Shown on Heavy.com, and animated by Mondo Media (who also animates “Happy Tree Friends” as well as other mini shows like “Inspector Beaver” and “Trailer Court”), this “Shirley Q. Liquor” short is anything but subtle. Love it or hate it. We’re pretty sure you won’t be indifferent.
Illustration by Craig Kellman
By Amber Ray / metro new york
For animation fans, every Tuesday is like Christmas. On a weekly basis, Channel Frederator serves as podcasting’s manic Santa Claus, delivering the gift of uninhibited shorts to computers and video players around the world. Masterminded by the aficionados at Frederator Studios, the independent cartoon house responsible for some of Nickelodeon’s most successful series (The Fairly Odd Parents, Chalk Zone, My Life as a Teenage Robot), the podcast and its red robot mascot have built a cult following of indie cartoonphiles.
If the Zoloft dot was a music video, it would be Wintersleep’s “Fog”. It is beautifully animated, well told, and you’re really rooting for the little guy to find some sunshine.
Says Mirco Chen “The Fog video came originally from Jud Haynes of Wintersleep. The band had designed a small storybook that went with there CD’s featuring the main character of the video. It had a great old fashioned children’s book illustration style to it and Jud brought it to us to animate the video. With the help of some great designs and backgrounds from Scott Macdonald we decided to try a rough pencil crayon kind of look. We tried to keep it in a children’s book type of style, hoping it would look more like illustration come to life. I love the old NFB films that used techniques like paint on glass and sand to animate with, they always had such a great sense [Read more…]
Rob Renzetti has been a steady companion of ours for longer than he would like to admit. He created Mina at Hanna-Barbera as part of our original shorts laboratory What A Cartoon! Having always loved it, when we started Oh Yeah! Cartoons at Nickelodeon in 1998 it was the first show I wanted to do. “The Vampire…” was one of six shorts we did.
When asked what inspired him to write “Mina”, Renzetti says, “When I was a small child I was able to get over my fear of Nighttime Monster Attacks by convincing myself that I could convince any lonely monster that came my way that I would make a better friend than a victim. This mental security blanket from my childhood was the start of the idea for Mina and the Count.”
Of course, Rob’s legions of fans know him as the creator of the hit series My Life as a Teenage Robot, but how [Read more…]
When you’re not a bird, flying isn’t always easy…The care and detail Sinem Sakaoglu put into her film “Bo” made want to learn more about how she came up with the idea, and how it all came together. She was a student at animation-school-hamburg when she made “Bo” as her graduate film.
How did you come up with the idea for “Bo”
I had scribbled some notes and designs of this kinda strangely-wired, kinda charming guy who was obsessed with flying - and the ways in which he would fail to do so…Being originally Turkish, I was heavily influenced by the absurd sense of humor and the wonderful characters of my childhood’s weekly Turkish comic & satire magazines. Bo was born out of a mixture of this influence, that of some of the 40s and 50s American animation (Terrytoons, UPA cartoons, etc) and the fact that at the age of 13, I was still [Read more…]
“Josh W.” was created when John Semerand, Creative head at Quiet Man, asked his daughters Emma and Dara to tell him bedtime stories. They wrote down all of the words to the Josh W. tales, and later John animated them to create a series of shorts about this curious little boy. There’s no hidden message in “Flashlight”, which is exactly what made it so refreshing to watch.
When they’re not producing Josh W. shorts, Quiet Man produces television commercials, and just recently animated a piece of Barnyard The Movie which is scheduled to be released some time this year.
Thanks to everyone for a job well done!
Channel Frederator has reached its 26th Episode, and its 100th FILM! Coming in at #100 is the festival favorite, “An Eye For Annai” animated by Jon Klassen and Dan Rodrigues. The premise is simple–Annai is searching for…an eye. The title makes me smile. The animation is clean and simple. Truth be told, everything about this film is endearing.
Says Jon Klassen, “This film was done by me and Dan Rodrigues in our third year at Sheridan College’s Classical Animation Program. I can’t really remember how the concept came about–we wanted to do an idea that would be best told through animation, and we wanted an excuse to go to a lot of different places really quickly. In terms of execution, all the animation is hand drawn and scanned
frame-by-frame, but we coloured our lines so you can’t really see the
drawing. The backgrounds are a mix of computer, hand drawing, and scanned textures, and [Read more…]
I’m really proud of the launch of ReFrederator.
Completely leaving aside the idea of setting up yet another production (and a daily one at that) that doesn’t generate the money it takes to run it, we’re stoked about the ideas involved.
We get to honor the great cartoons and cartoonists who build the business we work in.
We get to bypass the media giants whose great (seriously) businesses are so big that they can no longer support things that audience like, but not enough to be on television.
Our company is small, so we can all talk about the creative and business decisions that affect our lives and your enjoyment.
And everyone gets a laugh.
–Fred
Most of you watch Channel Frederator on your computer screens. According to the mail you send us you’re either waiting to afford a new iPod or waiting for a next generation, “better” device. Even though our network is compatible with other gadgets that your own, like the Sony PSP or an Archos Pocket Video player, or even your phone or Palm, none of you really uses them.
I initially conceived Channel Frederator as an “old school” (a quote from David) online cartoon network, but luckily David convinced me the convenience of the portable digital player would win our hearts.
Boy, was he right.
Thanks for subscribing.
–Fred
