I’m particularly proud of this piece, because, unusually for me, it comes directly from an idea I had, rather than one I mid-wifed.

After a few false starts, my career in animation really began here. In 1981, after my childhood friend (and his associates) designed the logo for the network no one had ever heard of yet, we were batting around ideas for the “top of the hour” (where the top music videos in an hour would be billboarded). It hadn’t escaped me how conceited we were (rock’n’roll changed the world, and our network was going to change television forever!) and I thought maybe we could appropriate the most famous television event in the world (in the world, mind you, for this tiny, American, cable TV venture) for our nefarious, or at least frivolous, purposes.

My mentor had already identified NASA footage as very cool and very free (believe it or not, our government agrees that we, the people, own all images and film from NASA missions in space). Alan and I brought a bunch of 4×5″ transparencies (and a music track by Elias Arts to Buzz Potamkin and his team (directors Candy Kugel & Vincent Cafarelli, assistant JJ Sedelmaier, producer David Sameth) at his new company Buzzco.

And an icon, and a long relationship, was born.

–Fred

Carrie Miller has with us since late last year, and I have to tell you that after almost 15 years in the cartoon business it’s great to have a huge cartoon fan in my office.

After screaming “Uncle!” to me about the amount of work I was loading on her back we agreed to move her up and get a new assistant. In addition to her fantastic blogging for Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! she coordinates all of our animation activities on the East Coast.

After Lee Rubenstein designed a robot for the invitation to our Greatest Hits party at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, Carrie designed what is –so far– our favorite piece of swag: The Channel Frederator Coaster, Salut!

Thanks Carrie.

–Fred

We tried to say goodbye to Lee Rubenstein.

But he refused to leave.

So we insisted. “Do great work for us!”

He complied.

Thanks Lee!

–Fred

My fifth and final (sorry, folks) post re-capping last week’s Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Codename Kids Next Door

Just three nominees here, and I missed seeing one of them (my apologies, Tom: Tom in the Woods — you can watch Tom here, but it’s in German). The other two were Cartoon Network shows, episodes of Camp Lazlo and Codename Kids Next Door. I like a lot of Camp Lazlo, but this episode (“Tree Hugger”) I don’t think ranks among the strongest. The KND episode, “L.I.C.O.R.I.C.E.”, on the other hand, I absolutely loved. Unlike last year when creator Mr Warburton clearly bribed the festival jury to have his show beat out Frederator’s My Life as a Teenage Robot for top honors in this category, this year’s KDN entry deserved the win. The jury and I agreed. “L.I.C.O.R.I.C.E.” won.

Pass the Pinha!

The Short Animation Made for Children part featured nine films, most of which were really good (thank god I don’t have to write reviews for a living – “um, good”, “I liked it”). Elanna Allen’s “Pass the Pinha!” was incredibly cute, “Die Gross Frage” by Matthias Bruhn I loved, and “Jaime Lo – Small and Shy” by Lillian Chan was adorable (“Jaime Lo” won the National Film Board of Canada Public Prize, an audience-voted award).

Jaime Lo - Small and Shy

Unfortunately, the only other film besides Tom: Tom in the Woods I missed this year was Michael Sporn’s “The Man who Walked between the Towers”, which I was eager to see. It wound up winning this category, too. I like the Gerstein book on which this film is based, and I’m a fan of Michael’s work, so it’s a safe bet I’ll enjoy the film, too. (There’s a clip on Sporn’s website.)

The Man who Walked between the Towers

Congratulations to all the filmmakers.

Hmmm. Maybe I should do one more post next week about some of the other Ottawa screenings I attended, like the Clampett retrospective, the Canadian Film Showcase, and Konstantin Bronzit screening.

On a completely different note, here’s a mural that my sister-in-law commissioned me to paint on the nursery wall before my niece was born. That was over a year ago though it feels like just yesterday. They grow up so fast, don’t they…

Dan Meth

With the completion of “Handycat” behind us, a few random thoughts about the making of our “Random Cartoon.” To Russ and I, this was more than just a 6:52 short. To us, this was a revolution – the reinventing of the wheel – our first production in Flash outside of some experimental pilot pieces.

