Channel Frederator Blog

I’ve posted about Frederator Veteran John Fountain, before. Well, here’s an even better Posting!!!
John Fountain took some time to answer some Channel Frederator Qs early November 2006. Thanks for the Interview John!!!

Ch.Fred: How long have you been animating or drawing?
JF: I’ve literally been drawing nonstop for as long as I can remember. I have no memories of a time when I wasn’t either drawing, looking at drawings or thinking about drawings. Sometimes I wish I DID have some fragment of a notion of what it was like to not draw… maybe I’d be able to use that fragment to relax for five whole minutes.
My “career” in animation began in ‘95 when I was hired by a small commercial production company in my hometown of Kalamazoo.
Up to that point, I had never thought of pursuing animation as a career because I had a fairly warped perception of what the process entailed. I imagined that it was more or less akin to an assembly line of workers who drew cel after cel after cel - all of which were nearly identical - tedious and far from creative. Little did I know about character designers, storyboard artists, directors, colorists, etc.

So, once I got the job at the production company I quickly discovered just how misinformed I’d been. It soon became apparent that far more was involved in the animation process and every aspect of it was equally as fascinating. I was hooked. Unfortunately, the company went under and I was laid off. Penniless and without any job leads or viable connections, I packed up a car and drove cross country to
Southern California.
And that’s where I really discovered what the animation business was all about.
The ’story’ of how I got into animation is actually laced with a lot more drama and detail… I actually get paid semi-frequently to go to schools and universities to give a lecture about it because it’s got a real ‘if this guy can do it, surely I can too’ sort of inspirational Forrest Gump-ish quality to it.

But I’ll stop with the details since this is getting really long*. (*Editor’s Note- The Novel will be coming out soon!-JX!)

Who are some of your influences?
Ah, my influences… I could thank them and damn them in the same breath.
One of the things that has been both a blessing and a curse in my career is that my influences are all over the map, so-to-speak. I believe that is in large part responsible for the fact that I’ve never focused on one style of drawing or storytelling and consequently, my work has been called ‘undisciplined’.
Anyhow, here’s a partial list:
Film: George Lucas- perhaps the greatest overall artistic influence in
my life.
Television: Jim Henson- ‘Sesame Street’ and ‘The Muppet Show’.
Music: Peter Gabriel- a genius that will likely never receive nearly
enough credit for his brilliant innovations in music and multimedia.

Comics: Kyle Baker, Evan Dorkin, Robert Crumb and many others.
Comic Strips: Charles Schulz, Berke Breathed, George Herriman, Bill Griffith, Bill Watterson, Gary Larson, Patrick McDonnell and many others.
Painting: Picasso, Magritte, Dali, Munch and many others.
Literature: J.R.R. Tolkien, Moliere, Douglas Adams, Greek Mythology, the Bible and virtually any books pertaining to philosophy.
Animation: Obviously, Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and all of the masters. Nick Park and Aardman… Over the course of the past 20 years, I’ve been increasingly influenced by anime - specifically the works of Miyazaki and anything from Gainax.
Some of the most important influences in my animation career however have been people that I’ve worked with and call my friends - Shawn Murray, Chris Graham, Ira Sherak, Louie del Carmen, Rudi Berden, Ian Graham, Rob Goodin and many others. If these guys hadn’t let me peek over their shoulders while they worked, I’d have drowned in animation ignorance LONG ago.

Where were you born?
A small town called Kalamazoo, Michigan which happens to host the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International at which I will be speaking this year. (www.kafi.kvcc.edu for details)
Kalamazoo is sort-of an idyllic small town - almost Rockwellian. That storybook upbringing has also been a major influence on my sense of humor and the stories that I tell.

Did you go to school for Art or Animation? If so, where?
I didn’t attend an animation school. I majored in Fine Art at Western Michigan University where there was no cartooning department so they taught us to paint bowls of fruit and get in touch with our inner child.

