Channel Frederator Blog

I was always a big fan of the animated web series Murry Wilson: Rock and Roll Dad, created by cartoonist Peter Bagge and comedian Dana Gould. Its production was funded by Icebox, which was one of those famous dot com boom-and-bust concerns that burned through about 15 million dollars in a short amount of time. Well, after the company went under, the name and creative assets were bought at auction in 2001 by five guys from the original team (plus some secret investors).

Imagine my surprise when I found that Icebox still exists as a re-launched website. Seems the company has downsized considerably and is now run out of some guy’s house, but if you go to the site, you can watch all the web series that they used to host in the good(?) old days when everyone had enough money to pay for scores of Aeron chairs and animated webisodes written by real Hollywood writers. It’s free!

Zombie College by Eric Kaplan is my favorite. Queer Duck, Hard Drinkin Lincoln, Starship Regulars, Migrane Boy…they’re all here, including the still controversial Mr. Wong. So enjoy opening up this time capsule from the pre-Web 2.0 days by going to the “shows” page .

After the jump, three more Murry Wilson episodes. (From YouTube, since I can’t embed the vids from the Icebox site!) [Read more…]

If you’re anywhere near Washington, DC from October 8-12, you can catch the classic one man theatrical mash-up that is MacHomer.

“Rick Miller brings you 85% of the Bard’s original text delivered by over 50 familiar voices from The Simpsons…”

The roots of the show are found in a short skit performed at a Canadian cast party for a “Shakespeare in the Park” staging of Macbeth, way back in 1995. Rick Miller had the not-so-choice role of Murderer #2, but now he roams the globe as the star of MacHomer, which has been seen by half a million people in 140 cities over the last 12 years. It was revamped with new songs and technical enhancement on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.

For a glimpse of this Tour De D’Oh, this page has some video excepts from an older production, along with an interview. More creator chats are here and here.

The October shows will [Read more…]

I watched the first episode of the new Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network tonight. I went into it not expecting much. I didn’t see the recent theatrical release, so I really wasn’t sure what to expect.

I enjoyed the show quite a bit. I was surprised at the level of the lighting, effects, and story. The animation of key scenes was well done, with some hit or miss bits inbetween, but overall it was pretty well done. I really liked the narrator intro at the start, and the pacing of the stories seemed spot on.

While I enjoyed the 2D Clone Wars cartoons from a few years back, if these first two episodes are any indication, this new series will be a very good one.

-Floyd Bishop

Tonight’s airing of “The Simpsons” will mark the start of it’s 20th season on the air. This ties the record held by “Gunsmoke”. The series is still going strong in the eyes of Emmy voters, picking up it’s 10th Emmy for Outstanding Animated Series.

To put the longetivity into perspective, I was in 8th grade when the series started after a run of hilarious short segments on “The Tracey Ullman Show”. I’ll be 33 this year. That’s an impressive run.

Watch America’s favorite yellow family when they start their new season tonight on Fox, 8 ET/PT.

-Floyd Bishop

Two new animated series for grown-ups premiere this Sunday, September 28: The Life and Times of Tim debuts on HBO at 11 PM and Superjail airs on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim at 11:45 .

Here are the official descriptions:

The Life and Times of Tim follows this everyday working guy from one scandalous crisis to the next….Tim is a young guy who always tries to do the right thing, but for some reason the world conspires against him. In many episodes, he’s trying to better himself, but the harder he tries, the worse things become.

Heavy animation and violence run rampant in Adult Swim’s newest original series Superjail! Created by Christy Karacas, Stephen Warbrick and Ben Gruber… Superjail is the most intense and complicated jail in the universe, residing on a remote island under the tedious eye of the mysterious and slightly delirious Warden.

Although I am rather peaceful by nature, I am really looking forward to Superjail. The team behind it are Supertalented; Christy and Stephen first collaborated on the hysterically over-the-top short Barfight. The series was produced at Augenblick Studios in Dumbo. Lots of tasty show artwork and info here.

The Life and Times of Tim seems to be going for an award for Animated Show With the Least Actual Animation Possible. It’s attempting a charmingly inept drawing style, but I don’t think it can compete with the best of the genre: Beavis and Butthead and Dr. Katz. You can check some sample videos on this page. A few red flags for me: the creator’s big claim to fame is that he was co-creator of Budweiser “Lizards” TV campaign; the show was developed for FOX, which didn’t pick it up. But he did make a funny short called Angry Unpaid Hooker. Since HBO hasn’t had an adult animated series since Spawn, I guess I will hope for best…

Both shows plan to be outrageous…my money (okay, eyeballs) are on Superjail!

If you watch either of both of these shows on Sunday, please come by this thread on Monday and post your reviews!

After the jump…Barfight and Angry Unpaid Hooker, for those who haven’t seen them. Both NSFW…especially the second one. [Read more…]

Three episodes of David Fremont’s Glue are now up on YouTube. Glue was an early Flash web series that was produced by Wild Brain during the heady heights of the dot com frenzy.

This blog post from the creator discusses how the series came about.

It’s jam-packed with quite the line-up of crazy characters and a stream-of-consciousness plot executed in Fremont’s trademark funk-patchwork style. Oh…it’s hard to explain…go see it for yourself!

“…I get an abundance of ideas and get anxious to use them all. whatever popped in my head that day ended up in glue. I was kind of like a kid in a puddle of mud making soup; leaves, sticks, an owl’s hairball, all of it went in the bucket. a transvestite troll! an albino frog! yeah, wouldn’t it be funny if ted nugent was in it? and carpet cleaning…”

I hope they post them all, because I’d love to start at the beginning and see how the series evolved. Keep track of what’s up on the Wild Brain YouTube page.

I’m a longtime fan of Fremont’s work, back to the days when he did mostly illustration and comics and designed the board game “Land O Sugar” for Scary Hairy toys–I still have it!

More about Scary Hairy after the jump… [Read more…]

On this date in 1954, “Lassie” premiered on CBS. The show proved quite popular, and ran for many years. It was predated by both a film, and a successful radio series.

In 1973, Filmation ran a series caled “Lassie’s Rescue Rangers”. In the show, Lassie lived near Thunder Mountain with the Turner family. Head Ranger Ben Turner worked with wife Laura and children Susan, Jackie, and Ben Jr. as “The Forest Force”, a ranger-rescue team that protected Thunder Mountain National Park. Lassie also headed up a group of wild animals that lived within the national park, working with the Turner family to maintain a healthy environment that was ecologically sound, and to create a safe place for tourists to hike and camp. This renegade group of animal heroes was known as “Lassie’s Rescue Rangers”.

The Rescue Rangers were a band of about eight animals, including Groucho the owl, Toothless the mountain lion, [Read more…]

There are rumors around the web of a new Inspector Gadget series set to start in early 2009.  It is said to feature many of the characters from the original series, but it has a darker tone.

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The Anime News Network is reporting that “Gon” will soon have his own television series. Korean company Daewon Media has secured the rights to Gon from Japanese company Kodansha. 

“Gon” is a comic book series featuring a small dinosaur type character with super speed and super strength. The stories have no dialog and no human characters. They all take place in nature, and place Gon with realistic animals in natural surroundings and situations.

Look for “Gon” in early 2010.

-Floyd Bishop 

Inspired by Eric’s post, here’s a piece of Flapjack Fan Art I created for my pal and ol’ Cubicle Buddy: Thurop Van Orman, creator of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

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