Fred Seibert's Blog

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.

Starting at Hanna-Barbera in 1992 it was clear I wanted the studio to produce short cartoons, but I was only beginning to figure out how we should actually go about it.

Anyone who would listen I’d talk to about shorts. And I picked up tips anywhere I could.

Buzz Potamkin was our new head of production. His New York studio had produced my original MTV “Moonman” animation before he packed it in to go to Hollywood to make Saturday morning shows, and over the years he’d given me a pretty fair education on how TV cartoon studios worked in general, and in particular how Hanna-Barbera had gotten into the sad shape it was in. Together with my operating partner Jed Simmons we figured we could credibly ask for enough money from our boss Scott Sassa to make 48 short cartoons. It would cost about the same as two series, but instead of two chances to succeed (or fail, like with 2 Stupid Dogs or SWAT Kats)) we’d have 48. “Scott, I know I know nothing about making cartoons. But with 48 shots even someone as ignorant as me can hit,” I pleaded.

Buzz also suggested Larry Huber as supervising producer. Having proved his ability to work with new people and new ideas on 2 Stupid Dogs he would be perfect.

John Kricfalusi had long preached the difference between traditional writers and cartoon-artist-as-writers (“Fred, every writer puts a cartoon scene in where ‘the bomb blows up in his face’ and thinks it’s funny. A bomb going off is not funny! It’s how the face looks before the bomb, how long it waits to blow up, how it blows up, and what happens after it blows up that might be funny. An artist shows you that.”) and I bought it hook, line, and sinker.

As a pitcher and buyer of shows I knew the limitations of the traditional pitch: Here’s the idea, here’s two pages describing the idea, and here’s a few pictures of what the idea might look like. After listening to folks like Friz Freleng, Joe Barbera, and Chuck Jones talk about shorts pitches back in the day, I determined we would only put a short into production after a full storyboard pitch from the artist originating it. Please show us the actual film you want to make, not describe the idea of the film. I’d been in advertising long enough to know the difference between an idea and the actual execution; the gap was light years. If we saw the storyboard we’d have some idea of whether or not the creator had any real notion of cartoons (versus animation, not the same thing at all), whether he/she really understood their character, and whether or not he or she actually understood story.

OK, so there was a framework to operate in. Now what?

(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.

Over a year ago I started what I figured would be a quick round-up of how we got to where we are today in the short cartoon game. But with the launch of Channel Frederator in November things got a lot busier than I would have ever imagined. And we haven’t even gotten to the first short we made. So here’s the first six posts and we’ll pick up where we left off.

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.

Looking back on the first parts of this story and the almost 20 years since it started I realize we’ve mid-wifed almost 150 original short cartoons and over 1000 more their creators made when the shorts prospered as series. All in the face of an industry that to this day has virtually abandoned the short form which had made it rich (historians like Jerry Beck or Michael Barrier are in a better position to speculate why it happened). The obvious question would be why beat our heads against the wall so constantly when it might be easier to do what everyone else is doing?

To begin with when confronted with the idea of actually being involved with making cartoons I looked around to see what cartoons were the greatest ever. Not the best of the day (late 80s) but the best of all time. Like everyone else I’m a product of my past (I’m 54, so I started watching screens in the early 1950s) so my first exposure to cartoons was the shoveling of theatrical cartoons from the first half of the 20th century onto the fledgling medium of television. From Farmer Gray to Disney shorts, from Out of the Inkwell to Mighty Mouse I was in love with them all. But, of course, I mostly loved the Looney Tunes, which then and now, I thought were absolutely unparalleled. So the first seed of shorts addiction was in by 1960.

Like most people (though not most of this blog’s readers) I stopped watching cartoons regularly around 11 or 12 and graduated to pop music, propelled by the Beatles coming to America in 1964. So begins another devotion to a short form of popular culture, the Top 40. No matter where my musical travels have brought me, from art-rock through avant-garde jazz, the economy of pop from Benny Goodman to The Beatles to Nirvana has been, for me, the cornerstone of the one of the most inventive arts to have descended onto earth.

My initial instinct when asked about making cartoons was to make them like the ultimate, like Looney Tunes. Not that I thought we could ever equal them, and, of course, I had no idea how Looney Tunes were made; my initial thoughts, had they been implemented would have been abject failures. But when I met John Kricfalusi he gave me a quick tutorial on the primacy of the artist in cartooning, and with further discussions with Joe Barbera, Bill Hanna, Friz Freleng and others I decided that I would attempt to make cartoons primarily created by artists/animators/directors rather than writers or executives (not to ignore either, but rather, to put them in their appropriate place in the creative mix). And it seemed to me (still does) that a short form is a better form to start films with artists. Cartoons are more character based than story and plot driven, and rather than put artist/creators at disadvantage, the short form could allow the artist with character and story predilections to be at his or her strongest from the get go. Shorts seem like the ideal artist film medium.

So, from the beginning the wallop and the sense of the short form sat right with me. Let’s emulate the greatest ever and since the greatest were short (averaging around seven minutes), by golly, come hell or high water, that’s what we were going to do.

(More next time. Soon, I hope.)

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons.
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6.