Channel Frederator Blog

Your insides - the final frontier. Seems like it would take a lot of work and brainpower to uniquely interpret the inner workings of the human body (and then some). Zhivko Dimitrov, director of “Body” tells us how he did it.

Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation?

Zhivko Dimitrov:Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. I was on the Communications Design program, so it was really a melting pot of typographers, photographers, digital media geeks and other weirdos - not your typical animation school… Didn’t really teach anything about animation, but a fair deal of insight on conceptual thinking and experimentation. Took me a while to realize those matter so much more, but I think just in time to make the most of it [Read more…]

Michael Stevenson is a super talented award winning animator and pigeon expert. Half of that is a lie. Read his interview and figure out which half.

Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation?

Michael Stevenson: I did a couple years of animation at San Francisco State University. When I was shopping for colleges I discovered that SF State contained this hidden gem, a two-year animation emphasis that could piggyback on a Cinema degree. Although it was a small and woefully neglected program, our teachers were phenomenal and we were given boatloads of freedom to experiment and learn. I spent one year taking 2D and computer animation classes, and another year teaching myself stop motion and making my film.

CF: What are your sources of inspiration?

MS: Real life events are by far the best source of inspiration. Most of my work reflects the structure of a fish story - it starts off as experientially genuine, and [Read more…]

Michael Hickox has done a great new short that takes people back to their arcade days in Lego Arcade. This was a lot of work, and the results are great.

-Floyd Bishop

Eben Zboch, director of “Walter’s Bed”, tells us a little about his Oren Lavie inspired stop-motion short.

Channel Frederator: Where did you get your animation education?

Eben Zboch: At a young age, my animation education began as trial and error. As I got older, I began to realize what I was doing and gained a passion for animation and film. I am now taking classes at my local community college on film and I am applying what I learn to my newer films.

CF: Who or what has influenced your work the most?

EZ: I am influenced by films and studying them helps me progress in my work. A local animator here in Charlotte , John Lemmon, who has worked on many commercials, has been a mentor and friend in my progression.

CF: How did you develop the concept for this film?

EZ: I developed the concept of this film through studies of a music video by the musician [Read more…]

I saw this video today while looking at animated shorts on YouTube. I was really impressed with the way the colorful characters move. The way their blobby bodies mimic people in long robes is brilliant.

Does anyone know anything about this piece, or where it came from? It looks to be part of a larger anthology type film.

-Floyd Bishop

When most people think of stop motion animation, they think of clay or wooden puppets. There are actually quite a few situations where wax is a much better solution.  Animate Clay has a great article about wax, and its use in animation. Some recent uses of wax in stop motion include Jack Skellington in Nightmare Before Christmas, the mouths on the Vinton series The PJ’s, and Fred Stuhrs Tool video for Prison Sex.You may never look at candles the same way again!-Floyd Bishop   

Thanks to Bobby Miller and the Best Short Films in the World over at our sister network Indy Mogul for featuring this terribly gory film by Takena Nagao, “Chainsaw Maid”. Watch it above, but be forewarned there’s a bit lot of (clay) blood.

– Eric

The Daily Mail is reporting that Wallace & Gromit will be making a comeback on television this Christmas season. The special is called “A Matter of Loaf and Death” (sounds Christmas-y enough to me) and will be 30 minutes in length, just like “A Grand Day Out”, “The Wrong Trousers”,  and “A Close Shave”.

Maybe it’s my weak American mind trying to take in the British humor (or is that “humour”), but I always thought Aardman’s best work was the shorter format. Both “Chicken Run” and “Curse of the Were-Rabbit” seemed to drag for me while I was watching them. The classic W&G shorts and the Creature Comforts series felt great.

Hopefully the piece will make its way to US television, or at the very least, the US festival circuit.

-Floyd Bishop

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

While I was moving this weekend, I saw some of my kids toys rolling around in a basket, and a song popped into my head. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but I thought about it a while and remembered something about Sesame Street. Thirty some years ago, this clip somehow cemented itself deep into the recesses of my brain, only to show up in a YouTube search.

What kind of animation related things are rolling around in your heads?

-Floyd Bishop