Many of you love Bill Plympton’s films. Heck, many of you know Bill, since he’s one of those great filmmakers who goes to screenings of his pictures because he loves meeting his fans and other people in animation.
We’ve known and loved Bill’s movies for quite a while, so we were really happy when he wanted to show us a storyboard for Oh Yeah! Cartoons.
Thanks to Bill Plympton for kind permission to post some panels from his cartoon.
It’s great to brag, but even greater when someone else (like a poster at Animation Nation) does the work for you.
“Frederator seems like an incredible company. They care about artists and creators and giving them the hands-off control they need to give their shows a real identity. None of the shows on Nickelodeon right now have anything in common with each other; they’re all unique and memorable and sometimes genious. These guys are so cool that they even give their up and coming Oh Yeah directors their own web-blogs to discuss production details. Where else do you see this kind of respect on TV? Nowhere else.”
Oh Yeah! Cartoons, started in 1998, but our minds were on original cartoons as far back as the 80s.
Blog History of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Part 1. Part 2.
Nickelodeon loved our idea for animation shorts. So they changed it all around.
(A short aside. Alan and I had been among the original employees at MTV Networks, parent of Nickelodeon. As the first creative directors, we established the whole promotion/brand/logo scheme for MTV, and, humbly, we carried some clout at the company. When we struck out on our own and set up Fred/Alan, MTVN’s Bob Pittman hired us back as consultants. Sounded great.
We quickly found out that consultants are often respected and listened to. Sort of. Over the years I’ve come to see that a consultant will come up with a ‘Big Idea’ for his/her client, which I liken to a bright, bouncy, light balloon. The client, on the other hand, sees said idea a beautiful, fragrant, heavy loaf of bread. Which they can cut up, take the most tasteful slices, and give back the rest.)
Our clients at Nick always liked our ideas, and the notion of new, short cartoons done by new creative talent fit their sense of themselves like a hand-in-glove. So, when they told us they were moving ahead with animation pilots, they thought they were agreeing with us.
(More next time.)
Oh Yeah! Cartoons, started in 1998, but our minds were on original cartoons as far back as the 80s.
Blog History of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Part 1.
Quickly improvising, I put all the meager knowledge I had of cartoons and the cartoon biz into a jumble of sentences.
The way I looked at it was Looney Tunes were considered the cartoon ideal of my Beatle-like view of contemporary art and culture; the films were the height of the art and unbelievably popular too. A great one-two punch. They were also short (cheaper to make than a half hour series), funny (kids like funny better than anything over the long run), and eclectic (sure, Bugs was the star, but they tried dozens of characters over the years to find their hits).
(Of course, this fit my view of our interests too. In my mind, I was trying to get my company into this new Nick/animation equation. If I could weave a senario that was unique in the contemporary landscape, who else would they entrust this new effort too, but the innovative folks at Fred/Alan?)
Nickelodeon prided itself as doing kids TV differently than the conventional wisdom (remember, this was the 80s, when Saturday morning television ruled the roost in the family industry, when tired formulas and commercialized toy-animation was seen as the only profitable route, when cynical executives decreed foolishness about kids every day).
It seemed this approach to lots of shorts by off-the-beaten-path talent was the perfect path for Nick to travel into animation.
Debby and Ann were enthusiastic. Looked like I was in like Flynn. Sort of.
(More next time.)
Blog History of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Part 1.
We keep getting asked about how we started making original cartoons like the ones in Oh Yeah!, so I thought it might be good occasionally to post a bit of the back story here. Feel free to interrupt with any questions.
In the early 80s, after getting my start in TV as MTV’s original creative director, Alan Goodman and I had started Fred/Alan, the first company to introduce the concept of branding to television networks. Our first client, and first success, was the relaunching of Nickelodeon, where we made them the number one cable channel in six months. (Amazingly, since they’d been the lowest rated network in America.)
