Channel Frederator Blog

“Mad Monster Party?” is a 1969 film by Rankin Bass. Classic monster movies were enjoying a resurgence in popularity in the late 1960’s, and humorous monster shows like The Addams Family and The Munsters were enormously popular. This campy film is a spoof of horror themes, complete with musical numbers and inside jokes.

Mad Magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman penned the script, and Mad artist Jack Davis designed many of the characters. Davis was a natural for the job, being famous both for his humor work and his monster stories in the pages of EC Comics. It has long been rumored that Forrest J. Ackerman had a hand in the script, but while the script is rife with Famous Monsters of Filmland-like puns, Ackerman’s involvement has never been confirmed. Although mostly intended as a kid’s picture, the film does feature some of Kurtzman’s typically dark humor and a few mildly risque jokes (in [Read more…]

If you click on the image above and you’ll get a full resolution file, ready for poster printing, of this great birthday poster. It was illustrated by Channel Frederator veteran filmmaker Ben Ross (his film “Lunch” was featured back in episode 2 of Channel Frederator, and “Tofu” is in this week’s episode). Thanks Ben.

Suitable for framing.

It hasn’t been my day today. AT ALL. It’s been quite an adventure getting this email, and episode 104 out to you guys today.
In a nutshell, silly retard me forgets his computer at home today. I realize this at work. So I hop the subway again, make it home, and get the computer.
Mission accomplished, right?
No.
I’m drinking a quick cup of tea at home, and spill it on my new, cool Saxton Moore Tee-shirt.
Great.
So I change shirts. Hopefully no one will notice it’s Urban Outfitters.
Episode 104, Friends, is a Doozy of Awesome!!! We have been around the Internet Block now for 2 years guys! Happy Birthday to US!!! WEEEOOOOOO!!!! We totally RULE!!!
Thanks for hanging out with us thru the good times, the bad times, and the okay times.
We wouldn’t be here without any of you.

You are the Punk to Our Rock.

—Chinese Translation, submitted by Joel Trussel
Whereas War Photographer was a well [Read more…]

via Starpulse

The biggest mystery 20,000 leagues beneath the sea is uncovered when SpongeBob and the gang find the lost city of Atlantis! To celebrate the monumental underwater discovery, Nickelodeon will blow it out of the water all day long with a SpongeBob convergent online and on-air event on Monday, November 12, from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Kicking-off the 12-hour marathon of kids’ favorite episodes from “Z to A” will be the theatrical film “The SpongeBob Square Pants Movie” (9-10:30 a.m.). The event will culminate with the premiere of SpongeBob’s “Atlantis SquarePantis” TV movie guest starring David Bowie and the “Behind the Pantis – How We Made Atlantis SquarePantis” special (8-9 p.m.), all times ET/PT. Also integrated throughout the day, Patchy the Pirate (Tom Kenny) will host his own talk-show from the bottom of the aquarium at the Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas with special guest star Devon Werkheiser of Ned’s [Read more…]

Directed by Pixote Hunt, “One By One” tells the story of children in a poverty stricken and somewhat depressing environment, and how they find ways to bring color and fun into their world.

The short was produced by Don Hahn and Roy Disney in 2004, and was intended to be part of the abandoned “Fantasia 2006″.

“One By One” is a great example of an artistic short film. It’s not designed to sell a series, it’s not full of fart jokes, and it features no celebrity voice overs. As far as I know, the piece was never released in theaters, and was not submitted for an Oscar consideration. It’s a shame, because I think it may have stood a great chance of winning.

-Floyd Bishop

It’s hard to believe that only two months have passed since I quietly let our blog readers know we were experimenting with a social network for cartoons, Channel Frederator RAW. I asked a few of you to sign up so we could have 100 members and make the place robust enough that we could see if it was going to have legs.

Well, as usual, you took me up on the offer through yesterday we had about 200 members. So, I figured it was time to move out of tryouts and open on Broadway. Today I invited a few of our closest friends –filmmakers, artists, and fans– from across the world to join. (You can check out some of their cool icons above.) As of five minutes ago we’d increased our membership over 35%, to over 270, adding more every hour. Thanks everyone.

I’m hoping that this increase will only make the [Read more…]

You may have seen and heard (sorry for the blown speakers) “The Happy Pumpkin”. It was included as part of the Fred O Ween episode of Channel Frederator.

The video was posted to YouTube two weeks ago. In that time, it has received nearly 200,000 views, was commented on 365 times, and was favorited 468 times. While it’s no “Internet People”, it’s no slouch, either.

Anyway, given the response the short has received, I thought it would be a great candidate for an experiment in self publishing.

What’s self publishing? Well, it’s basically the artist publishing material themselves instead of trying to get a publisher to do it for them. It’s like YouTube for paper.

I’m using a service called Lulu.

Basically, you set up an account, pick an item you want to create, upload the content, and set your price. When you sell something, they send you a check.

I’ve never self published before, so [Read more…]

The Women in Animation event “So You Want To Make A Short” was a great time.

The event was held at Dreamworks, which has a beautiful campus.

[Read more…]

It’s been a crazy couple of days out here in Southern California. There have been (and still are) fires burning across much of Southern California. There are several people injured, a few that were killed, many acres burned, and many houses destroyed.

Here is an interactive fire map of the area.

My family and I were some of the 500,000 + people that were evacuated. We actually left before we were asked to. My wife and I had been talking last week about what we would do in the event of wildfires, and we stuck to our plan. We put the kids, the dog, some paperwork, and some hard drives in the van and took off.

We left our home around 11PM on Sunday. We drove to Mira Mesa high school and stopped there. My wife and kids slept while I stayed awake, listening to the radio news reports and watching the [Read more…]

I got a call tonight from our loyal friend and colleague Floyd Bishop telling me he and his family had been evacuated from their home in San Diego in this week’s tragic California fires. Yesterday, producer Rita Street told me the same thing.

Our prayers are with all of you and your neighbors.