Channel Frederator Blog

With I am 8Bit’s Opening on the horizon, tomorrow… I thought I’d share Friend of Frederator Gabe Swarr’s Brothers Mario pieces.
They came out very cool, and he actually cut out individual pieces in wood.

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I’ve been noticing a trend in the animation community recently, and that’s Animators Who Rap. Maybe it’s something to do with all the timing and rhythm, but I think it’s a good thing.
Here’s a few of the best I’ve found across the internets. (Can I add myself to that list?)
(*ed. Note: There might be bad language in some or all of these. Don’t listen to it if you don’t wanna hear them.-JX)

I make music from time to time under the name Plankton. This is a song called “Y’all Soulz” from the What Whales Eat Sessions, 2004. Recently, my friend Ryan who runs a Net Label, Serac Label, digitally re-issued an album of mine called “15 YR Petting Zoo”. Even I don’t know how to classify it. It’s lower than lo-fi, and still a charming album. Download it for free. It will change your life.

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Isaac Hayes won the Oscar in 1971 for the theme from “Shaft”, however most people know him from his voice work as Chef from “South Park”.

Isaac left the series after an episode aired which featured a storyline that lampooned Scientology, Issac’s religion. Isaac wasn’t the only one to get angry over the episode.

Here is the story of his passing from CNN.

-Floyd Bishop

This animation, from College Humor, is a great piece that shows what happened to Megatron and Optimus Prime after their movie came out. If you were a fan of the film, or the tv series, or of those other transforming robots, you’ll most likely enjoy this piece.

-Floyd Bishop

This piece of film, which was created around 1975, shows off the Synthavision process for creating an animated film. It was created by Larry Elin of Computer Visuals, Inc., of Elmsford, New York.

via Atari Archives 

The new animation technique is called Synthavision and is marketed commercially by Computer Visuals, Inc., of Elmsford, New York. Using the process, dimensional, shaded objects can be made to perform a countless variety of complicated movements and captured on film. Amazingly, the objects don’t have to exist. The need for art work, photographs or prototypes has also been eliminated, since Synthavision enables the animator to produce his ‘actors’ within the software of the computer mathematically

This incredible attribute is an offshoot from the work which inspired the development of Synthavision in the first place. Scientists at Mathematical Applications Group, Inc., Computer Visuals parent company, were conducting experiments in which whole environments were mathematically described to a computer [Read more…]

Ever since the release of “Toy Story” back in 1995, movie audiences seem to have been in love with all things Pixar. This goes for many animation fans as well, sometimes to the point of fanaticism. Is this a healthy thing? In this post, I’ll be asking some questions that challenge that fanaticism, and I hope that Pixar fans will try to provide some answers in the comments section.

When Dreamworks released “Shark Tale”, many people implied that Dreamworks was trying to follow in the footsteps of Pixar’s “Finding Nemo”. They are both films that are primarily based underwater. The similarities end there for me. When Pixar released “WALL-E” this year, no one seemed to remember either Blue Sky’s “Robots” from 2005, nor the design of Johnny 5 from “Short Circuit” (another robot who becomes self aware and gains a personality). Granted, the Pixar films were stronger films in both cases, but the similarities are there [Read more…]

Via E! and AOL
I knew that eventually the tabloid industry would begin their assault on folks in the Animation Industry and begin treating them like actual celebs. I just didn’t know how soon…
And I loooove how the press doesn’t even use their names in the titles.

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Via UTNE
UTNE’s Kari Volkmann-Carlsen has been noticing a rash of Facelift epidemics… on Eighties Cartoon Characters.

She also ponders:

“So why are companies reinventing old cartoon characters instead of designing new ones? According to Kolodenko, playing off of parents’ nostalgia has proven to be a safer investment than creating unknowns in our poorly functioning economy”

Sigh.
Go check out the rest of her article at UTNE.
-Jeaux Janovsky

The San Diego Comic Con has come and gone. It was pretty busy, with the entire show selling out. Preview Night was just as busy (if not more so) than any other day. I would love to see some sort of expansion of the Con to cut back on crowd size. Maybe a professionals only night, or perhaps making the Con a full week?

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In this intro from the Disneyland tv show spotlights a few of the lands in Disneyland. These included Frontierland, Tomorrowland, Adventureland, and Fantasyland. For some reason, Holidayland was never really promoted too often, and was closed in 1961. Other “lands”, such as New Orleans Square and Mickey’s Toon Town were added later.

In this intro, we see Tinker Bell act out a bit for each of the spotlighted lands. She zips in and out as the text introduces the next location. It is particularly interesting to see the level of the effects in this piece as well, from Tinker Bell’s pixie dust trail, to the take off of the Tomorrowland rocket ship.  Custom animated segments would be used often to promote the park, and eventually animators would begin designing parts of the park themselves…

-Floyd Bishop