Episode 77

The fourth episode in the series from The Nursery, Director Jacob Reinstein writes in on the experiences making the film.

MELISSA: How did you come up with this idea?

JACOB: I came up with the idea for the film and the series in general from my experience as a native New Yorker. Ever since I can remember hordes of people with way more money then I or anyone I grew up with flock to my city to make it their home. The majority of these people are as stale and boring as they come and as soon as they get here start acting like they’ve been here forever. The show is a mock nature documentary about just such a city where the enviornment and the native flora and fauna is designed to entice and then feed on the invasive plagues of hipster locusts.

MELISSA: How long did the project take you to complete?

JACOB: The project took about 6 months from start to finish.

MELISSA: What do you do when you get stuck creatively?

JACOB: I never get stuck creativley I am a dynamo.

MELISSA: Haha. Good to hear! What was the most challenging part of the film to animate?

JACOB: The most challenging part to animate was the transformation sequence and the scenes directly after it.

MELISSA: What are you working on now?

JACOB: The Nursery is now hard at work on our new series “14th Dimension ER”

MELISSA: Who has influenced or inspired you?

JACOB: Our influences span the vastness of time and space as we pay homage to the great gurus and masters who haunt our dreams and mock us from beyond the grave with their unrelenting genius. Vaugh Bode, Goya, Heironymous Bosch, Heinrich Kley, Ub Iwerks, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Peter Bruegel the elder, Durer, Jack Kirby , Stan Lee, Phillip K. Dick, Kazuya Tsurumaki, Friz Frieling, Ray Harryhausen, Werner Herzog, Terry Gilliam, Mobieus, Eric Powell, Tomek Baginski, Otto Messmer, and the sights sounds smells and violence of the great city of New York. Thank you again for including us on the site, we are truly flattered be in the company of such exceptional work.

MELISSA: You’re welcome, Jacob! It’s been a pleasure!

Just to clarify the members of the Nursery and their roles on this project are as follows…

Jacob Reinstein-writer/director/animator/voices/designer

Josh Burggraf-animation director/story boards

James Buran-CG animator/backgrounds artist/compositor

Chadwick Whitehead-animator

Jeremy Povlony,Adrian Mojica,Ben Angotti,Adam Kidder, Eric Watkins-colorists

And Now, A Note from Mukpuddy Animation…

“Hey there Flash Animators, we have this idea so if ya want to contribute please read on….

Basically we have written this episode for the new season of Sparkle Friends which starts out with the kids fighting over the tv remote, we then cut to a shot of the tv flicking through heaps of channels, thats when we thought instead of flicking through stuff we’ve done why not put the call out and get other animators to contribute Flash animation to an episode of Sparkle Friends!

We’re not looking for anyone to make anything new, just if they have some exsiting stuff that we can pick out a couple of seconds from! Obviously, the animation has to be completely original and owned by the artist, and they must be willing to give us the rights to use it anytime and anywhere Sparkle Friends is played. The clip must be broadcast quaility and, of course, suitable for kids! Also SWF’s ONLY PLEASE!!!

Email us at sparklefriends@gmail.com if you’re interested!!
Cheers!

—The Muks”
Good Luck Mukksters!!!! Let’s help our HomeBoys out yo!!!

Channel Frederator. Yr #1 SOURCE for Animation News & Interviews!
Embed The Fred!!!!
<3,
-JX!

Who Do YOU want to see On Channel Frederator?
Click here to subscribe to Channel Frederator or go to iTunes. Please send your suggestions to promotecartoons@gmail.com.

Wanna know what else is cool about Channel Frederator?!?

Seriously. If yr film or short is featured on CH.Fred, what better way to promote yrself than embedding the Fred on yr very own website, blog or myspace page? For the extreme Fredheads, there’s the ultimate “Always Fresh” embedding code.
What are you waiting for? All the cool kids are doing it. I have mine up on my Myspace Page now.
Don’t believe me? Take a look, and add me while yr at it!
Cheers!

Here Is a project by Camp Chaos.

Jimmy Chow is a kung fu master on a mission of vengeance: to kill his nemesis, the masked kung fu mistress called The Purple Lady. Along the way, he picks up mall jobs and battles the Purple Lady’s cleverly disguised army of assassins, The Purple Ninjas.

Bishop Animation was asked to create the animation for the piece. We did all the visuals from just after the intro forward. Bob Cesca and his crew provided us with the boards, character designs, colors, etc. We did all the models, animation, textures, effects, and rough comp. Bob did the final edit.

