Channel Frederator Blog

Frank Thomas, Floyd Bishop, and Ollie Johnston

Channel Frederator asks filmmaker and Channel Frederator blogger Floyd Bishop about his career and work.

Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation?

Floyd Bishop: My degree is actually in graphic design. I taught myself animation by reading lots of books, watching lots of films, working through tutorials, and seeking out people in the industry to help me learn more. The mentoring of others has really pushed me to learn as much as I have so far. Some of these people included Doug Sweetland who gave me lots of great feedback early on when I was still in college. I would send him my reel, and he would send me feedback. He was super patient and very helpful.

I met Jan Pinkava at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 1998 and got to work on a stop motion film with him (“67”) during the festival. I picked his brain as much as I could [Read more…]

I love this film by Elizabeth Ito, it has everything you want out of an animated short. Monsters, sashimi, and a touch of reality tv.
I’ve interviewed her before on the fred blogs before, and wanted to make this one a bit different.
So, I interviewed the main character from her film, which turned out to be a character in real life, her brother Doug Ito!
[Read more…]

Animation Art Conservation has posted a great article online that outlines how “Ratatouille” was made. The article features three full length interviews: one with the film’s director and writer Brad Bird, production designer Harley Jessup and director of photography/lighting Sharon Calahan.

The article and interviews include exclusive art from Disney/Pixar that include the storyboards from the famous fixing the soup scene and concept art from Michel Gagné.

-Floyd Bishop

Give us a quick bio of yourself.

My dad’s a fisherman and I grew up close to the sea; the famous Belgian seaside. Spend a lot of my childhood on the beach … and saw a lot of “things” there
According to my parents I started drawing, like every other child at the age of three.
Influenced by my grandfather, who painted in his spare time, they told me I’ve not stopped since then. He taught me a lot about painting and drawing, the use of colors etc…he even told me that he didn’t believe you could make a living out of it. He past away just before I went to Art School to study Animation, so I never had the chance to prove him wrong. I studied ( and partied ) in Ghent, at KASK, the oldest school for traditional animation in Europe. .. I left early in my third year [Read more…]

David Chai and gang shared the hilarious Stoopid Movie with Channel Frederator this week.
Stoopid Movie is following in the footsteps of it’s live action film relative, The Kentucky Fried Movie. This is possibly what would’ve happened if the Zucker Bros. had gotten into animation, rather than film!
Channel Frederator asked David a few questions! Check his answers out down below!
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Back in 1992, Pacific Data Images (PDI) created a short film called “Gas Planet”, directed by Eric Darnell.

Perhaps remembered as much for it’s fart jokes as it’s render style, the film was groundbreaking in the way the imagery looked. Up until this point, most CG animation was designed to look as realistic as possible. Metallic surfaces and checkerboard floors were quite common.

In this interview with Eric Darnell and Michael Collery from fall of 1995, Eric and Michael talk a bti about the decision to go with a non photorealistic rendering solution for “Gas Planet”, their commercial work with PDI, and the upcoming release of a film about toys from Pixar.

The film “Gas Planet”, combined with PDI’s other shorts, tv, and film work were enough to secure a production deal with Dreamworks for the feature film “Antz”. Dreamworks then bought a controlling interest in PDI and merged them with their southern California [Read more…]

Click on the window below to play the interview.

As you might imagine, I’m very proud of Channel Frederator (Thanks Eric! And thanks David, Mike, Jeaux, Scott, Carrie, Dan, Melissa, and Justin). But, before I was a programmer and producer I was a promotion guy, overseeing promos for MTV, The Movie Channel, Nickelodeon and Nick-at-Nite. So, I’m really proud of the really cool promos Justin Johnson writes, directs, produces, and sometimes acts in for not only Channel Frederator but all of Next New Networks.

And I’m thrilled his work was noticed by the very smart guys at Tilzy.tv.

–Fred

We are Nuts about Grant Garvin’s Nuts, here at the Channel Frederator camp. Some of you probably thought we were Nuts for running Nuts, but then again some of you probably thought we were Nuts long before that.
Channel Frederator got a chance to ask Grant a few Nutty Questions.
[Read more…]

Today’s Frederator In Depth Interview is with Stray Dog, the Antagonist in the popular sitcom-short, The Catts, directed by Dave Carter.
[Read more…]

Neil LaPointe’s Gunbunnies short would make a cool video game. It also makes me want to break out my old robotech toys and rent Robot Jox.
Thanks for submitting and bringing back those nostalgic feelings!
[Read more…]