Channel Frederator, Episode 49

‘Pat’ Ventura has been one of my cherished cartoon companions since I got into the business in 1992. He was on my Hanna-Barbera Cartoons staff writing for Joe Barbera’s Tom & Jerry Kids Show when John Kricfalusi introduced us and suggested I talk to Pat about a revival of Screwball Squirrel. Pat went on to be the first creator I made shorts with and was the person responsible for convincing me that in cartoons “short” meant “7 minutes” (I wanted to make them three minutes!).

After a great re-invention of Tex Avery’s George & Jr, his original Yucky Duck and Sledgehammer O’Possum (which got me in a bunch of trouble), Pat came over with us to Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Soon you’ll be hearing about his Random! Cartoons short.

This week on Channel Frederator we’re featuring my favorite cartoon of Pat’s: Jamal the Funny Frog and his little sister Penny the Tadpole. Unique character design, brilliantly subtle background paintings, and sublime voice characterizations set off funny and heartwarming relationships, and it’s all topped off with classic, vintage needle drop orchestras. Pat’s one of the few contemporary filmmakers who’s as influenced by silent films and the Fleischer brothers as by Tex Avery and Looney Tunes.

–Fred

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Part IV of my salacious re-cap of my trip to the Ottawa International Animation Festival last week.

It’s Jerrytime!: The Brute

This category, New Media Competition, absorbs the category of Animation Short Made for the Internet. In fact, the terms ‘New Media’ and ‘Internet’ were both used in describing the fourteen films.

Even though these cartoons were made for the Internet, most were new to me, and, after doing cursory googling, I could dig up few on the web (even images were hard to find). Our Friends of Frederator© Tom Kyzivat and Zee Risek had their films, “Prey” and “The Z-Files”, included (Zee – why was this version of your film longer than the version we screened in last year’s Nicktoons Network Animation Festival?). The JibJab boys were represented, too.

Two Things Human Beings Really Love to Do

I enjoyed “Two Things Human Beings Really Love to Do” by Italy’s Luca Frattini and “Perestroika: Mushy Room” by Ryosuke Aoike. I guess I would’ve gone with the jury in choosing “It’s Jerrytime!: The Brute”, one of two Jerrytime! films by Jerry and Orrin Zucker here, as my favorite short of the competition. You can see their Jerrytime! cartoons over on their video blog (or subscribe to their podcast). Congratulations, everyone.

Wow. This weekend I truly learned just how powerful YouTube has become. Sometime before the sun came up on Saturday, my new cartoon “Hebrew Crunk” was posted at the top of the “Recently Featured” section on the YouTube homepage. By the time I checked my email at 10:00 am that morning, 71,000 people had viewed it and there was 430 comments. Within a couple hours…on a Saturday morning. Incredible.

As the week progressed and my cartoon worked it’s way down from the top of the front column, the views continued to mount up but less so each day. 403,344 so far on day 5. Let no one dismiss YouTube for a while. It’s where the action is these days.

Dan Meth

Today we witness the tragic spectacle of Flip the Frog denying his noble amphibian heritage. By time he made “Funny Face,” one of his last films, the once proud puddle jumper had all frog references in his movie credits removed — now he was just plain Flip (”Flip” — how catchy! How trendy! How sad!) Then he underwent excruciating cosmetic surgery to have a talking Halloween mask of a human boy attached to his own God given slimy head — all in pursuit of a forbidden inter-species romance with a little girl. Oh, call me old fashioned, but this whole affair makes me r-e-a-l-l-y uncomfortable. And besides, by this point, it’s not like he was looking all that much like a frog in the first place!

Not that the cutey-pie in question has any right to throw stones. She obviously had Betty Boop’s face grafted onto her skinny little Ub Iwerks designed body.

P.C. alert! Some cartoon characters of Asian and African decent show up, decked out in full stereotypical display.