Consequently, I never felt compelled to limit myself and elected to play with numerous techniques - but commercial animation isn’t always as spontaneous or imprecise as fine art so I have had to temper my ‘outside-of-the-lines’ tendencies a bit.

What are some of your hobbies outside the world of animation?
I watch an obscene amount of movies. My *soon-to-be-wife Leigh (*Editor’s Note: They have since tied the knot and have gotten married! Congrats you two!!! <3, JX!) and I have these movie marathons where we’ll watch all of the Star Wars movies back-to-back or we’ll select another genre; horror, etc. and run with that. Not sure if that’s really a hobby though…
What else? Camping, hiking. I don’t get to go nearly as much as I would like to any more, but I absolutely love it. I love sitting around a campfire with good friends and drinking lots of booze and laughing at whatever stupidity comes out of our mouths. I actually enjoy shaking off the hangover and hiking up into some mountain until I no longer have anything man-made in my line of sight.
Also, my fiancee and I have been working on childrens’ books together and I’ve gotten back into painting watercolors after about a decade of a paint-free life.

I also enjoy ultra-violent video games.

What are you working on currently in the animation industry?
Currently, I’m between jobs, as is common in the industry. The most recent shows I’ve worked on are ‘Yin Yang Yo!’, (currently airing on Toon Disney), and a Flash Animation show that I consulted on called ‘Chaotic’ that should debut sometime next year.
While I explore future opportunities, I also have a comic book project in the works, two childrens’ books, a calendar of pin-up girls that I’ve painted and I am feverishly working on developing and pitching my own cartoon concept shows.

What company do you work for or have you worked for?
As aforementioned, I’m currently not with any one company however I have worked at Nickelodeon, Disney, Warner Brothers, Bardel and Klasky Csupo, at various points in my career.
It’s very common for directors to hop around from studio to studio. I’d love nothing more than to settle at one place, but that’s just not how the industry works.

What do you think makes a cartoon good?
What makes a cartoon good is making a good cartoon. There is extensive labor involved, but the ‘magic ingredient’ per-se is fun. If you’ve got a team of artists, writers, executives, voice-actors, PA’s and so-on and so-forth having a good time and enjoying their work it’s
evinced by the product. The cartoon exudes the fact that it was a labor of love and the audience responds to it.
I think that unfortunately productions often lose sight of this. Somehow, everyone winds up mired in obstacles and threatened by intense deadlines that are commonplace during the production process and so it’s common for people on the team to become overworked and stressed out.
Of course, therein lies the real hurdle. Making something that is inherently complicated ‘fun’, (and thus good), isn’t always easy. But as long as you find a way to keep it fun, which usually just means keeping it organized and keeping the team motivated so nobody goes completely bonkers, then the magic evolves on it’s own.
Animation is, at it’s core, a collaborative art form and therefore, you want a team to be motivated and invested in the project. That’s why I believe that everyone’s job, everyone from the Executive Producer to the Interns is to make everyone else’s job easier. You can either embrace that, or try to be a rock star and try to do everything
on your own and run the risk of choking the life out of the project.

Have you ever shown your art in galleries?
I’ve been in maybe 2 or 3 gallery shows…one of which was a solo show. I can proudly say that I failed to sell any of my work though that is indeed a good thing, given that the thought of those paintings now overwhelms me with embarassment. The thought of someone actually
owning any of those pieces is horrifying. Since I’ve gotten back into painting, I’m going to try to score some gallery shows in the near future when I have enough material.

