Channel Frederator Blog

We actually wanted to show this short the other day, but for some reason the file didn’t work for us. I should’ve realized something was whack with the cosmic beehive when I was on the subway, on my way to work, and noticed the Freelancer’s Union poster had a beehive on it with a swarm of bees flying around. I hopped on my 2nd transfer subway car and noticed a poster for the new show, Pushing Daisies. It had a gigantic bee on the flower in that ad. I looked down to my Mister Rogers cardigan sweater I was wearing and noticed the cute little bee patch my girlfriend stitched on for me, emblazoned on my chest. I knew it was gonna be one of those off days.
David Seezen shows off how cute and terrifying bees are in his short, Bees, Lots of Bees.

1. Who are some of your influences?
I’m most influenced by UPA, Chuck Jones/Maurice Noble, Rocky and Bullwinkle. I love that dreamlike, stylized animation.

2. How did you come up with the idea for this film?
Bees are a metaphor for those nasty outside forces of nature/society that make you do or be things you would rather not. For me, for example, it’s all those mundane day jobs I would be stuck in because I can’t seem to land my dream job — which would be the position of Full Time Highly Paid Creative Flash Guy or some similar title.

3. Have you ever been stung by a bee, or by multiple bees? I, for one, have never been stung, and hope to indeed keep it that way.
Prior to the cartoon, no. My first time was just last month. A bee stung me while I was asleep in bed! There was swelling, itchy, and yellow liquid oozing, so it was pretty cool — except when I told my friends they all kept saying “gosh, how *ironic*” like a bunch of ninnies.

4. What do you do when you get stuck creatively?
What do you do when you’re stuck on a crossword puzzle? Take a breather if you can afford to, or just methodically keep working the pieces around. You know, I originally wanted to have an evil beekeeper, and the main character was going to be a hot chick (more internet traffic, you know?) but in the end I made the main character the beekeeper as well, and it’s hard to draw hot chicks, so I drew a cameo of a hot queen bee instead.

5. What are you working on currently?
Some animation for Criss Cheatham (from the band August Christopher)’s rock and roll screen show. He rocks out and video of himself is the backing band on the screen behind him. I’m doing some in between animation stuff.

Thanks for submitting David! Don’t forget to wear that Bee Suit. Watch out for those BEES!
-Jeaux Janovsky