With the exception of some bits in the intro, the whole piece is 3D. It was a fun project to work on, since it is so different from the stuff we usually work on.

Be sure to watch it on Heavy and post your comments there.

-Floyd Bishop

Geez, these guys are good.

Mike Lazzo is one of the smartest folks ever in cable television. He started as a cartoon scheduler at SuperstationTBS, impressed everyone around and was named the founding programmer at Cartoon Network. While he was using his considerable left brain to make CN super successful, his right brain was churning ideas like crazy and his innovative production of Space Ghost: Coast to Coast begat his explosion of [adult swim].

Mike put together an incredible network team, made up entirely of not-the-usual-network-suspects, probably a large part of their success. They were focused on the viewers, all the viewers, and nothing but the viewers. They spoke to them in every way possible and were the first to have a deep understanding of how to actually use the internet to build the relationship between what’s essentailly a corporate enterprise and a diffuse bunch of geeks. And the audience has paid them back in spades with a loyalty that must be the envy of absolutely every other television executive in America.

–Fred

Bobby Chiu is not only an incredible artist, he’s a great instructor as well. He discusses not the How’s, but the Why’s of art. Set up his five serial sessions and just draw while listening to his monologues. He is sure to inspire.

Up at his home in Canada, Bobby started the Subway Sketch classes, encouraging people to jsut sketch what they see on the subway for a few hours. Bobby understands that the fire grows dim in our artists’ hearts sometimes, but here’s there to remind us what a gift we have in our craft.

Enjoy!
-Jake

From the website: “Character Business is a team of six who believe they have a mission to create more great characters and share them with the world in as many ways as they can!”

Established by a Finnish ad agency a few years ago, you can see their progress in the company’s showreel.

–Fred

Why is this man smiling?

You’d be smiling too if you were visiting Frederator Studios offices in New York City. Anttu Harlin is a producer from Character Business in Finland who was in New York for one day (yesterday) and wanted to introduce himself and his studio.

Character Business was established by an advertising/marketing agency in Helsinki to create TV shows and feature film. Check out their showreel here.

Much thanks to Kay Wilson Stallings from Nick Jr for sending Anttu over.

Wow! Wow! WOW! I could not ask for a better turn out for Fanboy. Thank you all who showed up last night to support the screening of Fanboy. It really was an amazing crowd of friends. For those who were unable to make it you were missed. There was great energy in the room and the night started off strong with the funny Infinite Goliath followed by Garlic boy and Larry Huber’s Bitboy. It was the night of “The Boys” and it was a blast. The very brave Eric Homan is always great as he handles the crowds and intros the films. (Better you than me buddy) Thanks everyone for the great encouraging comments and thank you Fred for allowing me to have my very own piece of animation that I can share with friends and loved ones for the rest of my life.

PS
Thanks Floyd and Veronica for coming down and fighting the traffic from San Diego to Burbank. Keep up the great work. (http://bishopanimation.blogspot.com/)

All the best,
Eric Robles

So we were on our way to the screening at Nickelodeon when some guy decided to drive his too tall truck into an overpass on the 5 north. To make a long story short, we arrived as the screening was letting out and missed everything.

We did get to meet Eric Robles and some of the guys from Red Eye Animation. They were nice enough to give us our own screening of “Fanboy”, and man, it’s good!

What really stood out to me was the animation. The short is computer animated, and has all the dimensionality of other computer animated pieces I have seen before, but the animation is done in a very 2D way. Characters snap from pose to pose, hold poses, etc. I don’t know that this would work as well as it does if it weren’t for the design of the characters and set. Normally, when a CG character doesn’t move, it kind of dies on screen. These characters don’t.

As computer animation becomes more mainstream on television, we’re starting to see more 2D techniques bleed into 3D animation, and vice versa… kinda like that guy carrying the peanut butter who bumped into the guy carrying chocolate. The artists involved did a great job on this piece.

It was a refreshing use of the medium, and it would be great to see an entire series like this.

-Floyd Bishop

The next Next New Network. Eric Beck hosts “Backyard FX” on Indy Mogul: “limited filmmaking with unlimited potential.”

“Indy Mogul is the network for everyone who watches DVD commentaries, signs up for behind-the-scenes videoblogs and podcasts, and dreams of being a filmmaker.

“It’s the network for anyone who picks up a camera and tries to make something more than a home video.

“It’s the network for anyone who’s ever bought fake blood, rigged homemade pyrotechnics, or filmed their own backyard stunts.

“If the next Star Wars gets made in a garage in Peoria, we hope that it shows up on Indy Mogul first.”