Channel Frederator Blog

Oh wait… it’s not a turkey! It’s Turducken… What is a Turducken you ask? It’s the infamous yet delectable bird within a bird within a bird - duck stuffed inside a chicken which is then stuffed inside a turkey. Only in America folks!
Steve Stark celebrates the invincibility of the Turducken in his film, Turducken. Turducken takes home the prize for the December Cartoon of the Month - the highest rated cartoon to run in all of November. This includes episodes 152, 153, 154 and 155.  Hailing from episode 155, our Thanksgiving celebration episode, Steve created Turduken because…. well… maybe I should just let Steve tell you. Read his interview below!

What inspired you to create Turducken?

While I was going to school for animation, I was working at Cactus Club here in Vancouver.  My buddy Matty told me a story about how his friend ate a Turducken over the weekend.  It blew my mind.  So I [Read more…]

So I just came back from a select footage screening of “Monsters Vs. Aliens” hosted by the big man himself, Jeffrey Katzenberg.

There is something for everyone in this movie, no matter what age you are. Like any other good Dreamworks movie, there are pop references and lovable characters.

Technical speaking, the animation is really tight, the voice casting of the characters in relation to the character acting is spot on. The film has also really made good use of the ” REAL-D” 3D theater experience.  The sense of scale with the Monsters and the Aliens lends itself a perfect fit to the application of the technology. The entire movie is in 3D and I can already tell there will be no scenes in the movie where you’re thinking to yourself, ” oh that shot was put in because we need a crazy theater 3D audience reaction” .

Katzenberg made it clear that [Read more…]

The Golden Globe nominees for Best Animated Feature Film are Disney’s Bolt, DreamWorks Animation’s Kung-Fu Panda and Disney/Pixar’s WALL•E. Both Bolt and WALL•E have songs nominated for Best Original Song. “Down to Earth” from WALL•E features music by Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman, with lyrics by Peter Gabriel, and “I thought I Lost You” from Bolt has music and lyrics by Miley Cyrus and Jeffrey Steele.

The animated documentary Waltz with Bashir from Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman is up for Best Foreign Language Film.

-Floyd Bishop

The reviews are in (well, one is!)

Family Guy Sings! was performed on November 24th and 25th at Carnegie Hall. It featured the core cast of Seth MacFarlane’s animated series, backed by a 40-piece orchestra. The program consisted of an unedited live reading of two episodes, plus a selection of popular songs from the series. An earlier and less elaborate version of the shindig, Family Guy Live, was performed at the “Just For Laughs” festival in Montreal and later traveled to LA, Chicago, and New York City. But the Carnegie Hall night was far more fancy schmancy.

Broadway World has a review and a set of photos of the evening’s entertainment.

Here’s a New York Post article written in advance of the performance, with some Seth Green quotes.

After the jump, one of many YouTube shaky-shaky, from-the-audience clips of a Family Guy Live show. [Read more…]

If you crave an antidote to the sappier side of the Holiday Season, you can find a daily dose of grotesque greeetings over at the Creepy Christmas site. Beck Underwood heads this online project which will release one new short film every day up until Christmas. The series launched December 1st with Electrifying Holiday Spirit by illustrator David Goldin. Read about how he made this film over at his Drawger blog.

It’s all very low-budget and home-spun (yet high quality!) and I will definitely be checking in each AM to see what daily disturbances are unwrapped.

A full list of the filmmakers can be found at the Glass Eye Pix site. Upcoming creators include Voltaire, Peter Sis, and Mary Haron. (Glass Eye Pix is a production company run by Beck’s husband Larry Fessenden. They are a super creative couple and Beck was the publisher of a great kids magazine from the late 90s called ZuZu. They [Read more…]

In case you missed it in the frenzy of holiday happenings, there was a great article about animation in last Wednesday’s New York Times. “Cartoons Without Computers? Silly Animators!” features the “insurgent element” of modern animation. As far as I can tell, that just means interesting animators of an indie bent, though big budget Henry Selick seems to qualify. (Odd title as well, since many of the artist mentioned DO use computers in one way or another.) But anyway…faves Bill Plympton, Don Hertzfeldt, Signe Baumane, and Alex Budovsky are featured.

In case you were wondering how Bill Plympton gets so much animation done (while managing to actually get out of the house and socialize, and also make appearances at all the major cons and conferences) one tip is that he gets up early!

“I do about 100 drawings a day, which is about 10 an hour, and if I can do that times [Read more…]

The Daily Mail is reporting that Wallace & Gromit will be making a comeback on television this Christmas season. The special is called “A Matter of Loaf and Death” (sounds Christmas-y enough to me) and will be 30 minutes in length, just like “A Grand Day Out”, “The Wrong Trousers”,  and “A Close Shave”.

Maybe it’s my weak American mind trying to take in the British humor (or is that “humour”), but I always thought Aardman’s best work was the shorter format. Both “Chicken Run” and “Curse of the Were-Rabbit” seemed to drag for me while I was watching them. The classic W&G shorts and the Creature Comforts series felt great.

Hopefully the piece will make its way to US television, or at the very least, the US festival circuit.

-Floyd Bishop

RAW ART FRIDAY!

Evan Tedlock

[Read more…]

Last week on The Sarah Silverman Show, Sarah gave birth to a demon baby. How did she do it? With the help of stop motion animation. To watch a behind-the-scenes video go here. (Ignore that fact that there are multiple references to “stop animation”.)

The Chiodo Brothers (Killer Clowns From Outer Space) worked on the demon baby construction. Doug Tennapel (Earthworm Jim, Catscratch) also helped with the project. You get to see some glimpses of the original animatic. They also show how they made Doctor Dick Van Paten’s face melt with the help of low-budget tips from Indy Mogul, which offers instructions on using the crayon-wax-and-heat-gun method.

After the jump, a visit to the toy-packed Chiodo Brothers Studio. That Charles Chiodo sure is a good “drawer”!

[Read more…]

Let them kids watch toons!
Animation is making a hit with students and teachers alike!
Animation and Education collide!!!
[Read more…]