Fred Seibert's Blog

Buy The Animation Journal issues. Read some of the essays online. If you think for more than a millisecond about serious issues in animation you probably already do, but for newbies, check it out.

I read the most recent issue after I was visited with Maureen Furniss‘ class at CalArts (Maureen isn’t just a animation historian and professor, she’s also The Animation Journal editor). An article about black Hollywood animation veteran Floyd Norman fed my continuing interest in the underrepresentation of minorities and women in our industry, and Maureen’s article on television for the under 2 year olds (!) frightened even my liberal attitude about kids and TV. And I caught up on some of the newest books about animation that I’d missed (I miss a lot).

I briefly started working with animation during college, when I was in my most abstract intellectual phase. I came of age over 15 years in the New York indie animation scene, with filmmakers like Eli Noyes & George Griffin. It was natural for my friends to discuss the artistic side of the equation. Reading the Journal and books like Chris Robinson’s The Animation Pimp remind me of one of the less traveled, exhilarating side of what we all do. Maybe you’ll like them too.

The Animation Pimp By Chris Robinson (published by AWN/Thompson, June 2007)

I read an awful that has nothing to do directly with animation and that probably wouldn’t really interest our blog readers. So when I do, like I’ve been lately, I don’t post either, which is kind of dumb. The last few weeks I’ve been catching up with stuff I shouldn’t have been neglecting. Like  The Animation Pimp (disclaimer: I think he says a nice thing about yours truly in the book).

Many of you know about Chris Robinson as the director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival, but the sharper among you might have read his five years of columns at AWN called “The Animation Pimp” (or his TAP blog) which were edited and collected last year in this book of the same name. Influenced and inspired by writers wonderful and just awful, Chris is that rare thing in animation, a non-fanboy, serious thinker and writer. There’s a glimpse of that kind of thinking (though sometimes shallow in their narrowness) in Amid Amidi’s Cartoon Brew posts , and in The Animation Journal (great thinking, rarely good writing). Chris tries to inject soberness in his editing of the ASIFA Magazine but, geez, serious is as serious does, and it’s a little too dour for me sometimes.

But I have to say, as often as Chris irritates me with his overly stylized prose, he’s a lot of fun. And strangely enough, “fun” is not really a word one thinks of in animation writing. How dumb is that?

Everyone who gives a damn about animation or cartoons (though Chris doesn’t have that much interest in the cartoon subset it seems) ought to just flip over to his columns or buy the book right away. It’s rare that anyone provokes real thought in my head about what we do (unless it’s my own team, or John K, or Amid) and The Animation Pimp sure does. And in book form it’s way different than monthly columns too. Altogether in one spot, read in a short period of time, Chris’ incitement to dare to think differently, to even dismiss the form he’s writing about, is refreshing, liberating, and ultimately exciting. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my thoughts, or maybe I’ve been doing things with them all along, but I’m thankful to Chris for resurrecting them in me. Maybe he’ll do the same for you.

Regular readers of my blog know how much I enjoy Joey Ahlbum’s work, so his 2008 holiday card was a perfect excuse to share some more of it.

Elliot Cowan & Rebecca Angelou from fredseibert on Vimeo.

Elliot Cowan stopped by Wednesday with his new wife (congratulations!), artist/designer Rebecca Angelou. I got to see her work for the first time and go over a few projects with Elliot. Elliot’s “Boxhead & Roundhead” was last seen on Channel Frederator in May on Episode #134 oops, in October on Episode #149.

Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW

One of the highlights of my gig is visiting with college animation classes, and because I live in New York, I get the opportunity to hang at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) more often than some others. SVA is almost unique among schools because the entire faculty is made of up professionals in their given field, and no real full time teachers-only; they give a perspective that only working folks can have. Last week it was my annual trek to Lisa Goldman’s class, where she helps students prepare projects for selling to producers and networks. And yesterday, I spoke with Jim Arnoff’s senior class on getting ready to enter the professional world, along with Alice Cahn from Cartoon Network and Paula Rosenthal from Disney Playhouse. Thanks Lisa, and thanks Jim. As usual.

At the end of Jim’s class we all decided to have a little fun with my new Flip Video Mino HD, and I asked everyone in class to tape me a message (Arnoff’s the last guy). Check it out up above.

PS: And visiting art schools’ bathrooms is always fun:

Not too many folks in animation caught this great story. Check out the Ain’t It Cool News interview with Jon Favreau about his Genndy Tartakovsky fandom and how it ended up with Genndy and his Orphanage Animation team bringing their cartoon sensibility to Iron Man 2.

Great minds are thinking alike. First, Ben Ross and the UltraKawaii team came up with this video. Then our friend Alan Katz sent me this song, which Ben will be animating this weekend:

Pick Me!

(Sung by a dog who wants to be the Obama family’s pup, to the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”)

Barack, you just won the election
America gave you a smooch
Now we all await the selection
Just who will you choose as First Pooch?

Pick me, pick me
With kids of all ages
I’ve played, I’ve played
Pick me, pick me
I’m already neutered and spayed!

Malia and Sasha, such sweeties
One look and their hearts will be mush (the kids looking at the dog who’s singing)
We’ll snuggle while you’re signing treaties
For laughs, I can pee on a Bush! (peeing on George W)

Pick me, pick me
Your papers and slippers
I’ll fetch, I’ll fetch
You can sic me
When folks like Joe Lieberman kvetch!

Pick me, pick me
No collies, or schnauzers
No danes, no danes
Pick me, quickly,
I’m glad I’ll be yours
Not McCains!
(Big howl)

 
“Victor the Delivery Dog” title sequence, by Niki Yang

Well, not really. But ever since I got into the cartoon business the classic way of introducing a short animated film keeps animating me.

In anticipation of our belated debut of the Random! Cartoons shorts (December 6 on Nicktoons, in case you were wondering), I just posted 31 of the title card sequences over on our site. (Yes, there are 39 different shorts, but some of the sequences are animated, some just haven’t made their way to me yet.) Most of them were designed and illustrated by the shorts’ individual creators. I think you’ll enjoy the wide range of approaches they’ve taken as much as we do.

And as a bonus, here are some frame grabs from our original shorts program, What A Cartoon!, from before I was smart enough to save the original artwork.

 
Dave Levy (right) with Bill Plympton, Drinking & Drawing,
Platform Animation Festival, Portland, Oregon, June 2007

David Levy, aside from being a talented director and artist, and aside from being the latest longtime President of ASIFA-East, has proven himself to be one of the best observers of the animation biz. He’s written the only useful, smart, and well written book I’ve seen on working in the industry,  Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive (disclaimer: a few thoughts of mine are quoted). He teaches a senior course at New York’s SVA about getting employed, which consistently gets high grades from students year after year. And he’s living, successful, proof of his tireless boosterism of the New York City professional animation scene.

And, this week on his year old blog, Animondays, he writes another intelligent, cogent, and, yes, well written, piece (if self deprecating) on what it means to make a personal animated film. I wish some more people in the Hollywood animation industry would take his conclusions to heart.

By the time this calendar was published in late 1997, I’d left Hanna-Barbera for Frederator. But, not without a lot of pride in the great, original series that were finally getting under way from our first shorts program, like Dexter’s Laboratory, Cow & Chicken, and Johnny Bravo. And, lo and behold, to this day Cartoon Network Studios has kept up my tradition of cool calendars for their friends.