Okay, okay. We already had our Superman film festival this summer — just thought we’d pull the plug on our Science Friction Week with one more starring the Kid from Krypton. And this is the first one! The famous one! The one that got nominated for an Academy Award!
Hard to imagine the impact of Max Fleischer’s pilot film, “Superman” in 1941. Nothing like it had ever been seen on movie screens! Realistic (more or less) animated figures, spectacular special effects, a straight faced (more or less) science fictiony story — all wrapped up in sleek, streamlined trimmings. The Man of Steel does battle with a death ray and a crazy scientist who’s lookin’ a lot like a chorus boy from a production of “The Mikado.” What a kick!
And the most amazing thing is this is, objectively, perhaps the weakest of the original Fleischer Superman cartoons! Narrative techniques would be sharpened, character designs (particularly Lois Lane’s) would become more attractive and the animation would actually improve. Still this initial episode has a special little orbit around the hearts of many a old cartoon buff!
ReFrederator is in a family way starting Monday, kicking off Relatively Speaking Week. Come visit all our shirt tale cousins!
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The recording session is very fun, but at the same time stressful. Because It needs a lot of energy and concentration. I had two cups of coffee before it kicked off.and it went well!. Here is the casting map.
I was lucky enough to get E.G.Daily as Victor. Oh! she did a fantastic job!. If victor(my dog) ever speaks, it would sound like this. It took me and my great casting director, Meredith Layne the longest time to cast MR.PAPIER…And here we go-Mr. Fred Tatasciore. The singing french paper, Mr papier was brought to life through fred’s awesome perfomance. Do you remember Dorothy form TWO WITCH SISTERS? I loooove Scott Bullock so much I had to have him again. He nailed down the strange yet mysterious Gi and Raffe. When I heard Jeniffer Hale’s reel, I knew this was the right person in half a frame .Jeniffer did a great job for Mom and express mail.
Everything wouldn’t go as smoothly as it did without my voice director,Ginny Mcswain. She directed the show with great energy and patience. Oh, And my composer Brad was there all the time to direct the little songs. He even skipped a half day of work for me. Also, many other cool people stopped by, Thank you all and let’s keep rocking!
HANDYCAT in BEES-NESS AS USUAL is getting the final polish on the picture this week. We got our notes from Claudia Spinelli of Nickelodeon, and Claudia had some great insight on several of the scenes. Since we’re finishing in Flash, most of the ideas were relatively easy to incorporate - and a couple required reworking some animation. But let me tell you, it was all worth it. Having someone with a keen sense of story telling and visuals look over the product is totally awesome. Claudia won us over from the get-go with her notes on the Handycat storyboard. She was dead-on right with her observations and suggestions as how to bring out the best in these quirky characters. Thanks Claudia!
There’s not many characters in my film until you come to very end where there is a marathon in my film. What was I thinking?!?!? Anyway, live and learn… here’s a few of the runner’s from that sequence. As Flavio would say…“Lotsa more to follow, HO Yes! Lotsa more!
Hundreds of talented animators inquired about “FredEX” a never before attempted world animation collaboration.
Twenty animators from around the world have been selected. Each Animator brings a unique animation style and vision to the project, I’m very excited to see what the end result will be.
They have until October 1st to animate the topic we have given them. The end result will be a completely original cartoon that will be premiere on the 1st Anniversary of Channel Frederator.
Here is the list of animators, in no particular order, selected to the FredEX team:
Simplicity at its finest. In this sweet Holiday Greeting from Mudbubble, 2 year old Andrea Georgenes belts out her “audition” for “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.
Chris Georgenes, Andrea’s dad, and Designer and Animator over at Mudbubble, frequently “chatted” with his 2 year old in his studio. “During one of those conversations, I turned on the microphone. Twenty minutes later I had a very cute and somewhat random assortment of songs she loved to sing. It wasn’t until a few months later that the “audition concept” came to realization. Most of the character actions were taken from real life. Andrea is already a very animated little girl. She always pulls her front curl, stretching it as straight as possible, letting go and adding her own vocal sound effect by saying “Boing!” The response to this film has inspired me to include her throughout my website, which may just be an excuse to continue to animate her, because it’s so much fun.”