Chief programmer Debby Beece and business head Anne Sweeney asked me to breakfast at New York’s Paramount Hotel sometime in 1988 or 89, and said it was necessary for Nickelodeon to seriously start producing it’s own programming, and they wanted to start with animation. Since Alan and I had brought hundreds of wild, award-winning, animated network identifications to the channel, did I have any idea how they could get started? Honestly, other than random conversations I’d had with NY commercial producer Buzz Potamkin, I’d never given animated programming much thought. We were branding and promotion specialists, I reminded them, with no background in storytelling, and there was a world of difference between little 10 second dancing animals (as wonderful as they might be) and comedy. Debby and Ann insisted we were the ones to help them out, and I began improvising.
Why not copy from the best, I suggested. Why not emulate Looney Tunes?
(More next time.)
As you can tell from this flyer at the Nickelodeon Animation Studios, we’re constantly on the prowl for new entries into this season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons, even though, as you can see from the column on the right, we’ve starting a new short virtually every week.
Speaking of… we noticed some interesting Oh Yeah!-related posts at Animation Nation:
1. The number one rule for Frederator is this:
2. (notice the great, simple advice from Vincent Waller, one of our distinquished and greatly talented Oh Yeah! alumni):
Oooh, I love this poster. Almost as much as the special it’s promoting.
I think I like it even more because it was done by a fan –Glen– who had no other motivation than the fact that he loves My Life as a Teenage Robot, and, of course, his obvious talent.
XJWriter, the Teenage Roblog webmaster posted this fabulous piece after a successful premiere screening of the special at the Nickelodeon Studios in Burbank, home of the MLaaTR production. His report from the screening? “IT ROCKS!”
Of course, I’m prejudiced. But here are two of my favorite recent entries from Frederator Studios production blogs:
AWN REVEALS THE SECRETS OF RENZETTI!!! Hop over to Animation World Network for a five page interview with MLaaTR creator Rob Renzetti, chock full of photos, illustrations, and juicy tidbits about his inner thoughts and desires!
It only took one episode to get Wubbzy into a rainbow colored afro! Sweet!
Many of you know that Frederator Studios started Nextoons: The Nicktoons Film Festival. The second season of screenings has taken over the Nicktoons network during the month of August, and our eight full screenings are airing August 22-29 at midnight.
Once again my festival co-directors are Eric Homan and former Animation Magazine publisher/editor Rita Street, and added to this seaon’s team has been the indefatigable Melissa Wolfe. They’ve been making their way through the hundreds of entries from around the world to cull them down to the final 100 or so that’ll make it to the eight screenings.
Winners? Well, they’re being picked by our all-star judges (seen here from right to left after the top-secret sessions): Mark Hamill (yes, we know he’s in Star Wars, but we love him for all his animation voice acting), last year’s Producer’s Award winner, Elizabeth Ito, Michael Dante DiMartino & Bryan Konietzko (co-creators of the new hit Avatar), Disney feature director Mike Gabriel, and our first kid judge Noah Webb (not pictured). See their choices at Midnight, Sunday, August 28. Tune in. Please. Thank you.
So I go on vacation, but the team keeps starting cartoons! Dana Galin & Diane Kredensor have been working with the Frederators (Eric Homan, in particular) for quite a while now, first on a great picture book for pre-schoolers, and now on Call Me Bessie, and we couldn’t be more excited. They’re based in New York (like yours truly), but they’ve hauled themselves out to lovely Burbank to work with the Oh Yeah! Cartoons production team to get their hilarious cartoon out to the kids of America.
They’ve already snagged one of the most talented directors in the business, Yvette Kaplan (a creative consultant on one of the early Oh Yeah!s, David Burd’s and Amy Anderson’s Zoey’s Zoo), so Bessie’s on a roll. And, of course, Diane and Dana are the first two women to prove my point of a few weeks ago.
Welcome in guys. We’re pround you picked us to play with.