Do you have any advice for someone wanting to break in or just beginning in the industry?
The best way to get work and keep working is to find something unique about your abilities and put it into your craft so that you are providing something that no one else can.
For instance, I took a lot of crazy classes in college that had nothing to do with my major let alone animation. I studied improv comedy, TV performance, philosophy, public speaking and lots of stuff like that.
Consequently, I’m very adept at pitching shows and storyboards because I know how to speak in front of a crowd and I know how to think on my feet. It’s something a lot of animators aren’t all that good at. I also took lots of writing classes and wrote for the school newspaper as a columnist… additionally, I wrote and drew a comic strip for the paper that ran for over five years… I was writing and drawing every day and had deadlines to meet… thus, the disciplines I learned in all of these various fields gave me a unique array of experiences.
As aresult, I’ve been able to advance my career despite having an educational background that has nothing to do with animation. In addition, you need to recognize that animation is a form of storytelling in a film medium. In order to tell a story with sincerity, you have to be able to draw from real-life experience… so you should experience life. Run a marathon… go rafting… play guitar at an open-mic night…volunteer at a homeless shelter… but continually break outside your safety zones and experience a lot of different things. You’ll be shocked at how profoundly it improves your craft.

]What was your first job in the animation field?
Creating animated sequences for an educational CD-ROM about animals. There was one called ‘Rapping Raven’ that I helped concieve of, design and animate… it’s got this raven doing a ventrilloquism act with an Edgar Allen Poe dummy and they do a rap version of (naturally) ‘The
Raven’. Even though the CD-ROM itself was a bit of a flop, I submitted that cartoon to MTV and it wound up airing on ‘CARTOON SUSHI’ sometime around 1997.

Is there anything you want to say to the people out there in Channel Fred-Land reading this?
I would like to encourage cartoon fans to explore different types of animation. It seems that there are a lot fans who enjoy only one style of animation like Disney-style, Anime-style, etc. But why close yourself off to one genre? Variety is the spice of life.

What animation DVDs have you picked up lately?
‘Naruto box set’, ‘Dr. Katz’, ‘South Park Season 7′ and ‘The
Transformers Movie 20th Anniversary Edition’- one of the greatest animated movies of all time.

What animation/art websites do you check in on regularly?
Why, this one - naturally. Also, I go to AWN every day for the ‘daily animation news’.

One of my favorite shorts from the Frederator Oh Yeah! Cartoons Era was The Tantrum. Which was your Team Fred OY! contribution.
You’re a filthy liar, but I love you for it.
(*Editor’s Note- Nuh-Uh. I do loves me some Tantrum!!! See for yourselves at this Week’s Current Channel Frederator Episode #74!!! You’ll see!-JX!)

Being a fan of comics, I felt it had sort of a Comic Book feel to it. Are you a fan of comics and have you ever worked in the comics industry?
I love comics. I’m a friggin junkie for ‘em. I have walls of shelves jammed with them. I did some snotty ‘alternative’ comics with a small publisher in the early to mid 90’s… but apart from that I’ve never worked for any major publishers.
Very recently I collaborated with Leigh on a story for HOT MEXICAN LOVE COMICS #3 (www.hotmexicanlovecomics.com)

and I’m working on a couple of my own comic-book ventures as well - but none of them are what you would call ‘traditional’ comics fare. I have very ecclectic tastes, so I love superhero comics as well as arty small-press and underground stuff.

Were comics a big inspiration for The Tantrum?
Absolutely. I’d always wanted to do a superhero story. I always loved Superman and Spider-Man and all that stuff as a kid.

