Channel Frederator Blog

It only just now occurred to me that after nine months I’ve never properly introduced our Channel Frederator bloggers. Shame on me.

A little background might be in order. We started Channel Frederator and its blog in November 2005. At first, it was a hype for the great surprise of our successful launch and I figured it would be a natural addition to the cartoon community blog we’d set up for our production company, Frederator Studios. Soon it settled into a useful, but predictable pattern of one awesome post (by former Frederator development exec and creator Melissa Wolfe) for each weekly cartoon we featured. Not only we were bored, but you let us know you wanted more from Channel Frederator than merely an amazing weekly cartoon show from the best filmmakers in the world.

What to do? We were already swamped just putting together the show and making our own cartoons. So we turned to you, our readers. We checked out our most loyal Frederator blog commenters and asked the top 5 to come aboard as weekly posters. We asked them to make our blog the premiere spot on the web to showcase their favorite animation artists and filmmakers. Everyone gave an enthusiastic “Yes!” and the daily results have been obvious. You’ve all visited us much more often, and let us know how much you appreciate everyone’s efforts.

So, much belated and in no particular order, here’s a little bit of my personal perspective on my colleagues.

Jeaux Janovsky caught our attention as an artist and animator recently graduated from CalArts. He lived in Los Angeles until a few weeks ago when he moved to New York, promoted from irregular blogger to a community manager at CF’s parent Next New Networks. His thoughtful interviews of great animation artists have become some of our most in demand features.

Floyd Bishop runs Bishop Animation, recently relocated to the San Diego area where he doubles at Sony Computer Entertainment and as a contributor to Frederator Studios. His wonderful posts run incredibly deep, from Arrayvintage cartoons[/llink] to video games to CG how-to’s.

Stephen Levinson bills himself as the #1 Frederator fan. For sure, he’s our biggest commenter, by far, even from his perch as an East Coast high school student. (I keep hoping his teacher don’t find out and blame us for whatever he’s doing, or not doing, in school.) He’s an animator himself and recently posted his really good finished cartoon on his Frederator blog, which, in a fair turn of events, earned him some glowing comments of his own.

Mike Milo is a veteran animation director who’s worked in all the major television studios, most vividly at Warner Bros. Animation, but most memorably with us at Frederator and Hanna-Barbera creating his own shorts. His blog eye for independent filmmakers is sublime.

Jake Friedman interviewed me for the ASIFA-East newsletter last year, and his depth of knowledge and interest in work beyond his own made him ideal for our blog. His own work as an artist, animator, and writer stands impressively and his posts keep us informed on events, artists, and wonderful films.

Knowing how much Eric Homan hates to have his picture taken, I’ve used one of his favorite artists, Amanda Visell, as his header here. Eric is President of Programming for Channel Frederator, working with the amazing filmmakers from across the world who generously contribute to our weekly show. As if that weren’t enough, in his day job as Vice-President of Development for Frederator Studios, he sheparded the incredibly complex series of 39 short Random! Cartoons we produced over the last two years, and is at the center of the action of all our new projects. Eric and I have worked together since he was cleaning animation art cels at Hanna-Barbera upmteen years ago, and I’m thrilled he’s still putting up with me.

That’s it for now. We’ll be adding more bloggers to our ranks over the next couple of months, and this time I’ll be more of top of introducing them to you in a timely fashion.

–Fred