Fred was the first one to say “go Flash.” Then a really good friend, Adam Dykstra who is an animator at Disney Feature said the same thing. Another good friend, Glenn Zimmerman, who has done most of the Flash animation for the “Garfield” website for the past several years, was already telling me how great it was. When the world starts talking, it’s time to start listening, so, as much as I was caught up in the romance of doing things the “old way”, we took the plunge and set up a Flash workstation.

Two days into working with it, I was hooked. Two weeks into it, I was ready to pull my hair out, because even with Glenn’s tutoring, I didn’t think I’d ever learn how to use the software. But, I got through it, and ended up doing a five minute pilot presentation on my own.

By then, Russ and I both knew that there was no going back. No more traditional X-sheets. No more cels, rolls of background paper, Graphic Zoomers, stinky trichloroethylene and alcohol to clean and fuse the xerographic line. No more vinyl paint and the struggle to comp the various levels. No more white cotton gloves.

No more Richardson RB300 animation stand with an ancient Bell and Howell 2709 on it.

No more KEM flatbed, nor 35mm mag stock and track reading. No more film editing, nor negative conforming. No more film lab – no more telecine. In fact, even the full name of our company, Perennial Pictures Film Corporation, seems an anachronism when we aren’t using film anymore.

I thought I would be bothered by the abandoning of the techniques and tools I had spent a lifetime learning. I was surprised how untrue that was. So, you can teach an old dog new tricks, I guess. And the old dog was able to pass along some of his new tricks to the younger dogs - namely Daryl Pyle and Charlie Cooper who animated most of the short.

When we started production on “Handycat” we had not yet created the model for a Flash production pipeline, and there were challenges along the way. A note of thanks here goes to Ashley Postlewaite at Renegade for taking the time to give us a tour of their studio and for generously sharing her considerable knowledge. Seeing that they could make it work gave me confidence that we could, too. And as a little aside here, from the time I was 14 years old and wrote Bill Hanna a letter sending him some of my work and asking a bunch of questions, to this day, I continue to be grateful that I am in an industry where there are so many just plain nice people who are willing and eager to share their time, knowledge and friendship.

In the new pipeline, traditional X-Sheets were gone and replaced by the Director’s Timeline that mimicked the Flash timeline with a dash of good old fashioned bar sheet thrown in. Traditional camera field sizes didn’t apply anymore we switched to doing everything that didn’t have a zoom or pan to a standard field size that could be done on 8 1/2 x 11 paper instead of the traditional 10 1/2 x 12 1/2. Letter sized paper (we continue to draw on paper though this may well change one of these days soon) allowed us to use inexpensive sheet fed scanners to input the drawings, and even saved money on silly things like scene folders and boxes because we could pick ‘em up at the office supply.

We had to figure out along the way who was going to “paint” the “cels” – the animator? An assistant? Someone who just did that? Well, it turned out to be a little of all three, and those kinds of decisions continue to evolve. And, who was going to scan stuff, and how do we cut the track and slug it into the Flash scene, and do we put the layouts into the Flash scenes or just hand the paper layouts to the animator? Thanks to Keith Myran, who used to run our camera among other things, for picking up a lot of these technical jobs. Even though the work was new to him, I had a sense of security knowing a trusted person was doing it.

It was a bit of a communications challenge to have our Layout/Background guy, Andy Friz, in Columbus, Ohio while we were in Indianapolis, but rather amazing that he could email both layouts and finished backgrounds our way and all we had to do was “plug ‘em in.”

I mentioned some of the traditional tools and techniques we had to give up. There were some other things that we had to “give up” that cause me no heartache at all. DUST! No more dust on the cels. That means if the designer wants to use a black or very dark background, dust isn’t an issue. RETAKES! In 35mm, one mistake in one frame of a scene and the whole thing has to be retaken. We used to try and limit the footage length on our scenes just to keep from having to do 90 ft. retakes. Now, you can see mistakes and fix them right then and there and the scenes can be as long as they need to be. And we can have 99 levels instead of just 4. And there isn’t any comping of paint, and an arm on one level and the body on another doesn’t have a “seam” anymore.

I mentioned footage just now. Well, there isn’t any “footage” anymore. So, how do you measure scene length? We’ve jokingly been saying “secondage” and maybe it’s going to stick

I can’t say enough good things about how well the Flash program has been designed. It does just about everything we want it to, and more.