When and how did you come up with the idea?
Just prior to the third (and final) season of OY!, I pitched an idea for the show and met with Larry Huber and Fred Seibert (this idea, ironically, was also a humorous superhero concept)… they passed on my idea, but hired me to work on ‘Chalk Zone’… this gave me a direct
line of communication with the lovable Larry along with Ken Kessel who was overseeing the OY! production and acted as the ‘first line of defense’ for Fred. You had to get past them in order to put your idea in front of Fred - which is a good thing because I wound up pitching like eight different things - seven of which, in hindsight, were
horrible.
After getting rejected seven times I was driving around Hollywood and saw a billboard for ‘Mystery Men’ which was a comedic-superhero movie… I always loved mixing superheroes and comedy, so I thought
“Hey… I’ll do something like that but with kid characters!”
The result was a pitch for a sort of ‘justice-league’ that featured a team of kid heroes… one of the team members was called ‘The Tantrum’ and he was like a mini-HULK.
Ken liked the premise, but he gave me some great advice… he told me to pick ONE character out of the team to focus on… since the cartoons could only be seven minutes long, it would have been murder trying to do a story with a whole team of heroes. So, I picked The Tantrum.
By that time, though, I didn’t want him to be like the HULK… I wanted to do a character with a cape and the whole superhero schtick like ‘The
Greatest American Hero’ (a show I loved as a kid) so I reworked him into a kid who had superpowers that were triggered by his temper… the madder he got, the more powerful he was.
Waiting for Fred’s decision on whether or not to give ‘The Tantrum’ the greenlight was positively one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my life… but when he finally gave the thumb’s-up, I was thrilled beyond belief.
More than any other show I’ve worked on, ‘The Tantrum’ has the most ‘me’ in it… I wrote it, produced it, directed it, storyboarded it, designed the characters and - shockingly - provided the voice for the main character.
I had experience in stage acting, improv and radio back in Kalamazoo, so I convinced Larry to let me audition for the part on the caveat that if the network didn’t like my performance, we would audition other actors as well… but, naturally, no one knew the character as well as I did so I had quite an advantage and won the part.
Eventually, Nickelodeon wound up testing the short as a pilot for a potential new series. It didn’t get picked up, but it was my first outing as a director, so I’ll always have a special place in my heart for The Tantrum.

I would see your name sprinkled here and there on other OY shorts. What other ones did you work on?
I storyboarded ‘Skippy Spankerton’ by Eric and Michelle Bryan as well as one or two of Butch Hartman’s ‘Dan Danger’ shorts. This, in turn, led me to being a storyboard artist on ‘Fairly Oddparents’ which, eventually, led me to directing and supervising on that show. ‘The Tantrum’ was the first cartoon I’d ever directed and an episode of ‘FOP’ called ‘Action Packed’ was the second. Most young animators have to slave over student films before they ever get to direct a cartoon for television, but my first two cartoons actually aired on a major network and I got paid for them! Suffice it to say, I’m extremely grateful.

What was it like working with other creators?
I’d love to be able to say that it was this hellish ordeal with lots of screaming and violence because that would make for more entertaining reading, but the fact of the matter is it was an absolute blast. Being on OY! in those days was like being part of a cartoon think-tank. We were all little mad scientists and Fred created this castle for us to conduct our demented experiments in.
Being around the likes of Rob Renzetti, Dave Wasson, Butch Hartman and Larry Huber really allowed me to soak up their wisdom and experience like a sponge. I’ll always be grateful to them for letting me follow them around and ask annoying questions like the naive little cornshucker from Kalamazoo that I was.

As mentioned earlier, You can peep John’s OY! Short, The Tantrum, on this week’s Channel Frederator Episode #74, Make sure to check out John’s Portfolio Blog of Coolness O’er @ http://fountainsportfolio.blogspot.com, you won’t be sorry!

I originally intended for John’s Interview to come out towards the end of November 2006. A full time soul sucking Internet Company job, a dash of freelance & not enough time to rest or work on my own projects unfortunately led to the interview collecting dust and cobwebs in my Gmail inbox.
For that, I sincerely apologize to John, fellow Channel Frederator Associates, and to all of our dedicated fans.
Fear Not True Believers, I have Indeed bounced back to true Jeaux Form! And what a good form it is!!!
I have some great interviews lined up that you all don’t want to miss! Special Thanks goes out to John, again, for a fantastic Interview, and to our Fred-Heads for their continued Support and severely appreciated Big Big Love!

Stay Tooned and Glued to Channel Frederator, Yr #1 SOURCE for Animation News & Interviews!
Don’t forget to Embed The Fred.
Big Big Love,
-JX!

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Cheers!