Fred Seibert's Blog

With only a few months to go before we greenlight the final shorts for this season, pitches are pouring in.

Today we met with Niko Douchis and Kathleen Lu; they showed us their clay/CG cartoon called Mech & the Moonflower.

We first met Kathleen and Niko when we decided to run their award winning film Brothers in next week’s preview of the world’s first pre-school video podcast.

Thanks to Kathleen and Niko for kind permission to show some of their storyboard art.

I tried to post this cartoon during the holiday because it might be the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while, but the link had disappeared. So it’s a little late, but it’s just as funny (at least if you know any Jews; my mixed marriage family found it hilarious).

Created by Robert Smigel for Saturday Night Live, the creative team also includes director David Brooks, writer Julie Klausner (creator of the very funny Cat News), and my high school bandmate, saxophonist Bruce Kapler.

I promise, we’ll re-post it at the appropriate time next year.

Almost every new year we distribute a poster to some of our friends. This year’s is a particularly wonderful one designed by my old friend Frank Olinsky.

After writing about our 50 year friendship on the occasion of his birthday, it occurred to me that Frank and I hadn’t worked together in almost 20 of those years. How dumb of me! Frank’s one of the most creative, thoughtful, and resourceful artists I’ve ever worked with, so after racking my brain for this year’s poster, I realized he was the perfect person to come up with a fresh way to introduce the year.

Mere days after establishing size, deadline, and budget, I got this incredible image in the mail. And a couple of days after that Frank stopped by and dropped off the actual sculpture of plastic cups and styrofoam. What a great addition to our office.

Thanks so much Frank. Happy New Year to you too.