Channel Frederator Blog

Channel Frederator inventor David reports “Our downloads are actually high as ever. [After only two days] Episode 4 has been downloaded 76,000 times.”

Filmmaker Dave Quion has blessed us at Channel Frederator with his CalArts sophomore student film from last year (yes, that means he’s now a junior). Go see it now at our Website or by subscribing at iTunes (it’s free). If you like Dave’s work (and you will), track down his freshman student film, “Lobster Schmobster”, now making the rounds with our friends at Spike & Mike.

Thanks for the film, Dave.

And, everyone else, just wait until you see what we’ve got for next week’s episode.

– Eric

Featured in this week’s episode of Channel Frederator is a stop-motion short by Mr Max Winston. As with some other shorts, “House of Wane” was deemed “not quite right” for this year’s Nextoons: The Nicktoons Film Festival, to which it was submitted. Not so for Channel Frederator; we think it’s a perfect fit. Here’s a little bit about the filmmaker, written by the filmmaker:

“I am from Sonoma, California, and I’m 21 years old. I’m currently studying at CalArts in the Experimental Animation program. I love all kinds of animation, but stop-motion has always stood out to me throughout my life. It has a much different feel than hand-drawn or computer animation, because when you watch stop-motion, you are actually watching a real thing move on a screen in front of you. Even if it doesn’t necessarily look more realistic, you know that it is an actual physical object moving by itself, and [Read more…]

This week’s Channel Frederator episode (#4) features three wildly different shorts. To kick things off is “I Like Pandas”, a Flash film by Canadian filmmaker Jessica Borutski. I could write a wonderful bio for Jessica, but since AWN has already posted one, I’ll steal theirs (including their punctuation):

Jessica Borutski is a 21-year-old animator from Ottawa, Ontario. Her film titled I Like Pandas is her first short film. In 2001, Jess was awarded first place in Teletoon�s Animation Scholarship Competition. She then went on to study animation at Algonquin College. After graduating she landed her first job at Spumco, where she animated on The New Ren and Stimpy. She lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia for a year and worked in the industry there as well. Jess continues to work for animation studios in both cities, from her home in Ottawa.

You may have seen Jessica’s film already (it’s hugely popular and was even screened [Read more…]

Leo Laporte has one of the most popular podcasts in the world (right now it’s #6) called This Week in Tech. His enthusiasm for us this week spiked our subscribers and our downloads by tens of thousands. Thanks Leo.

I don’t think I ask for much, just a few phone calls. What do I get? Nothing.

Doesn’t anyone read the blog? Or watch Channel Frederator? Or do I smell?
–Fred

I really love working on Frederator’s Nextoons: The Nicktoons Film Festival for the Nicktoons Network. Each year we — festival co-director Rita Street and I, along with Melissa Wolfe — receive hundreds of great films for the annual August event. However, many of the shorts we get aren’t always the most appropriate for a kids’ cartoon channel. So, when Fred presented me the idea for Channel Frederator just a few short weeks ago with the notion that we’d be a lot less limited in programming, the first thing that came to mind was that it’d be a great opportunity to re-visit some of those films that couldn’t get by Nicktoons Network’s Standards & Practices, and present them to cartoon lovers worldwide. The very first person I contacted was Vera Brosgol, who for Nextoons had submitted “Snow-Bo”, the film she made along with Jenn Kluska at Sheridan College. It wasn’t right for Nextoons, but it sure is right for Channel [Read more…]

Our teammate David writes: Just as soon as I felt the disappointment of Apple taking down our New & Notable spot I was completely overwhelmed by this.

The top promotional spot on iTunes! We don’t mean to keeping blowing our own horns, but your support of our channel keeps overwhelming us.

Did we mention how much we’d like you to call us to let us know what you think? 620-402-0254

We’ve just posted Episode 3, and you’ll notice on the bottom right of our site the voicemail number.

Call! We’d love to hear your comments, both good and bad. And we’ll try and use them in upcoming weeks. Thanks in advance.

Channel Frederator is already making an incredible impact, reports Kevin, our West Coast honcho.

You’ll remember that last’s week’s first cartoon (Episode 2) is animator Joel Trussell’s film of Jason Forest’s song War Photographer.

Well, it seems that as of last Tuesday morning –before our post– Joel’s CD was number 28,000+ in the Amazon.com rankings. But, 24 hours later, the CD had jumped to 6000! A jump of more than 21,000 positions upward! And it’s stayed way up there; today it’s at 8000.

We knew we were getting popular, but we had no idea Channel Frederator would be affecting commerce quite so quickly.

Remember, you’ve got the power.