Channel Frederator Blog

A fellow animator and Calarts Alum, Justin Wright, unexpectantly passed away Tuesday Evening, March 18th. It’s hard to believe that someone who loved life as much as he did, is now gone.
Very unfortunate, and very sad.
He was only 27 years old and graduated from Calarts 2 years ago.
I didn’t know Justin that well, save for bumping into him in classes or in the hallways, but he always had friendly smiles, and kind words to go along with them.
He was able to achieve his dream of working for Pixar, and they were very lucky to have him.
Here’s a few pieces of his art from his blog, Charlie, A Deck Hand.
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Digital Tutors has just released a new training DVD entitled “Detailing Next-Gen Characters in Z Brush”. It looks like another solid training title. If you are a Z Brush user, you are interested in Z Brush, or you want to know more about how characters are detailed, you may want to check this out.

-Floyd Bishop

Boy, these little buzzers buzz more than the teachers in a Charlie brown cartoon stuck in an 8 bit dimension. And it’s cute. And Funny. So Funny. And Evil. So Evil. We sat down and buzzed a bit with their creator, Fraser Agar!
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Watch it here!

This film was done by a small team with an Open Source (free) software package called Blender. If you are a student on a budget, a hobbyist, or an established artist looking for a new package to work in, be sure to take a look at Blender. As “Big Buck Bunny” proves, it is capable of great things!

-Floyd Bishop

Congratulations Carlos Ramos for winning the March Cartoon of the Month for Channel Frederator! Carlos’s short, Twins Crimson is one of the many “Oh Yeah! Cartoons” shorts that Frederator produced with Nickelodeon. This oldie, but goodie, is still going strong with our Channel Frederator Fans.
Twins Crimson rated highest among all of the cartoons to run in February, which included episodes 118, 119, 120 and 121. Head on back to episode 121 to re-watch Twins Crimson. Also check out a great writeup that Fred did about Carlos a while back, here.

http://www.channelfrederator.com/episode/CFR_20080318
Today, we enter the realm of Random Town Tuesday. A quaint, residential area of another dimension completely randomized. The inhabitants live randomly, walk randomly, speak randomly, and eat randomly. They even watch cartoons randomly!
We have received a video transmission via satellite of their alternate version of Channel Frederator, called Channel Randomator.

— Little Buzzers in “Random Gibberish”, submitted by Fraser Agar
Boy, these little buzzers buzz more than the teachers in a Charlie brown cartoon stuck in an 8 bit dimension. And it’s cute. And Funny. So Funny. And Evil. So Evil.

— Mountain Town, submitted by James McCarthy
This is everything Waking Life could’ve been. By that I mean, not annoying, not too heady, and about a cool 84 year old artist. I’m looking forward to checking out more Mountain Town in the near future.

— What the Shell?!, submitted by Gabe Swarr
You know what? Gabe Swarr is cool. His version of everyone’s [Read more…]

Have a look at this Studio Hari production, from the “La Chouette” series.

So, what makes this a great online short?

Well, first off, it’s short. The whole thing clocks in at just over one minute. That may not sound like a big deal, but with so many people having such short attention spans, a one minute short is perhaps the perfect length.

The piece is funny. Funny means different things to different people, but funny shorts tend to get passed around more than sad or emotional shorts. There are always exceptions, but this is generally true.

The piece has no dialog. This is important for a few reasons. You don’t have to translate the dialog into other languages, or include subtitles. On a YouTube screen, subtitles are often hard to read, or are so large that they can cover up much of the lower portion of the frame. If your comedy plays enough on basic human [Read more…]

http://www.channelfrederator.com/episode/REF_20080317
You may have noticed something extra in the mix today on Channel Frederator. That’s right, we dusted off Refrederator, The All Vintage, Refried Cartoon Experience.
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B-17 segment from “Heavy Metal”.

Variety is reporting that Paramount Pictures will make an animated film inspired by the ’70s sci-fi fantasy magazine Heavy Metal, with director David Fincher spearheading the project.

Fincher will direct one of the segments; Kevin Eastman, the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” co-creator who is now owner and publisher of Heavy Metal, will direct another. So will Tim Miller, whose Blur Studios will handle the animation for what is being conceived as an R-rated, adult-themed feature.

Here’s a quote from Tim Miller on the project: “And just to save people time….It will not resemble in any way shape or form Heavy Metal 2000 and most of the stories aren’t coming from the magazine. It will be a mix of Sci fi, Fantasy, Humor, Horror, etc. with lots of cool violence and lots of naughty bits. It won’t be an “Homage” tot the original film–which I loved–this will be an entirely re-imagined [Read more…]

This is a great year for comic book and action films. One that a lot of people have been looking forward to is “The Incredible Hulk”.

Yes, there was a Hulk film only a few short years ago. That one strayed from the comic and television show storylines quite a bit. This new film looks to be a mix between the show and the comic.

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