Dan Meth, Herb Scannell, and Craig Barlett
find something amusing in a Meth Minute. Hmmm.
Old friend and colleague Craig Barlett stopped by the studio in New York to say Hi to Herb Scannell and me, and chat a little about everything from new projects to Hey Arnold!
Amazing illustration made by Kiichi for this month from the New Jenny-San Calendar english site. XJ5 icon created by gashi-gashi. Via the Teenage Roblog.
Four years ago, my partner Emil Rensing suggested I start a blog when I asked him what we should do online for our (Oh Yeah! Cartoons spin off) series My Life as a Teenage Robot. “You’ll learn something,” he said.
Boy was he right. All the Frederator blogs, Channel Frederator, and Next New Networks are all the direct result of the learning, and of course, that’s been in addition to all the great series, movies, and shorts, the great talents have been working on with us during those years.
A particular shout out and thanks should go out to a few folks:
Rob Renzetti created MLaaTR in the first place, inspiring us to create the first blog.
Eric Homan took my challenge to get the thing going, and keep it going.
Scott Peterson, MLaaTR’s story editor, wrote the blog for a couple of years when the rest of us were too scared to try.
Wichobot is the loyal and talented fan who took over the Roblog when the series was over, and has kept it going with our great fans over the last couple of years. It’s better now than we ran it, and proves the complete value of community in the modern, interconnected world.
And, of course, most of all, our loyal fans and readers who have read, suggested, commented, contributed, complained, and supported all of our efforts during the last four years. Without you we would literally be nothing.
A forum post from Lenny Boudreau’s Channel Frederator RAW:
Is there money to be made making web animations? We all know that the people at the very top of the game are making enough money to pay high price call girls $2000 an hour JUST to drive them around in their limousines, but what about the rest of us?
How many of you do this for a full time living, part time to supplement a “day job”, for occasional chump change, or simply as a hobby? I fall in the “occasional chump change” category. Nothing I do is commissioned. I make animations and videos, post them on certain sites that pay a royalty, and then three to six months later I get a check or a PayPal payment for two or three hundred bucks (minus those PayPal fees).
I think of it as supporting my habit. I guess it’s not bad. I could be spending a crap load more on golf clubs and golf course fees every year. Plus, creating web content means I get to be around my kids more often than if I golfed. My kids love helping out with voice acting or suggesting silly jokes for use in my videos.
What avenues are there? Mobile content. Online greeting cards. AtomFilms. Anything else out there I should look at.
What are you guys doing?
Lenny
Animator Ross Bollinger stopped by on Friday for the first time and showed us his film “The Mosquito Who Gave Up Blood.” Nice to meet you Ross. Come back soon.
Elliot Cowan came by the other day to show us his storyboard for a funny short called “Snake.”
We met Elliot through his membership on Channel Frederator RAW late last year. We featured his cartoons in Episodes 86 & 106 and in our & “48 Frames…” contest, we’ve hung out at the New York Drinking and Drawing’s, and he gave us a nice, thoughtful, Christmas present.
Thanks to Elliot for kind permission to post some of his storyboard.
Leave it to idea man/writer/comedian David Burd to perfectly rewrite Wally Wood’s “Cartoonist’s Credo” for the modern world the same day I posted it.
For reasons I can’t remember, during a conversation the other day with Dan Meth I mentioned a card my old friend idea man/writer/comedian David Burd used to hand out (when he was working on MTV networks IDs for us in the 80s) called “The Cartoonist’s Credo.” I couldn’t remember the exact wording but it seemed applicable to our conversation.
I emailed David and he wanted me to make sure to give credit where credit is due to the originator, Mad’s Wally Wood, and that I should link to www.impko.com. And he sent me a pile of the cards too! Thanks David.
The guys at ShadowMachine Films (fantastic home of Robot Chicken) and I friended each other on MySpace a while back and I stopped by to visit their production studios last week.
Matt Senreich and Seth Green were just the kind of great guys you’d expect if you’re a Robot Chicken fan, so great in fact that I never got around to taking pictures with my crummy phone camera like I wanted (well, here’s a few). If you’ve ever been in a stop motion studio you know why I wanted to give you a virtual tour. Ah well, next time.
There’s always someone who blows up the conventional wisdom and then the world is never the same. Ralph Bakshi is the one in animation, and we can all thank him every day.
Jon M. Gibson and Chris McDonnell have written Unfiltered: The Complete Ralph Bakshi and filled it with insights and tons of art that will remind a lot of people why they thought it would be cool to be in the cartoon business, suggest to others why they wonder why they got in, and introduce everyone else to the person some of us always describe by “What can you say about Ralph?”
I should add I was thrilled Jon & Chris mentioned the couple of shorts of we did with Ralph in the 90s at Hanna-Barbera. It was an honor he chose to work with our then experimental program (I guess it’s in keeping with the man) and helped introduce our wacky idea to the world. Thanks Ralph.
Eric had his Irish studio visit and I had mine. Caboom produces animation, live action, TV, film, commercials, digital…they *produce*. Creative Director/owner (and animator) Damian Farrell and producer Joanne Roboz stopped by during Kidscreen to show us “A Beary Bootiful World” (bootifully design by the wonderful Anna Chambers) and some of their other projects. (They left a DVD, but I couldn’t rip it properly to show you.)
Thanks to Caboom for kind permission to show their artwork.