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Dave Kirwan

When my friend Rita Street suggested we start searching out cute cartoons for girls from 8 to 18 (or 80), it fit right into some stuff we’d been talking about around the office, where Cute Overlaod (and every other cutness blog is a huge hit (yes, someone has too much time on their hands).

So I figured I’d kick things off with one of the projects we’re working on, one of the truly cutest shows on Earth right now: Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Bob Boyle’s new show on Nick Jr.. I think Bob can’t help it, no matter what he draws, whether it’s Wubbzy or the characters from his boys’ comedy show on Jetix, Yin Yang Yo!.

If you’ve got any cute cartoons for us to link to, please let Hadley Hudson (from Radar Cartoons) know at hadley@radarcartoons.com.

–Fred

Part III of my mouth-watering thoughts on this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival.

FedEx: Stick

The category of Commissioned Animation was broken into three sub-categories: Promotional Animation; Music Video; and Television Animation for Adults.

Promotional Animation I.E. commercials. Going back over the list of these 17 spots, ranging from 15 seconds to a minute, it’s sort of tough to remember all them. I mean, heck, I saw them for just a few seconds a week ago, after all. There were some nifty ads, promos, and PSAs by J.J. Sedelmaier and our friends at InterSpectacular. We saw two of the United Airlines ads and a pair of Dodge spots. Basically, everything was pretty much fun (the fact that I, along with clearly a lot of people, have the attention span of a poodle often makes these shorter films come as a relief). Ultimately, my favorite spot was David Hulin’s spot for FedEx, “Stick”. Watch this film here. If you’re like me and don’t watch too much TV, you’ll get a kick out of seeing this for the first time.

Music Video There were five films in competition here. Too bad for the four really good ones that they were up against a really great one. I won’t apologize if you’re tired of Melissa and me always raving about “Jason Forrest: War Photographer” on this blog but it’s really that good. The response at the screening for the film was certainly among the best of the festival, too, so we’re not alone. Joel Trussell created this film to Forrest’s song. We featured it on Channel Frederator early on, and you can see it here.

Television Animation for Adults So. Seven films made it into this category, five of which were The Brothers Pistov shorts. Now, in full disclosure mode, “The Brother Pistov” is the creation of Random! cartoon creator Mr Lincoln Peirce. Also, I really enjoy them, and they were a highlight for me on Cartoon Network’s Sunday Pants show. However, five of them? Not only did I think it might’ve been nice to see some other shows represented, but having five nominated probably split the votes. For what it’s worth (nada), I would’ve selected the Pistov short “Dangerous Situations” as not only my favorite of the five, but also my favorite of the category. All the Pistov shorts were directed by Dan Sousa at Global Mechanics.

The Ottawa jury, finally, chose “Journey to the Disney Vault” by Robert Marianett, David Wachtenheim, and Glenn Steinmacher as its favorite TV Animation for Adults winner. “FedEx: Stick” nabbed Promotional Film honors, with Jamie Caliri’s “United Airlines: Dragon” getting Honorable Mention (Caliri directed the end credits of The Series of Unfortunate Events movie, worth the price of admission alone). And “Jason Forrest: War Photographer” won best Music Video. And, the Grand Prize for Commissioned Animation went to “FedEx: Stick”. Congratulations, everyone.

“Robot Tea Party” by Amanda Visell

Hey, Chicagoans. One of my favorite artists ever – Amanda Visell – is in a group show with Jimmy Pickering and Michael Slack at DvA Gallery, 2568 North Lincoln Avenue. For those of you not in the Chi-town area, you can view the art online here. If you go (and you should if you can), make sure you steal me something. Thanks.

“Sweet Dream” by Jimmy Pickering

“Custard Stork” by Michael Slack

Ahoy Mateys!
This be yer Cap’n Jeaux Janovsky speaking, wanting to let ye know I didn’t want to be leavin’ ye with nothin’ to do on yer cursed Lunch Break. I done took the liberty o’ taking a break from workin’ on the Fredex project, to get something in front o’ yer bloodshot pupils.