Chris, this was a wonderful moment you were able to capture. We’re looking forward to seeing more of Andrea!
Y’know how there’s always that thing? The blip that suddenly appears on popular culture radar — something that has nothing to do with YOUR everyday life, but seems boundlessly fascinating to professional comedy writers? Pretty soon the damn thing is shoehorned into every skit, monologue or movie, and before you can say “that’s so day before yesterday” it’s gone again. Last year it was ’speed dating’ (and I’ve seen the 32 sitcom episodes to prove it.) In 1933 it was ‘technocracy.’
Whatever the real definition was, technocracy quickly became the buzzword for anything futuristic and a little nutty. In today’s cartoon, “Techno-Cracked,” that means building your own robot with a jack o’ lantern head. This gets my vote as one of the best Flip the Frog films, full of goofy ideas and great, chunky, Ub Iwerks style animation. The mechanical man starts off being kinda funny, but he’s got those spooky hollow eyes, and pretty soon he’s creeping us out bigtime. Iwerks’ favorite reoccurring character, the ubiquitous spinster-old maid (she appears in many of the Flip, Willie Whopper and ComiColor cartoons) pops up here as Flip’s employer. At least that’s what I think she is. Could be some sort of maiden aunt, his step mom, or school marm. Not sure. Anyway, Flip’s mowing her lawn when all the brouhaha begins, and is doing the same after everything blows over.
Science Friction Week on ReFrederator, movin’ at warp speed. Beam up tomorrow.
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The British writer Aldous Huxley once said, “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” After hearing the works of composer Geoff Levin, I couldn’t agree more.
I’d like to welcome Hero Heights’ newest resident, Academy Award Nominated composer of the feature film “The Janitor” and the Nickelodeon series “Chalk Zone” Geoff Levin. He is currently composing the score for our cartoon and believe me when I tell you, it sounds fantastic! In the six minutes and forty seconds Bill and I have been given to make our cartoon, we’ve managed to cram it full of conflict, emotion, character, exposition and resolution. It wasn’t an easy task but so far so good. Scoring this cartoon would be quite a challenge to the average composer, but Geoff Levin is not your average composer. This gentle soft spoken fellow is a true master of his craft.
We spent a few days with Geoff in his studio and were amazed at his incredible virtuosity. We explained to him what kind of music we wanted and within minutes, he roughed out the Hero Heights theme! Geoff was on the same page as us and what resulted was pure magic. Now Hero Heights as we all know is a suburban community where everyone has superpowers, so naturally we wanted powerful superheroey type music. But Hero Heights is also about children who use their powers for everyday mundane kid stuff. So now the mundane has become the fantastic. Geoff gave us something that is a cross between Superman, Back to the Future, Napoleon Dynamite and Boccerini. I know it sounds weird but trust me when I tell you, the music Geoff has created for Hero Heights is awesome. Geoff to kept the score unified and it works better than Bill and I could have ever dreamed. We can’t wait to hear the final score which Geoff will finish in the next week or so.
Check out Geoff’s cool website where you can hear a sample of his work and scope out his credits.
(L-R) Charlie Schlatter, Dee Bradley Baker, Jennifer Hale, and myself, Erik Knutson.
A photo of people in good spirits? Why it must be cast photo time! The cast of “Sugarfoot” gathered to record Friday morning while a majority of the animation industry was at the “root beer and cheese-scented” extravaganza that is Comic-Con. Charlie Schlatter was fantastic as the titular star of this little picture show. Sugarfoot accounts for 85-percent of the dialogue. Dee Bradley Baker brought his wonderful bag of grunts and growls to the wordless Socko, the bully, and Newspaper guy, the newspaper guy. Jennifer Hale provided the only voice of reason as the delightful Ms. Penelope, the school teacher. Big kudoes to voice director Collette Sunderman for getting great performances out of each actor. Also, thanks to Meredith Layne for helping me put together such an outstanding cast. Finally, pictures and sound come together Friday as I cut the animatic (with an emphasis on “cut”) to put an end to my time here at the Random! Cartoons nerve center. Next week, it’s back to my cartoon home of Renegade Animation for BGs, color, and animation.
