Channel Frederator Blog

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…]

In 1952, the Tex Avery directed a short Rock-A-Bye Bear premiered. The short, written by Heck Allen and Rich Hogan featured a simple premise: Spike has a job running a house for a hibernating bear, who insists on quiet. Tex was strained by the amount of work, so he left MGM shortly after completing the piece (the film was actually completed in 1950, but not released until two years later due to the backlog of cartoon shorts).  In Tex’s absence, his unit was directed by former Walter Lantz director, Dick Lundy.

Tex returned to MGM in 1951,  where he took back his animation unit. He went on to direct eleven more cartoons. Most of these had a similar look to the UPA cartoons that were gaining popularity at the time. In March 1953, MGM closed down Tex’s unit, believing that 3D films that were quickly taking theaters by storm would end the [Read more…]

It’s a big week for two of today’s top cartoonists fixated on centuries past. Last night was the premiere of Tony Millionaire’s The Drinky Crow Show on Adult Swim. Five episode summaries are currently posted including the intriguing-sounding “Episode Four: Organs” where “Drinky Crow infuriates his brain by quitting drinking, Gabby dates a sexy French spy trapped in a cage, and a young syphlis [sic] with a lot to prove fights his bladder.” Learn more, if you dare! Catch future episodes (but not syphilis) late Sunday nights at 12:15 AM.

Also, here’s a two-part- interview with Tony Millionaire and co-producer Eric Kaplan: Part One, Part Two.

And the more land-based creative storm Dame Darcy has a show up at Sloane Fine Art on the Lower East Side (until December 20th) which displays artwork from her new graphic novel Gasoline, about a family of orphaned Gothic witches.

The ever eerie trailer is here. Or on YouTube here. (Embedding is “disabled by request” so you have to go through the effort of clicking!) For another animated/puppeted take on Darcy’s dark and ornate world…after the jump, view “Golden Shoes” animated by Adam Gravois back in 1996.

[Read more…]

I heard today that one of our favorite CF contributors, Joel Trussell is doing his first solo gallery show. Congrats Joel! The show starts December 4th at the Grassy Knoll Gallery in Portland, OR. I so wish I had plans to visit Portland over the next few weeks, but alas, I do not. I hope that any of you Portland-based CF-ers that might attend will comment about the show.
If, like me, you can’t get to Portland make sure you stroll on over to “Joel Trussell’s Scribble Dumpster” where Joel blogs about the many things keeping this Tennessee-based artist busy. Joel goes way back with Channel Frederator. His cartoon, War Photographer was the fifth cartoon to ever air on Channel Frederator and since then we’ve shown a number of his films. He’s also a two-time Channel Frederator Award recipient.
Good luck Joel!- Carrie

A “boiling” line is the inevitable wobble seen in animation drawn by hand. The effect has even been exaggerated and used as a style choice on popular TV series like Ed, Edd ‘n’ Eddy and Dr. Katz.

Line Boil is also a great new animation blog about character animation in general, founded by the Cold Hard Flash guys. Besides the cool name, Line Boil will have animation, news, and interviews. The site isn’t limited to Flash only stuff (like Cold Hard Flash), so expect to see a much wider range of animation content.

Be sure to give them a visit.

-Floyd Bishop

Pixar Planet has posted some images from the short film “BURN•E”, directed by Angus Maclane, who served as supervising animator on “WALL•E”. The film will be included on the “WALL•E” DVD and Blu Ray release on November 18th.

On a related note, check out the Lego WALL•E that Angus made for Brickfest 2007. Hopefully the Disney and Lego people get together and make some kits like this.

[Read more…]

When I wrote about the new Kanye West video for “Heartless” earlier this week, I wondered what Ralph Bakshi was thinking about the fact that his feature American Pop was cited as the source of its inspiration. Well, I received an email from Bakshi and it seems that he is definitely pleased:

First of all I absolutely loved the video for its color, strength, and music. I appreciate your writing about it, and the honesty of its original inspiration. We are all so excited about Obama, I am doubly proud that West also did the Obama song.

You can watch the trailer for American Pop on this page, which is part of the official Ralph Bakshi website. The site features an extensive store, where you can buy DVDs, production art, T-shirts, and even original clown paintings.

After the jump, a link to “The Obama Song” mentioned above (I think!)… [Read more…]

Kanye West got my attention this week because his latest video is animated and greatly influenced by Ralph Bakshi. Also, The Jetsons make a cameo appearance.

This statement is from Kanye’s blog:

“This video was rotoscoped. We recorded real people and then had 65 animators in Hong Kong hand draw over every cell. Inspired by the movie American Pop. Hype [Williams] showed me the movie and I was sold.”

The question on every animation fan’s mind is, of course, did he also show him the controversial Coonskin? And what does Bakshi think about this tribute? Did they throw any bling his way?

(For more on Bakshi, check out the comprehensive book Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi by Jon M. Gibson and Meathaus publisher Chris McDonnell.)

—Anne D. Bernstein

Mark Mayerson has posted a great news clip he found from a CBC news story from 1961. In the clip, we see Joe Barbera and William Hanna walk the reporter through the stages of production from the initial layout to the final audio mix. One interesting note is that even though the news clip (and the cartoons at the time) were broadcast in black & white, the cartoons were all produced in color. Joe mentions that when everyone gets to see the cartoons in color, it will be really exciting. I would have to agree.

 -Floyd Bishop