spruce this up and send it off? Advice? Playing around with Flash is really the best way to learn! Just keep experimenting, keep drawing and keep working! Thanks! Check out these Portal submissions by The-Super-Flash-Bros: --select-- Website: Super Flash Bros Site Age: 24 Gender: Male Habitat: Kent, England Job: Students Favorite Films: My Neighbour Totoro Donnie Darko LOTR: The Return of the King Favorite Bands: Iron Maiden Modest Mouse White Stripes