Channel Frederator Blog

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…]

We’re all familiar with the classic “Got Milk?” campaign, which was sponsored by the California Milk Processor Board. Now another scrappy milk-promoting trade group, the British Columbia Dairy Foundation, is promoting a video contest on YouTube.

To enter, make a video with the message “Must Drink More Milk” and upload it to YouTube. Each month, two winners will be named. At the end of the year, one Grand Prize winner will win a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air (with Final Cut Pro). Oh yeah, you MUST BE A RESIDENT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA to enter.

I really like the video above, a stop motion fight scene where our underdog champion is a claymation version of one of those wobblies monsters you stick on the end of a pencil. I wish the BCDF would credit the animators and make it clear that eight YouTube videos most prominently posted were done by pros and had “real budgets” and the supervision of an advertising agency. The fight scene is by at Bent Image Lab. (Chel White, Ray Di Carlo, and David Daniels formed this Portland, Oregon studio in 2003.)

For more information about the contest, go to the milkvids YouTube page or the mustdrinkmoremilk website.

PS: For an online gallery of the classic milk mustache ads, check out this link.

PPS: Here are some earlier spots for the BCDF with animation direction by Curious Pictures.

After the jump, another Bent Image Labs video, starring Russian nesting dolls with very annoying voices. And a few videos by an actual contest entrants. [Read more…]

Thanks to Mark Mayerson for pointing out the presence of two George Pal shorts at Europa Film Treasures, an online archive of important European films. (Mark’s blog Mayerson On Animation is highly recommended, so check it out!)

The first film is “La Grande Revue Philips” (”The Great Philips Revue”). Made to promote the Philips brand of radios, this sassy, stop-motion extravaganza was produced at Dollywood Studio in Holland (where he worked with art director Joop Geesink). (Note: The portrayal of Harlem residents is definitely un-PC.)

Philip funded at least ten Puppetoons. The George Pal Site rounds them up here. (The information on the Pal website leads me to believe that the short on Europa is a combination of footage from “The Little Broadcast” (1935) and “The Big Broadcast of 1938″ (1937). Any experts out there to clear that up?)

Anyway, watch the film here and read more about it on this page.

The other Pal film posted for your viewing pleasure is “Tulips Shall Grow” (1942). It was made for Paramount after Pal fled WWII-era Europe for New York City. The evil Screwballs Army attacks a delightful, cheery, windmill-loving blond couple in a not-so-subtle bit of anti-Nazi animation propaganda. The hardware heavies are ultimately defeated and hardy flowers bloom. YEAH!

Watch it here and learn more on this page.

After the jump, a commercial from post-Pal Dollywood where coffee beans speak in a foreign tongue! [Read more…]

GAME OVER is just one of several art projects developed by the French-Swiss artist Guillaume Reymond, working with the NOTsoNOISY creative agency. The piece is a series of short films, each one based on a different early video game. Instead of pixels, we see humans in colored shirts moving from seat to seat in a theater.

Other films in the series include Pole Position, Pong, and Tetris.

-Floyd Bishop

On  September 1st, “Life’s a Zoo” will premiere as part of TeleToon’s Detour (the Canadian version of Adult Swim on Cartoon Network). The show’s creators, Adam Shaheen and Andrew Horne, are heading up the production from their studio in downtown Toronto.

The show is about a group of animals living in a mansion as part of a huge reality show.  The animals must either work together or plot against one another, just like a live action reality show. The creators have mixed together aspects of just about every reality show there has ever been, and then went over the top with the material.

Perhaps the coolest part of the show is the music video section. Each episode will feature the music of a different Canadian indie band. This gives the show great music at less of a cost, and gets the band a wider exposure than they might get otherwise.

We’ll have to wait and [Read more…]

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…]

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.

[Read more…]

Animator and software developer Friedrich Kirschner has figured out a way to do 3D scanning with a webcam, some Legos, a plastic bowl, and milk. It’s called Milkscanner. It’s a silly sort of stop motion that actually works!

The Lego structure holds the webcam. Your object of choice is placed in a the bowl of milk (filled up to halfway). More milk is added three teaspoons at a time. Each scan is a “slice” and it appears that you can get a pretty accurate outline from this calcium-rich contraption. (You have to flip the object to finish the scan.)

For the latest version of Milkscanner, go here.

Friedrich Kirschner has his own website here, which spotlights lots of cool Machinima innovation. (Machinima is the process by which movies are filmed using game engines.)

And go to this Vimeo link to see a variation on the technique where people are dipped into a kiddie pool that is filled [Read more…]

This is a great piece of footage. This animatic was done by Phil Tippett and crew for the first “Jurassic Park” film. It’s really cool to see the armature supports and such as well. The personality that Tippett’s crew was able to inject into these characters was incredible. While I can see why CG was chosen over stop motion, that snake like tongue would have been awesome!

Here is the way the sequence played in the final film.

-Floyd Bishop