Channel Frederator Blog

[Read more…]

This week’s episode of Channel Frederator, Episode 25, really got some great feedback on our blog:

About My Little Obsessive Compulsive Friend:
That was really beautifully drawn and animated. I love pencil tests. - VoodooPuff
Very unique idea, and very well animated. It’s always nice to see someone animate the old-fashioned way, without so much software. - ekosix
I Love this. A gutsy move to show rough pencil animation. - jimmynock

In-Out:
I was surprised to see that so much emotion still came through without any mouths. You could almost see the smiles at the end. It also had a great Dilbert-esque concept that was very funny. - ekosix
The expressions that conveyed so much without having to resort to the easy and obvious mouth was what amde it. Well done. - tuomime

“The Irok-Z Song” by the High Speed Scene:
Interesting and well done. Maybe quality could’ve been a bit better - AJD08
I think the quality level was important [Read more…]

I went to the Producer’s Show at CalArts last year with Eric Homan, and was immediately taken by this student film by Steven MacLeod. Completely hand drawn, it’s one of those refreshing films that reinforces my belief that you don’t need a Shrek budget to produce some truly stunning character animation. This film has been in the Munich Film Festival, and recently the Philadelphia Film Festival. Here’s what Steven says about his inspiration behind the film:

“Srangely enough I was going to make a film about a prisoner and a mouse trying to escape (been done a million times), only the story when in circles for about four months, but I drew one picture, which ended up as the poster, of just the mouse who was compulsive and I instantly connected with the story and finished it in two months for school. I myself can’t leave any jigsaw puzzles out on a [Read more…]

One of the most important parts of the Channel Frederator community (beside you, our faithful viewers) are our filmmakers. Every single cartoon in each episode is submitted by producers from around the world. And the high quality of our podcast is because of their talent and persistence.

When we launched in November were we getting hundreds of entries every month; it’s trickled down to a few a week. I’m not sure whether that’s because it’s so hard to make a cartoon (which, of coure, it is), whether new filmmakers don’t know about us, or whether everyone’s a little bored. But, we’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves to goose the process.

Thanks cartoonists. Thanks submitters. Thanks viewers.

–Fred

Channel Frederator viewer ekosix summarizes Fly Boy quite perfectly: “I never realized how creepy old ladies can be as an animal.” Eric Merola shows us how scary kitten grannies are.

Says Merola, “I wanted to utilize photo collage, no drawing. Back in 2000, nearly no one was using photo collage on a regular basis, now, you see it on every TV network in almost every station ID and show open - in one form or another. I was always highly influenced by irreverent cartoons like Beavis and Butthead, South Park, etc. I also like to try to write and animate the unexpected. When deciding to explore animation…I wanted to create something totally fresh, not imitating or mimicking anything. Fly Boy has been pitched to every conceivable network in the US, twice. Surprisingly it’s been getting a lot more attention in Europe & Asia. I am in the middle of producing more episodes, and plan [Read more…]

Nylon Motion brings us back to the geeky grunged out days of 1970s high school in their animated music video for “The Iroc-Z Song” by High Speed Scene. With a look and feel very reminscent of School House Rock, these guys really nailed it with this vid. The song sort of reminds me of “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus, another highly enjoyable ode to adolescent angst.

Executive Producer Joe Montalbano says, “Once the decision was made as to the look, era, and feel of the video, we realized that traditional animation was key in making it work. It’s a tremendous investment in terms of time and labor, but the difference is something that’s immediately obvious. For example, most of the backgrounds were actual water-colored paintings that were created by artist Mari Inukai.

The video begins with a very tight interpretation of the lyrics, but as we move along, it definitely slides to a fantasy [Read more…]

You might have noticed a credit at the bottom of our Frederator blogs: Website imagined and created by Davidville. David Karp from Davidville is the man who “imagined and created” Channel Frederator too. And the main Frederator site, and The Wubbcast, and just about everything we do on the internet. And his colleague Annie Chiu designed the logo and the website.

I won’t go into lots of detail here, but suffice it to say that when I asked David to build us a cartoon version of Channel 102, he looked at me sideways and said, “You don’t want that. It’s very old school, very 2000.” As only a 19 year old could.

The rest is Channel Frederator history. David produced our first few months of episodes (with Eric Homan and Melissa Wolf programming; now Mike Glenn has taken over the producing and editing chair), and David is inventing other things with us.

Thanks David. Thanks [Read more…]

When I was growing up I worked at my parents’ pharmacy, and the first lesson they taught me was how to say “Thank you” to our customers. The lesson always stuck with me.

As we’re on the eve of airing our 100th cartoon, I wanted to thank you for loyally subscribing to Channel Frederator. Thank you for calling, emailing, and commenting about the cartoons and their creators. Having spoken with many of them over the months, I know they appreciate your attention more than we do. And thank you for sending in your pictures in our t-shirts (like the ones above) and videos; we’ll be sharing many of them in the weeks to come.

Sincerely, Thank You, everyone. You make it fun.

–Fred

Ian Etra’s short film, In-Out is a humorous story told through character animation that seeks to communicate the frustration of a meaningless job – and the joy of transcending it – through the eyes and body language of two mouth-less office mates. Based (loosely) on actual work experience, this is Ian Etra’s recently completed thesis film for NYU’s Center for Advanced Digital Applications. “In-Out” was featured in last year’s “Nextoons: The Nicktoons Film Festival”, and I have recently heard that it will be in this year’s Annecy Film-/ Festival. Congrats Ian!

Here’s what Ian has to say about his film:

“The main inspiration for In-Out is pretty much every job I’ve ever had up until now, and the jobs that seem to preoccupy most other people I know. Not that they’re really all that terrible, but I guess I’ve spent too much time thinking about what it all really means, and from that perspective [Read more…]

We seem to end up with continuing themes in voicemail each week. This week’s theme is watching Channel Frederator at work to kill time. We’re proud to be there for you guys… (please note that we don’t condone watching Channel Frederator while driving)

voicemail1
voicemail2
voiecmail3

Dear Frederator,
thank you for 24 great episodes and especially for number 24! It really rocked!
Now you are 24! That is amazing! That is the time to celebrate.
So my question: What is a goal or event that you will celebrate when you have reached it?
Stay cool, says
Andreas

Funny you should ask, Andreas. We’ll actually be celebrating our 100th cartoon during the week of April 17th. Look out for some special add-ons in that episode!

Dear Frederator,
i think you should make one podcast be a compilation of the top rated cartoon music videos. some those music videos are awesome! like suburban harmony, groove monkey, hell yes (the robot one), and that one [Read more…]