Channel Frederator Blog

In episode 95, we spread a little darkness in August. That’s right kiddies, we dig further, scratch more than the surface, and stick the knife in a little deeper.
And then we twist it.
We’re like that at Channel Frederator sometimes…

—Respire, Mon Ami, submitted by Chris Nabholz
I had imaginary friends when I was little. I used to play 4 Square with them. Don’t ask…
However, I’ve never had a decapitated head for a friend. YET, at least.
Chris Nabholz gives us a very well done short which walks a thin line between Quaint and Disturbing.

—The Flying Purple People Eater, submitted by Mary J. Hoffman
Mary J. Hoffman presents us with a creepy, crawly modernized cautionary kid tale where she teaches us to NEVER use a Green Crayon… UNLESS it’s for vengeance.

—The Well, submitted by James C. Rider II
James C. Rider’s The Well is an eerie, spooky short. It’s also animated in sand. Makes me wonder [Read more…]

via Animated News

Variety reports that Promenade Pictures has set the release date of its first project, a CG-animated version of The Ten Commandments, on October 26th. Promenade added that Commandments will be the first of a 12-part Epic Stories of the Bible series. The Ten Commandments, which has an $11 million budget, is directed by Bill Boyce and John Stronach from a screenplay by Ed Naha and features the voice talents of Ben Kingsley as the narrator, Elliott Gould as God, Christian Slater as Moses and Alfred Molina as Ramses.

You can visit the official site by clicking here.
-Floyd Bishop

Animation is a very visual medium. With animated shorts usually coming in under seven minutes in length, you need to be able to get the audience up to speed rather quickly. If you play upon stereotypes, this is one way to get the audience to understand a character or situation quickly. This frees up some of your seven minutes for more gags or plot points, since you didn’t have to do quite as much building of the character. The audience just kind of gets it, based on what you do with the character. For instance, a larger character might be assumed to be slow. An oafish character may be assumed stupid. It’s when you start to bring in ethnic, religious, or physical handicaps into animation that you begin to tread on thin ice.

Speedy Gonzales was a very popular character for Warner Brothers for many years. You don’t see very much [Read more…]

While most may remember him as the creator of “Lilo and Stitch”, Chris Sanders has recently (as of March 2007) moved to Dreamworks Animation, where he is currently working on “Crood Awakenings”.

I am anxious to see what Chris does at Dreamworks, as “Lilo and Stitch” was seen by many to be a refreshing change of pace to Disney’s standard feature film fare.

Look for “Crood Awakenings” sometime in 2010 or 2011.
-Floyd Bishop

James “Bad Ass” Jaculina is like the Quentin Tarantino of the animation world. He has a wicked design sense and great retro-fu sensibilities, not to mention a twisted sense of humor. He handed out some action packed answers to a few of our Channel Frederator questions.
[Read more…]

Long before the new movie, there was Shoe Shine Boy, better known as Underdog.

In 1960, handling the General Mills account as an account executive with the Dancer Fitzgerald Sample advertising agency in New York, W. Watts Biggers teamed with Chet Stover, Tread Covington and artist Joe Harris in the creation of television cartoon shows to sell breakfast cereals for General Mills.

The shows introduced such characters as King Leonardo, Tennessee Tuxedo and Underdog. Biggers contributed both scripts and songs to the series. When Underdog became a success, Biggers and his partners left Dancer Fitzgerald Sample to form their own company, Total Television, with animation produced at Gamma Studios in Mexico. At the end of the decade, Total Television folded when General Mills dropped out as the sponsor in 1969.

In 1995, Biggers, Stover, Covington and Harris negotiated a sale of their creations to Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels, who later [Read more…]

Sometimes, birds just oughta leave a monkey alone to relax and sculpt a tiki god head.
But Noooooo.
They don’t.
Alex Donne Johnson shows us a dirty birdie doo doo combo that is a one-two punch of cuteness to the face.
He also took some time to answer a few Channel Frederator Qs. Thanks Alex.
[Read more…]

For purposes of happy provcation, filmmaker Doug TenNapel asks on the new Claymators group on Channel Frederator RAW:

Is there a reason for puppet (or clay) animation now that computer technology is getting easier, cheaper stronger faster? I’m split on the issue because of the inherent charm of puppet animation that is readily accessible to the amatuer which is difficult to acheive in CG even by seasoned professionals.

[i}I’ve got my own opinions on the subject, but I’d love you to join the conversation at RAW.

–Fred

Do you hear that?
It’s the faint sound of Frederator crushing skulls.
That’s right. Our episodes will crack your skulls open with laughter… Your Own!
So really, you do the dirty work for us.
We thank you for that, as only true warriors could.
Get ready for another action packed episode of Channel Frederator!
(Where the cool cartoons chill.)

—The Forgotten Toy Box, submitted by Mike Bell
Who knows what evil lurks inside toy boxes? Mike Bell obviously does, and we should all trust him… cause he’s the creator of Super Santa. 2 words: Were-Babies. (Insert Maniacal Laughter here!!!)

—”Bad Ass Mofos, submitted by James “Bad Ass” Jaculina
James “Bad Ass” Jaculina is like the Quentin Tarantino of the animation world. He has a wicked design sense and great retro-fu sensibilities, not to mention a twisted sense of humor. Also, it’s his birthday today, you all should go to his blog, KungFu Thursday, and wish him a Happy Birthday… Kung-Fu [Read more…]

There might not be any <a href=”http://channelfrederator.
com”>Channel Frederator if it weren’t for Pete Alcorn and Scott Simpson at Apple’s iTunes. They’re the first ones to have recognized what we were offering and liked it enough they promoted us at every twist and turn.

In their honor we put together special Freddie Awards but they weren’t able to pick them up in person at the show. So we held on until Pete visited our New York office last week.

Thanks Pete. Thanks Scott. Thanks Apple.

–Fred