Fred Seibert's Blog

I’ve been a huge fan of the cartoon music ever since I was a kid and realized there was a difference between Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera. I had an essay written once about the greatness of HB’s Hoyt Curtin (there was already plenty on Carl Stalling), and when I started making cartoons I vowed to pay special attention to the scoring, since I felt it was an essential ‘character’ in a film. So, every once in a while I’d like to pay homage to the great contemporary composers who work on Frederator cartoons.

Guy Moon has produced more scores for us than any other composer; we met through Bodie Chandler, Hanna-Barbera’s music director, a great champion of new artists. Starting with The Addams Family, Guy went on to really prove his chops on the deceptively challenging What A Cartoon! shorts, which led to Cow & Chicken and Johnny Bravo. When we moved over to Nickelodeon Guy would hold the record for the most scores for Oh Yeah! Cartoons, and those in turn led to the lead chair on The Fairly Oddparents and ChalkZone, in addition to one of our movies, The Electric Piper. And Guy’s been no slouch working on other shows and films either. Whew!

Growing up in Wisconsin, going to college in Arizona (loving Chick Corea’s Return to Forever), Guy and his family live in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.

Thanks Guy, for all your great work.

Bernie Petterson has been one of the stellar artists on various Frederator cartoons (among others) for longer than anyone would like to admit. Brought into the Oh Yeah! Cartoons by Dave Wasson, he became a key part of the teams on ChalkZone and My Life as a Teenage Robot. Here are two typically wonderful illustrations Bernie’s done of ChalkZone creators Bill Burnett & Larry Huber.

I’ve qvelled about Larry Huber before on this blog.

But writer/producer Bill Burnett (or Billllll, as he sometimes goes by) is probably someone new to most of you. Our long and wonderful relationship began when Bill was a writer at my advertising agency in New York in 1988. He eventually became our Creative Director, creating some groundbreaking campaigns for Nick-at-Nite, Sassy Magazine, and Nickelodeon; he even named a network called Comedy Central. The two of us bonded over our mutual belief in popular music as a supreme cultural force, and I found out that after songwriting, his next passion was for cartoons.

Against all logic, I was named president of the venerable Hanna-Barbera Cartoons in 1992, and, no surprise, one of my first creative hires was…Bill Burnett. Officially, he moved to Hollywood to run our marketing department, but he and I both knew that he would make his way into production. He became story editor on Dave Feiss’ legendary Cow & Chicken, and went on to create a record eight shorts for Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Including, of course, ChalkZone. And I’m happy to announce that along with co-creator Jaime Diaz, Bill will join the Oh Yeah! team again to produce Dr Froyd’s Funny Farm.