This young, ruff and tuff lass is none other than Nappy-Head Rhonda! How she get’s that blasted bandanna round her thick, poofy, sea-mist plastered orange hair is beyond me bucko! Aye, but she has a beautiful smile… but don’t let it fool ye… she’ll rough you up something good in the face if you make fun of her! You should see the last poor kid she hospitalized after he called her Napoleon Dynamite!
(insert Lightning Crack here!)

This here be Barnacle Billy! When Billy was hatched out of the incubator capsule, the scientists working on the Peg Leg Orphanage Project let out gasps of terror so loud, you could hear it ringin’ outside the underwater laboratory and out across the 7 seas! The poor wee lad was covered head to toe in crusty barnacles! Despite his hideousness and horrible stench, Barnacle Billy is a happy camper, and one of me favorite of the new batch of Mutant Pirate Babies!
I’ll be leavin’ ye now with a few quotes from a few more GPK hall o’ famers!
“My head has been far, far away from GPK…pretty much a distant memory, but I can appreciate what you are up to. It all looks pretty creative and exciting. Keep up the good work.”- James Warhola
(Yes, he is related to THAT Warhol!)
“They have the potential of translating well into trading cards, greeting cards, editorial illustration or even children’s books. If you haven’t done it already, make sure that your characters are copyrighted!”- Layron DeJarnette
(CHECK-MARKED!)
These 2 cuddly Scallywags are still available for some tender loving care! (Not the artists, although ye really should go check out their sites! I be meanin’ the Mutant Pirate Babies!)
Let me know iffin’ yer interested in adopting them!
-JX!

A while back, I did a post about Steven Scott, and his Channel Frederator Featured Film of Episode 23, “Suburban Harmony”. Steven is part of a band called Telementry Orchestra. Their tunes are catchy, and damn do they have some great animated music videos! Steven alerted me to his friend Dael Oates, who came up with an idea for another on of Telementry’s songs, “Under the Cherry Tree” which he worked on with the help of Animal Logic.

Both 2D and 3D techniques were used in making this video about two characters who travel on two different trains in parallel worlds; the boy from a dirty city, and the girl from a beautiful cherry tree orchard. They end up crossing into each other’s worlds and desperately try to stop their trains so they can be together, only to end up where the other began.

Dael Oates had an interesting story of how he came up with the concept: “I originally based it on two friends of mine. I thought the abstract narrative worked perfectly with their troubled relationship. However, I eventually realized that it wasn’t only about them, it related to my relationship too. My partner Michelle picked up on it straight away, very strange! The character actually looks a little like her too, by accident!

Everything is roses with us now! So there does need to be a scene added to the end where two characters meet up - maybe for the sequal! I learned a lot from this. I was so entrenched in this project and the production that I failed to see what it was telling me until the end.

Funny how subliminally that found its way into the story….. but maybe most relationships have times like this; where people are traveling on different tracks…? It’s a little existential!”

Dael, we love your film, and knowing how it came to be is even more rewarding. Thanks for your candidness!

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Melissa

Just Plain Weird Week trundles on at ReFrederator with “The Snowman,” a 1932 classic from Ted Eshbaugh. This is the cheerful story of a jolly little boy and his jolly pet seal who live above the jolly arctic circle, having a jolly old time with all the other jolly animals until one day when they build a snowman who comes to life AND BECOMES A HIDEOUS, FLESH EATING MONSTER WHO WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND DEVOUR YOU ALIVE EVEN IF YOU HIDE IN A CHURCH, BECAUSE HE’S EVIL!!! EVIL, I TELL YOU!!!

Yeah, well, this is the same Eshbaugh who gave us “The Sunshine Makers”, so you knew the ride was gonna be a little twisted. No telling how many baby boomers sought therapy in their middle years as a direct result of multiple childhood veiwings of this golden oldie.

And things just get weirder tomorrow.

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Dave Kirwan