Happy Three Friends: Helping Helps
Mondo Mini Show Productions
Creators: Rhode Montijo, Kenn Navarro
Length: 1 minute
Watch The Cartoon

Happy Tree Friends is an animated Flash cartoon series where bad things happen to cute and cuddly animals. Don't let their charm win you over, there's much violence ahead. In this episode Giggles, a pink chipmunk is in danger of being swallowed by a sudden tidal wave. It's up to Splendid, a flying blue squirrel to save the day. Will Splendid reach Giggle in time to save her?

The story is quick with lots of action reaction shots showing Giggles in peril and Splendid trying to reach out to her. This is great editing. Giggles is the classic victim who cannot escape, as one of her legs is in a cast. The story really shows Splendid's neurotic heroic behaviour. He will stop at nothing to save a life. It seems that he only does it for the accolades, but who cares, the cartoon is so funny!

The animators really did an incredible job with this cartoon. Although they use traditional Flash motion tweening techniques, they are timed and short. The characters have enough facial expressions to fool the eye into believing everything was done frame by frame. The backgrounds are bitmap images with some vector overlays. It's an interesting mix, although some bitmap artifacts are distracting.
Hervé