Fred Seibert's Blog

Mopsy Flopsy and Ted

A few months ago I posted the original pitch bible for Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! In that spirit, I thought some might enjoy Bob Boyle’s actual creative work that kicked off the whole project in the first place.

Originally, we were looking for a creative way to enter the pre-school market. It occurred to me that picture books could be a parallel universe to our cartoon shorts, a way for commercially minded artist/animator/writers to show their stuff in the best possible light. Eric Homan approached a number of folks, and Bob Boyle was one of the earliest people to show up with the goods (like he always is). We’d started working together in production with Oh Yeah! Cartoons (Bob even created two shorts of his own), and continued for through years on The Fairly Oddparents.

Flopsy, Mopsy & Ted was the second picture book came in with. It’s pretty much the complete template of the series that followed. With a few name changes –first the Wubby, Widget & Walden, then with a legal challenge to Wubbzy, Widget & Walden, and finally to W!W!W!–Bob wrote the pitch, and then the pilot script. We were off and running.

Fredbot illustrated by Eugene Mattos

Eric pointed out that we’ve got a jammed packed weekend of Frederator related TV events on Nickelodeon’s networks this weekend.

Friday kicks off at 1pm ET on Nick Jr. (and 7pm Sunday on Noggin) with the premiere of Wubb Idol, guest starring Beyoncé (yeah, who woulda thought?), the first original movie for Bob Boyle’s Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!

And Friday night, 8pm, the beginning of the Wishology event for Butch Hartman’s The Fairly Oddparents.

And that’s not all. Tomorrow at 3pm you also get (big sob, bigger tears) the absolute end of Rob Renzetti’s My Life as a Teenage Robot.

So give us some love this weekend. You’ll be glad you did.

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! show bible

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Culture wubbzy

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is doing so well in it’s second season (so well that it’s a state secret right now; I’ll share the details when I can) that I was looking back on it’s origins (that’s the original pitch bible above). And I was being fascinated with how true to it’s original vision creator Bob Boyle has kept it.

Back to my week. By the way, I don’t want to leave the wrong impression here. My average week is no busier than anyone trying to keep their productions and businesses going. But, for those who wondering…

Thursday, September 20, 2007

I wanted to get this picture from the Nicktoons Studios up. It doesn’t have much to do with the post other than I took it during my trip and it reminds me of the evolution of even the best cartoon shows.

Kent Rice is the new CEO of Starz Entertainment (formerly IDT Entertainment), so he now represents our major production partner on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! We’d met briefly in New York but I wanted us to get to know each other better, so we met for breakfast at the Graciela, my home away from home, and coincidentally Kent’s too when he first started working in LA.

On my way over to Sherman Oaks for an early lunch meeting, I called into a conference call with Dan Meth, Jeaux Janovsky, Eric Homan, and Carrie Miller about the show packaging for our impending weekly launch of the Meth Minute 39. As usual, we don’t all agree on everything, but I think there’s a solution everyone’s happy with in the end.

Peter Lee is in the LA office of Boston’s Prism VentureWorks. We met for lunch to give me my perspective on Next New Networks and Channel Frederator.

Over the hill from the Valley into West Hollywood to meet author/singer Barney Saltzberg at the Urth Cafe. Barney and I met about 10 years ago and like each other’s work a lot. As with others, we keep struggling to find stuff to do together and haven’t licked it yet.

I didn’t leave my seat for the next meeting, this time on Next New Networks business again with Damien Somerset, the creator/producer of Zaproot, our cool new green show on Viropop. We’d only met briefly before, and in case I haven’t made it clear, I really like getting to know the people with whom I’m doing things. Damien’s a nice, smart, talented guy.

East on Melrose are the Paramount Studios and the production offices of J.J. Abrams‘ Bad Robot Productions. We’re starting work on a movie and this meeting was the first time we’d met in person. Later on, Bryan Burke, JJ’s longtime producer and collaborator, and I had a great first dinner on the Sunset Strip.

Friday

Art’s Deli for a turkey sandwich for JetBlue, and home to New York.