Russ has learned how to use Final Cut Pro, and this, along with some sound software he got, allowed him to do all the sound mixing right here at the studio. In fact, we were able to do everything here in the studio with the exception of the dialogue and music recording and final transfer to Digibeta. The freedom to “try things out” that this gave us, was simply a marvel.

The recording session was great. Rob Paulsen did a wonderful job on Handycat. Larry Huber suggested we get June Foray to do the voice of Handycat’s customer, and what a grand suggestion that was. Not only did we get a great voice, but I now I get the chance to say I worked with one of the finest talents our industry has ever seen. What a lovely person. And she even “did” Rocky and Natasha for us!

And to close this rambling thing, I just want to say thanks to Fred, Eric, Larry, Therese, Claudia, Jack, Meredith and everyone else at Frederator/Nickelodeon for making this whole experience an extremely positive and enjoyable one. I for one, hope that it won’t be the last time we all work together.

In case you couldn’t tell from the above, I’m really happy with the way the whole project came down.

~Brian

We say goodbye to Just Plain Weird Week with something called “The Devil’s Ball”, which is actually a fragment from a much longer French film called “The Mascot” created by the great Russian animator Ladislas Starevish. Don’t look for any plot — most of that has been edited away in this version (although, for the record, the original is about a toy dog saving a little girl from scurvy, so rest assured this clip is just the tip of the iceberg as far as refined oddness goes.)

If the elegant creepiness of the animated puppets seems eerily familiar, you may be a child of the eighties. This same clip was rerun relentlessly on the old cable TV standby “Night Flight” (does anyone else remember that weekend goulash of rock videos, documentaries and stock footage?)

Monday we are off and dancing with another week of ReFrederator.

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Dave Kirwan

As the Nick Jr. line up goes, the cutest thing right after Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! has to be Wonder Pets. Each episode follows the adventures of three classroom pets, Linny the Guinea Pig, Ming-Ming Duckling, and Turtle Tuck, who travel around the globe helping to rescue baby animals that need their help all while singing. With no super-powers the team has to work together in order to solve problems.

I’m not sure what it is about this show but every time I see it on I’m drawn to it like a stoner to a screensaver. I think it has to do with the photo-puppetry animation that is used to create it. This animation style was created specifically for this series which allows the animators to manipulate photos of real animals. Doesn’t come cuter then the real thing! The amazing talent behind this is a studio called Little Airplane Productions, Inc..

Above is almost a full length episode of a funny one that was on youtube. The wonder pets have to go save a dog who has to go outside and potty. If this doesn’t put a smile on your face then you have no soul.

–Hadley

I love the music of Brian Wilson like nobody’s business. By extension, I’m a fan of Mr Darian Sahanaja and the Wondermints (Darian has served as Brian’s musical director on tour for the past few years). Since maybe 2003 or so, I’ve been thinking that if I ever were in a position to bring in someone fresh to compose for a cartoon, I’d plead for the musical services of Darian. Then, people would say, “Gee. That Frederator guy has fantastic taste! He’s ahead of his time! What a find he found in Sahanaja!” Well, the sad story here is that someone at Disney felt the same way. The Wondermints keyboardist has gone ahead and written the theme song to the network’s latest show, The Replacements. You can hear it (and see the opening titles) here. Congratulations, Disney, you jerks, for glomming onto the one idea I thought was original to me.

PS It appears that Darian has composed only the theme song and is not, in fact, the musician who scores the show. So I may still be safe.

PPS I should point out that Andy Paley, another musician who has had more than a little to do with Brian Wilson (once, in 2001, when I saw Wilson in concert at Jones Beach (“Hooray for Wilson!”), he remarked how Paley was “a good guy to have a beer with”), excellently scored Kyle Carrozza’s Random! Cartoons short, “Moobeard: The Cow Pirate.

Hanging on my wall is this piece of original Ub Iwerks production artwork — my kids gave it to me a while back. It’s unidentified, and I couldn’t quite place the film with which it was connected. Reviewing today’s cartoon “Funny Face,” I think I made a discovery.

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Dave Kirwan