Fred Seibert's Blog

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.

Scott Nash has been one of my great friends and closest colleagues for over 25 years, though I don’t think we’ve actually done anything together for at least 15. He not only illustrates and writes books, consults on graphic design, teaches, and produces animation and movies, Scott (and Tom Corey) designed the Nickelodeon logo for my agency.

Scott stopped by with Nancy and Dave to catch up and fill us in on his animated project The Uh-Ohs.

Scott’s been hiding his wife from me for 25 years, so I was thrilled to finally meet the talented Nancy Gibson-Nash, a collage artist. She’s quite lovely, so of course Scott kept her out of sight.

Dave Schlafman is an independent filmmaker designing and directing a great project with Scott, The Uh-Ohs, and he dropped in on Eric at Frederator/West a couple of weeks ago. Dave was working at Soup 2 Nuts when he and Scott met.

It was great seeing everyone, especially Nancy. (Oh OK, it was awesome hanging with Scott and Dave too.)

Two of our cherished Random! creators. Adam Muto needs a portrait for film festivals, so he turned to his close friends Pen Ward.

Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Part 13. Part 14. Part 15. Part 16. Part 17. Part 18. Part 19.Part 18. Part 20.

So the Hanna-Barbera shorts program –still unnamed– was off and running. Everyone in development, and the production department leaders, was out beating the bushes looking for animators who wanted to make their own cartoons, their own way.

As we were out in the world trying to convince creative folks that Hanna-Barbera was serious about doing original shorts (remember, the animation industry had made it clear that original ideas were not to interesting or, for that matter, commercially viable), our hardest immediate job was convincing people already working at the studio. For years there had been almost no history of taking an idea from a staff member for a show. Everyone thought I was just spouting a line, or at the very least naive, and most of the company went about their daily jobs not paying too much attention to my call for shorts.

If I remember correctly, the first person who started a short was Pat Ventura. We met through John K while he was a writer on Tom & Jerry Kids (he wanted first hand experience working with a master like Joe Barbera) and struck up an immediate sympatico. He helped me often in my thinking about the shorts program, and his original style and excitement (tinged with a shade of cynicism) made me want to start a project with him. Since he was a Tex Avery fan I thought maybe launching him with one of Tex’s characters could make a smooth transition into the program, and when he suggested George and Juniorwe gave him the greenlight.

Of course, any short we began with would start a ruckus, and Pat was the perfect guy to help us through the muck.

From the very start there was a huge, tremendous positive. Basically, the feeling among the artists was, “If he’ll give that guy a short, he must be serious. Or crazy. Maybe both.” It was clear to everyone that Pat was a complete original who would never get a chance to do his own thing anywhere in the Hollywood commercial animation establishment. He was obviously a talent who would get a chance to contribute to some studio project (he’d worked on Aladdin and Roger Rabbit at Disney, for instance), but really, wasn’t he was too out there? Once it was clear that Pat was a ‘go’ lots of the folks, newbies and veterans both, started working on their own boards.

Once work started on the short the shit really started to cascade.

A little background you might already know: the real revolution at Hanna-Barbera was the ability of Bill Hanna to create tightly organized productions that could be systematized, reducing costs enough to be affordable for television stations. Everything –art & models, layout, directing, animation, voice recording, etcetera– was split up into departments, all controlled at the top by Bill and Joe. Decision making was highly centralized into as few places as possible, reducing waste of time and money. It worked great at the beginning, when the whole staff was the cream of the world class folk who made the great theatricals of the first half of the century, but began breaking down into merely hack-like efficiency as newbies came into the industry during its 30+ years. By the time Ted Turner bought the company in 1991 there were decades of rationalization piled on convenience, the famous system was spiritually, not to say creatively, broken, and existed merely for the sake of inertia.

Everything came to a head most clearly over voice acting and directing. My head of production, Buzz Potamkin, assigned veteran Larry Huber to supervise all the shorts production. Larry had been in the business since 1969 and had seen the transition from full to limited animation, from full on American production to overseas animation, and was comfortable with his superiors, his peers, and the young turks invading. But, as much as we insisted we wanted a return to a unit system of individual responsibility for a cartoon, Larry had to get along with the still powerful vestiges of Bill’s system.

Voice directing had become centralized with a “real director” who “understood actors,” like there was a big secret. Pat’s short was plugged into the game and his script was given over to one of the “voice directors” who “allowed” Pat to sit in on casting and recording, as if it was their right to decide. When I asked Pat about the session he told me everything was great, wasn’t that just the way it was? I realized what was going on and ordered everyone in the production line that from then on each of the shorts creators was to have final cut on all casting and would direct their own voice actors. If there was a disaster, so be it. To this day, I’m sure there was some weaseling going on around the edges, but all in all it worked OK. No actors refused to act, no voice sessions ended in horror, no cartoons were harmed.

When it came to directing, Larry assigned another veteran, but someone who’d been a young turk when he entered the biz 20 years before, Robert Alvarez. Robert did a pass on the exposure sheets, and this time Pat did come by my office to complain.

“He made the eyes blink!”

So?

