Channel Frederator Blog

Neil Sanders

Neil Sanders is an illustrator, teacher, designer, and animator from Melbourne, Australia. Here he shares a little about teaching animation, his uncontrollable sketching habit, and his dancing pup.

Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation?

Neil Sanders: I haven’t ever officially studied animation. I studied illustration in 1998-1999 at NMIT in Melbourne, Australia and have always been interested in animation. I studied at home and with friends, reading through at least a dozen books by various animation heroes, so much so that I’ve noticed from their books that Shamus Culhane and Richard Williams really didn’t like each other. Mostly I have learned by listening to people, trying things and seeing what works for me and what doesn’t.

After working and traveling for a couple of years, I returned to the institute to show my folio, which led to some sessional teaching. A few years ago I looked at my new timetable and was told I was [Read more…]

Art Grootfontein, photo by Stanley Portobello

We featured Art Grootfontein’s film “Snap!shots of the Year” just about a month ago, and already Art has turned right around and given us a cool time-lapse of his Frederator-centric “FredMobile”. We talked about it some.

Channel Frederator: What program are you using during “FredMobile”?

Art Grootfontein: In this case, I’ve directly drawn the sketch on my computer using my graphic tablet in Adobe Photoshop (although I really like to draw with a pencil, I do use a digital pencil-like brush as well… this may sound stupid, but I like it).

All the color/texture stuff was also done in Photoshop. When I’m working on an animation, I usually design my graphic elements in Illustrator and then import them into Flash.

[Read more…]

Channel Frederator gets down with some traditional 2D, fun flash, and sketchy student projects in this week’s episode. It’s fun to get back to basics sometimes. Suffering through carpal tunnel and severe eye strain from doing thousands of drawings isn’t particularly fun… You just get to kick back and watch this stuff.

Y’know, it’s almost Valentine’s Day, so why don’t you show your animator friends some looove for all of their hard work. I know we will. Cue Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe”.

Slim Chance, submitted by Aniket Natekar – With his eye on a lady, a young man decides to whip himself into shape. It all goes wonderfully, horribly wrong.

Sketchy Friends Dance, submitted by The Boogley – Boogie down with colorful characters as they get their groove on. Dancing groove, I mean.

Nature, submitted by Steve Kovalesky – What does a bear do in the woods? Aw, don’t be vulgar.

FredMobile, submitted by [Read more…]