Jim Mortensen and I met last spring during a session of director (and ASIFA East President) Dave Levy’s senior animation class at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. This afternoon he gave us an early look at his cartoon Ginger & Mary.
Thanks Jim, for kind permission to post one of your storyboard frames.
It’s official. The production of the new season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons starts today. The series will air on our great partner Nickelodeon sometime in 2006 (we’ll give you the details when we have them).
Our first filmmaker? Kyle Carrozza, creator of Moo Beard, The Cow Pirate. Moo Beard is his first ever commercial cartoon, but I’ll let Kyle tell you more about himself and his short on his own blog.
(Kyle will be starting his own production diary at our Oh Yeah! blog homepage. And, as each of our other creators starts his or her film, they’ll be starting one up too. Based on our experiences at The Teenage Roblog and The Wubblog, they should be a lot of fun.)
For those of you who are keeping track, Moo Beard, The Cow Pirate is the 52nd original character since we started Oh Yeah! Cartoons in 1998.
So let’s give Kyle the Oh Yeah! cheer. We’re proud to have you on our team.
I think Nickelodeon (our exclusive network partner) is pretty happy with the storyboards we’ve been seeing for the upcoming season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. It might be because the next generation of talents have been very present. Like Penn Ward.
Penn is a recent graduate of Cal Arts in Valencia, California, specializing in character animation. He also plays a mean guitar. His very original voice is evident in his cartoon storyboard called Adventure Time.
Thanks to Penn for his kind permission to post some frames from his storyboard.
Greg Eagles and David (dahveed) Kolodny-Agy came over to Frederator Studios to show us their unique cartoon Teapot, for possible production in the fourth season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Greg’s a writer and voice over artist (we’ve worked together before on Buy One, Get One Free for What A Cartoon! Right now, Greg’s famous for the voice of Grim on The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy). David’s a storyboard artist who runs a company called Smorgasbord Productions.
Thanks to Greg and David for kind permission to post models from their cartoon.
I am not very smart. Or rather, I’m pretty careless.
In the post from June 28, in my rush to a mea culpa, I neglected to mention Michelle Bryan, who with her husband Eric, created a wonderful Oh Yeah! cartoon for our 3rd season: Skippy Spankerton, Nickelodeon’s Hottest New Filmmaker. At the time (1999) Michele was a member of the Oh Yeah! production staff and Eric was an animation professional.
I always loved Skippy, and I’m sorry to have skipped by Michelle’s contribution as the very first female creator of one of our Oh Yeah!s. Thanks Michelle (and Eric)!
We met artist Ryan Sias through our friends at Silver Lining Productions. Ryan came over to our New York office to show us his storyboard for Courageous Critters for Oh Yeah! Cartoons.
Thanks to Ryan for his kind permission to post a frame from his storyboard.
It’s been an incredible 13 years to be in animation. After 99 shorts (48 What A Cartoon!s and 51 Oh Yeah!s), countless sequels, and hit series, there’s one thing I can tell you for sure. With great humiliation, I confess: We haven’t made one short with a woman creator. And, believe me, not for lack of trying. We pushed, we prodded, we begged, but out of the more than 5000 storyboards we looked at throughout the years, I don’t think we even had a couple dozen pitches by women; the industry just hadn’t been hospitable enough to front-line female animators who wanted to step up.
Well, I’m here to tell you, the world’s changed. Day after day, Frederator’s Oh Yeah! Cartoons development team is seeing that metamorphosis first hand.
You can see it too, just take a look at our blog. On this page alone there are four woman who’ve come to us to show their ideas. There are dozens more on the other pages. And, take it from me, there are some fantastic cartoons in those ideas. Some great talent.
It’s about time. Cartoons need to reflect the diversity in our modern world. It’s the way our children are growing up. Women aren’t the only reflection of that breadth, but they’re the biggest tidal wave of the moment. Here’s to Grrrl Power finding the next great cartoon hit. Or maybe it’ll be somebody else we haven’t heard from before. I’m sure of it.
