Channel Frederator Blog

As a huge fan of Flight of the Conchords, I was curious about the mock animated series “Albi, The Racist Dragon” that showed up in Episode Seven. Well, after some intense Googling, I found out that the guy responsible for directing this terribly touching toon is Oliver Dear. Director, Illustrator, Animator, Painter, Production Designer, Actor–he has got it going on! (And his dad, William Dear, directed Harry and the Hendersons.)

After the jump, a bonus Conchords clip on that subject of getting it going on (warning: silly adult content)… [Read more…]

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. -Theodor Adorno

Gene Blakefield

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This is a great clip. You can see Milt Neil discuss his approach to inbetweens, how he handles cloth animation, and a young Jerry Beck (around 6:08) describes “Der Fuhrer’s Face”. The segment is more of a tribute to Milt Neil than an animation lesson, but there is a lot of great information in there.

-Floyd Bishop 

Minuscule is a series of buzzworthy animated shorts from France that explore the itty bitty world of insects. The creators describe it as “a cross between Tex Avery and Microcosmos.” Created by Thomas Szabo and Hélène Giraud, Minuscule shorts have aired erratically on Toon Disney in the United States.

Their techinique is a seamless combination of 3-D animation and live action footage. You can view a large selection of Minuscule videos on this YouTube page. Here’s the official website.

Tease yourself with this trailer for the DVD release. (Don’t bug out, but so far, it is only available as a set of Region-2 DVDs, so unless you have a fancy dancy Euro DVD player, you’re out of luck!)

—Anne D. Bernstein

Back in the 1950’s, the Kool Aid man was not much more than a pitcher with a face. As time went by, Kool Aid Man gradually became a guy in a suit with an animated mouth. The commercials began to feature other animated elements as well. In a few of the commercials, Bugs Bunny and the Monkees even helped out as pitch men.

While I’m not sure the wall wrecking Kool Aid Man sells the powdered drink mix any better than his hand held ancestor, it was interesting to see the progression of the character though the years.

-Floyd Bishop 

I’m really excited to announce this month’s winner of the Cartoon of the Month prize! We had 8 films from episodes 136, 137 and 138 in the running this time - a bit low because of the Channel Frederator Awards, but nonetheless stiff competition! In the end, Pushkin took home the prize!
Pushkin is a great stop motion film brought to us by Trevor Hardy of Fool Hardy Films. I took a few minutes to do a mini-interview with Trevor below. Check it out and then, if you haven’t had the chance to watch it, or haven’t seen it in a while, go watch Pushkin again in Channel Frederator episode 136.

CF: What inspired you to create Pushkin?

I came up for the story line for Pushkin after losing my own cat who thank fully returned a while later but with bent whiskers??? (Don’t ask me?), whilst writing pushkin I watched Sylvain Chomet’s brilliant film, ‘The Triplets of Belleville’ and of course his sets and atmosphere totally inspired me and helped carve the look of the world Pushkin would live in.

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Last week, I posted about the (then upcoming) gaming-inspired art show “I Am 8-bit”. Well, the opening was last Thursday and reports of fun are pouring in from blogs all around. Destructoid and Kotaku, for example. (Crowd photo from Kotaku.)

A video of the festivities from the World of Wonder site is here.

There’s also a Flickr set where you can check out the mayhem that ensued—and peruse halfway decent photos of all the art. Many animation peeps participated. (Photos below by oldmanmusings, btw.)

“Zelda and the Great Deku Tree” by Carlos Ramos (Dexter’s Lab, Chalkzone, Robot Jones).

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Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAWNew Tee Vee is doing a live screening of animated videos and other not-live-action clips on August 28 in Los Angeles.
They want you Animator types to submit to them Aug. 21st. Oh yea, the theme this month is NON HUMAN.
for more info, Go Here:
http://events.newteevee.com/screenings/08/Submit
-Jeaux Janovsky

A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing. -William Dobell

John F. Green

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There’s a great interview with animation artist Pascal Campion over at Character Design Blogspot. Pascal has a uniquely delicate style which flawlessly integrates complex arrangements of background and character. Most of his work is done in Flash:

I use color differently than most artists I know, more like a painter actually. I don’t do a clean drawing . I just sketch very loosely something in flash, and I clean it up in color! Which is why my colors are as essential to the piece as the composition itself because they ARE the drawing.

Click here for the interview and gallery.

For more on Pascal Campion, see his website and blog.

After the jump, a short video interview with the man, conducted by ChicagoAnimators.com at San Diego Comicon 2008 [Read more…]