07/18/00
By JAMES McWILLIAMS
Times Technology Writer

When Robert Bunch was a kid in Arab watching ''Superfriends'' cartoons, he had no idea he would grow up to start his own cartoon studio - and have it win an international animation contest.

Bunch, 30, is now owner of FlashKing Multimedia, which has created short cartoons, online advertisements and interactive presentations for such businesses as Motorola and Swatch, and for former ''American Gladiators'' star Red Williams.

In June, Bunch won an award at the World Internet Animation Contest, sponsored in Hollywood by Variety magazine and the Shockwave animation-software firm.

Bunch competed against more than 650 contestants, impressing the celebrity judges with ''fabulous'' work, said Shockwave spokeswoman Mary Leong.

The judges of the animation competition included Rob Minkoff, director of ''Stuart Little''; Rob Cowie, producer of ''The Blair Witch Project''; and Stan Lee, creator of ''X-Men,'' ''Spiderman'' and ''The Incredible Hulk.''

Bunch was a finalist in the contest's educational-animation competition, in which he won a fourth-place award. He accepted his award during a two-hour ceremony at Hollywood's Egyptian Theater.

''It was unbelievable, an awe-inspiring experience,'' Bunch said.

Bunch's award-winning cartoon traces evolution from the development of the first cells to the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, and compares the various types of life present on Earth during each evolutionary stage.

The animation project, called ''Projekt Grau,'' took about 120 hours of work during a six-week period, said Bunch.

The winner in Bunch's category was Tom Snyder, creator of the popular cartoon ''Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist.''

''Getting beaten by one of the best is good enough for me,'' Bunch said.

The judges searched for the world's best one-minute cartoons that could be downloaded from the Internet. Honored cartoons are online at http://wiac.shockwave.com/.

Arab cartoonist wins international animation award for online work Flash After winning an award at the animation contest, Bunch got jobs to create short animation clips for television and videogames, he said.

He plans to offer future work to a variety of Web sites that display cartoon shorts.

Bunch creates the art and the music tracks for his cartoons. He has never received formal training in animation. He has had classical music training since age 11.

''I took my first college course at 13,'' Bunch said. The class, at Snead State Community College, taught him computer-programming, in conjunction with some gifted-student classes he was taking at Union Grove Junior High School.

Programming skills became useful in his later work with computer animation.

Bunch started animating cartoon characters during childhood, by drawing progressive poses on corners of book pages and then flipping the pages quickly to see characters move.

After high school, Bunch bounced around the nation, attending different colleges for short stints. He spent two years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, six months at the University of Central Oklahoma, six months at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and nine weeks at Loyola University in Chicago.

''My parents wished I would stay home,'' Bunch mused.

He soon made a living as a computer consultant, working in network architecture. He saved up $20,000 and started a computer-multimedia business that emphasized animation. Bunch started that company three years ago, originally naming it Thinline Media, and then changing the name to FlashKing.

Bunch started the company in Arab, but he operates largely out of Dallas. He has no actual office and lives in motel rooms, from which he runs a virtual company that has four other employees, he said.

Those employees are computer programmers in Dallas, New York, Silicon Valley and Huntsville, Bunch said. Whenever he gets a new project, he calls them up with details, gives them 48 hours to mull ideas, and then schedules a conference call with everyone. The workers then collaborate over the Internet, creating interactive content for Internet sites, CD-ROMs or other electronic venues.

Bunch produces most of his animation with Macromedia Flash software, from Shockwave. It costs as little as $300, but he has linked it to $8,000 worth of add-ons, Bunch said.

Anyone can get Flash player software for free, at http://www.shockwave.com/, for watching Flash animation online. Flash has become so popular that 248 million people have downloaded the Flash player, and major entertainers have started producing Flash cartoons online.

The toughest part of animation is coloring the drawings, said Bunch. Traditionally, each second of animation consists of 24 separate still images, called ''frames.''

''One cartoon had 8,000 frames, and I had to color each one,'' Bunch said.

Because Bunch creates his artwork on computers, the whole process of drawing and painting is faster than it would be if he drew pictures by hand.

Bunch's Internet site, at http://www.flashking.com/, is visited by 10,000 people per month, he said.

His next major competitive project is for a French animation contest.

Bunch's long-term goal is have a 30-minute show on the Cartoon Network within five years.