In 1953, Disney released “Ben and Me”. This Oscar winning short was adapted from the children’s book of the same title, by Robert Lawson. While the book was based on more historical fact, the film aims for entertainment. The film serves both as a sort of biography of Ben Franklin, and an overview of the American revolution.
Have a great Fourth of July weekend, and don’t throw fire crackers with your animating hand!
Before you hit the road, watch the classic 50s cartoon “Stop Driving Us Crazy” and follow its advice. Remember: “Reckless driving is a sin”. Rusty the Martian says so!
Commissioned by the Methodist Church. Animated at Creative Arts Studio. Character design by Cliff Roberts. Music by Benny Golson with Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers. Also, Howard Morris does the voice. (He was “Uncle Goofy”–among other characters–on Your Show of Shows!)
Today’s Channel Frederator Awards episode features our Best Design winner. We see a lot of amazing cartoons float through here and it was so difficult to choose nominees for this category.
Nina Paley’s “Sita Sings the Blues” trailer was a quick add to our list. The design on this film is truly unique, and Nina managed to find ways of fitting numerous different styles into the same cartoon. “Carlos, My Name Is Not” was the little film that could. This film oozes french influence. Musician Maxime Robin worked with illustrator Pascal Blanchet to create this super-swanky and hip music video. Finally, Dave Wasson was another must-have to our nomination list, and the one to take home the prize for “Max and the Pigeon Incident”!
An industry vet, Dave has had a hand in a countless number of cartoon series. My favorites include the “Max”(see the two “Max” cartoons in Channel Frederator Episodes 58 and 13) and [Read more…]
Hanoch Piven is a unique illustrator who combines painting and 3-D objects in his artwork. He is best-known for memorable portraits of famous people, both real and fictitious. Behold Borat:
On his website, Pivenworld, you can see examples of his work. He also has a Drawger blog. And the book Faces: 78 Portraits from Madonna to the Pope contains a great gallery of merry mugs.
Now Piven’s art stars in a show called Superstuff, airing on Hop! TV (the Israeli pre-school channel). It’s fascinating to watch a pair of hands juggle a pile of miscellaneous junk until it’s transformed into a recognizable image and then springs to life. The show uses mostly real time live-action footage, but there’s a bit of stop motion animation sprinkled in.
More clips from the show after the jump… [Read more…]
Here at Channel Frederator headquarters, we consider Cartoonist of the Year to be our most prestigious award. This award goes to the one person in cartoons who has made the biggest impact on the industry. We ask for input from all of our viewers, then argue fiercely about it here at Channel Frederator headquarters. This year was tough. We had a few great suggestions. In the end, however, we really thought that Marjane Satrapi, creator behind Persepolis, truly deserved this award. Eric Homan, Channel Frederator’s President of Programming, wrote a great tribute to Marjane for the Channel Frederator Awards program, so I’ll leave it to him! - Carrie
When we created the Cartoonist of the Year category for last year’s inaugural Channel Frederator Awards, we decided the honor would go to the person who brought the most attention to the world of animation in recent months. Choosing our first recipient, John Lasseter, was an easy call. Even easier was choosing this year’s winner, Marjane Satrapi.
Ms Satrapi, who co-directed and co-wrote Persepolis with Vincent Paronnaud, based the movie on her own autobiographical graphic novels. By making the film, she’s given the average American adult audience everything it craves in its movie-going experience – a French, hand-drawn, [Read more…]
In this Tuesday’s episode, we have all kinds of exciting news. Firstly, we’ve announced our Cartoonist of the Year! We consider this award our most prestigious out of all of the Channel Frederator Awards as it’s designed to recognize the one person who made the biggest impact on animation this past year. Look out for a whole separate blog entry about winner, Marjane Satrapi later today.
Our other winners announced today include the winner for Best Flash Film and the Kiwi Award winner!
Flash has changed the animation industry forever. Allowing filmmakers to do everything in one fairly self-contained program, Flash has given life to a grass-roots animation movement. [Read more…]
Click on the pic to watch the episode in question.
The Channel Frederator Awards are Here!!! It was a hot, feverish, and fierce competition!!!
Find out if your favorite cartoons claimed the Big, Red, Hunk of Burning Fred!!!
Watch which film took home a Freddie for Best Flash Video! Was your pick even close? Our favorite Flash film Flashes so bright, you just might need some Frederator Branded shades!
Kiwi fruit is good. But Kiwi animators are better. Find out which animating New Zealanders won in our Kiwi Award!
And finally, our Cartoonist of the Year Award went to Marjane Satrapi for her work and her film, Persepolis! She is Awesome. We wholeheartedly think you will all agree!!!
Watch all the nominees at channelfrederator.com
-Jeaux Janovsky
Disney/Pixar’s “Wall·E” had a huge weekend, with over 62 million dollars in it’s first weekend. It has been a great year so far for animated films. Have you seen “Wall·E” yet? What did you think?
Apple has posted what they are calling an animated comic for “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army”. It feels a lot like an advanced animatic more than anything, but it is a pretty nice piece. I’m not sure if they plan on doing any more episodes than just this one, but it would be great to see a whole series of them.