“Tom and Jerry never blinked. Touché Turtle did. I don’t want the eyes to blink.” Pat filled me in on the directing compromises needed in TV animation, and keeping the eyes blinking while nothing else in the frame moved a hair was one of them. It wasn’t what he was looking for in his cartoons.

I called Larry and he patiently explained to me that Robert was directing on the very strict rules he was told to follow if he wanted to keep his job. And who didn’t want to keep their job? It was the same at every studio in town by then, and if a director directed by their own instincts they wouldn’t be working for long. I told Pat to tell Robert what he wanted, and that he’d be happy with the result. Robert was not only a pro, he wanted to involved with wonderful cartoons. Follow the creator.

Next thing I knew I was face to face with Robert. Scared to death I might add. Who was I, with no animation experience whatsoever, to question the wisdom of the best system ever devised for television cartoons? But Robert, a good man as well as a talented one (to very roughly paraphrase an old blues) shook my hand instead. He thanked me for trusting talent like Pat’s and trusting Hanna-Barbera to make great cartoons again. Soon, Robert was the go-to guy for everyone who wanted great animation direction in the short program, as well as creating two wonderful shorts of his own (Pizza Boy and Tumbleweed Tex).

Creators started to rule again.

(More next time)

Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Part 13. Part 14. Part 15. Part 16. Part 17. Part 18. Part 19.Part 18. Part 20.

Artist (and RAW member) Chris Battle posted this photo on RAW the other day with a few folks identified. The Sherlock Holmes in me was intrigued, because not only was this the last all studio portrait ever, but the first (and last) one after my tenure of running the studio. My colleague Eric Homan called upon his community of HB friends*, and between us all we’ve filled in the names of almost 100 of the intrepid. If you know any of the missing faces, please let us know.
…..
This photograph is the last all-studio portrait taken at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons. Time Warner had bought Turner Broadcasting (owner of HB) and folded the studio into Warner Bros. Animation. WBA chief Jean MacCurdy made the decision to fold HB. Eventually, it resurrected as Cartoon Network Studios. Luckily, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were able to sit for this last portrait of the company they founded.

1 Jim Hearn
2 Paula LaFond
3 Jim Stenstrum
4 Mark
5
6 Vaughn Tada
7
8 Nora Johnson
9 Vincent Davis
10 Paul McAvoy
11 Maxwell Atoms
12 Chris Bracher
13 Steve Marmel
14 Mike Ryan
15 Robert Alvarez
16 Patricia Gatz
17 Jeff Collins
18 Ed Collins
19 Carlton Clay
20
21 Hugh Saunders
22 Sergio
23 Gilbert Quesada
24
25 Gary Olson
26 Al Gmuer
27 Renaldo Jara Jara
28 Sandy Ojeda
29 Susan DeChristofaro
30 Mimi Magnuson
31 Harry Nicholson
32
33 Louis Cuck
34 Marc Perry
35 Linda Barry
36 Pat Foley
37 Kerry Iverson
38 Paul Douglas
39 Julie Humbert
40 Jim Moore
41 Tim Iverson
42 Van Partible
43 Bodie Chandler
44 Joseph A. Bova
45 I can’t count
46 Keith Copsin
47 Kris Lindquist
48 William Parrish
49 Colette Sunderman
50 Carol Iverson
51 Nancy Grimaldi
52 Davis Doi
53 Melissa Lugar
54 Joanne Halcon
55 Nelda Ridley
56 Diane Kianski
57 Sandy Benenati
58 Barbara Krueger
59 Alison Leopold
60 Linda Moore
61 Diana Stolpe
62 Eleanor Medina
63 Janet Mazzoti
64 Genndy Tartakovsky
65 Craig McCraken
66 Jean MacCurdy
67 Joe Barbera
68 Maggie Roberts
69 Frederick Flintstone
70 Bill Hanna
71 Iwao Takamoto
72 Wanda Smith
73 Paul Rudish
74
75 Andy Bialk
76 Chris Battle
77 Nancy Sue Lark
78 Michael Shapiro
79 Zita Lefebvre
80
81
82 Craig Kellman
83 Luz Leon
84
85 Diana Ritchey
86 John McIntyre
87 Pat Lawrence
88 Amy Wagner
89 Brian Miller
90 Victoria McCollum
91 Rob Romero
92 Sharra Gage
93 Charlie Desrochers
94 Iraj Paran
95 Sami Rank
96 Jason Butler Rote
97 Liza Ann Warren
98 Chris Savino
99 Scott Setterberg
100 Donna Castricone
101 Sue Mondt
102 Martin Ansolabehere
103 Kevin Kaliher
104 Summer Wells
105
106 Ray Garcia

* Photo supplied by Chris Battle,
kindly identified by Chris Battle, Eric Homan, Marc Melocchi, Fred Seibert & Amy Wagner

Jim Mortensen stopped by to visit Eric and me at Frederator/Burbank with his storyboard for “Suzy Backwards.” It’s always good to see Jim, an early contributor to Channel Frederator and a talented, nice guy.

Thanks to Jim for his kind permission to use a frame from his board and this special illustration.