Rick DeMott has posted his lengthy interview with Eric over on Animation World Network. Thanks, Rick.

Nickelodeon debuted its latest CG series from Frederator Studios, Fanboy and Chum Chum, on Friday, Nov. 6th. Only following the latest SpongeBob special, the series debut posted huge numbers, ranking as the #2 basic cable program of the week. The series began as part of the shorts series, Random Cartoons, which Frederator Studios produces as well.

The series centers on a fearless, comic book-loving 10-year old named Fanboy and his best friend and trusty sidekick, Chum Chum, whose wide-eyed acceptance of the bizarre is the perfect complement to his friend’s hyper imagination. I recently had the opportunity to speak with creator Eric Robles about his first off-the-wall series.

Rick DeMott: What inspired the series?

Eric Robles: What inspired the series for me was just wanting to tell stories about being a kid. Basically, I’m a latchkey kid. I grew up at a 7-11. It was like my home away from home. So I thought what better place to tell stories as a kid and growing up than at a 7-11 where you basically come across every individual you can think of. Back then when I was growing up, 7-11s were the place to be. You had your convenience store. You had your Slushies. You had your videogames. Back then they actually had the videogames inside the 7-11s. You had all the junk food you could get, and all your buddies were there. All the action, the drama, the suspense happened at your local 7-11.

RD: How did the original short on Random Cartoons come about?

Eric Robles: … I got a phone call from [Frederator’s] Fred Seibert and he had heard of some of my work that I had done throughout the years…

To read the rest of Rick’s interview, click here.

– Eric

Eric Robles at Nickeldeon from fredseibert on Vimeo.

Creator Eric Robles and head writer/executive producer Steve Tompkins were in New York today visiting Nickelodeon HQ and spending them with the dozens of people who take up a show after it’s produced. Programmers, marketers, press and promo folks all gathered together to tell us more about what they’re doing to let America know about “Fanboy & Chum Chum.”

Anne Mullen, Nickelodeon promotion honcho, saw on the PR sheet that Eric’s story was a possible pitch to newspapers and magazines, and wondered exactly what his “story” was anyway. So, as Eric was telling them his path into the biz I started up my crappy phone video. The quality’s not too good so I’ll transcribe it below.

Eric drew his first fan drawings of Superman for friends in the first grade in a not so good neighborhood in Los Angeles. The son of Mexican immigrants, he lived in one room with his parents and by the time he graduated high school knew there was no money for art school. He signed up as a security guard and starting training to be a policeman. One of his teachers was related to animation veteran Stephanie Graziano.  With no formal portfolio, Eric bought a blank book and worked literally day and night over a weekend to fill the book with drawings. Stephanie took one look and offered him an internship. Eric takes it from there:

“…so all I would do at night is draw as soon as I got home. What’s crazy is I had this little light box that Cary Silver, the production manager, gave me. My parents, God bless ‘em, we all slept in the same room so I’d be there in the middle of the night going [the sounds of pencil sharpening] drawing on my light box while they’re trying to sleep. And it’d be like this… I’d hear my Dad snore and I’d go [faster pencil sharpening, and laughter].

“What I would do is every morning as soon as I got in I’d make a bunch of copies of my drawings and I’d put them out to all the directors and producers. So, within a week and a half of working there as an intern they offered me my first design job.

“… I went from making $6.25 and hour at a security job to making $20 an hour when I was 19 years old. And, that was more than both of my parents combined. Basically for the first two years of my career in animation I saved money and I got them their first house. And that was my big accomplishment.”

Wow.

–Fred

Shaun Cashman

I distinctly remember sitting with Fred at the Annie Awards a few years ago and watching Shaun Cashman and Phil Cummings win the TV directing award for their work on Billy & Mandy (”Attack of the Clowns”). Fred said then how great it would be to work with those guys. Well, we haven’t had the chance to be in business with Phil, yet, but we’re incredibly lucky to have Shaun as the supervising producer on Fanboy and Chum Chum. He took a break from the craziness of production to answer a couple of questions for the blog.

Frederator: Where did you grow up?

Shaun: I grew up in Middletown, Connecticut. Situated along the Connecticut River and home to Wesleyan University, it’s a town of about 45,000 people and it has one of those wide classic Main Streets that runs from one end of town to the other. It’s called the “Forest City”: because it’s nestled in the Connecticut River Valley and as you come into the valley from out of town it looks like it literally is popping up out of a forest – it looks awesome in the fall! I grew up in the North End, a predominantly Italian neighborhood at the time – my mother is Italian, my dad is Irish – I spent most of my formative years growing up there and making some of the lifetime friends I have now.

Frederator: What was your favorite cartoon as a kid?

Shaun: Aside from the classic Warner Bros shorts, Jonny Quest. It was, at the time, like a comic book come to life. I also grew up with the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons, too! As for animated movies, I’d have to say The Jungle Book.

Frederator: What’s your artistic background?

Shaun: I majored in illustration in college, Paier School of Art in Hamden, Connecticut, and I went to NYU one summer for an intense 6 days a week course in film production. And I worked for many years in newspaper advertising design, marketing and freelance editorial illustration. Although neither one pursued it, both of my parents are artistic. My father is a very good watercolorist and my mother comes from a long line of musicians (she was a singer in her younger days), so growing up I was always surrounded by good music and exposed to some form of art.

Frederator: You’ve worked on King of the Hill and The Simpsons as well as Billy and Mandy and Chowder. What’s the single biggest difference between working on primetime and non-primetime animation (besides the money)?

Shaun: LOL! Besides the money, the main differences were that on the FOX shows, as a director, I had limited opportunity to put my stamp on an episode. Basically, the animatic was my chance to make my little “movie” before the writer/producers on the show took it and rewrote or revised it. Don’t get me wrong, I still had a blast directing on Simpsons and King Of The Hill but at some point on every episode you go from being director to a facilitator of revisions. On Billy & Mandy and Chowder, I got to do what I really always wanted to do and that was do cartoons, if you get my meaning. Classic 7 or 11-minute format cartoons, gag driven, and pushed to the limit. Artistically, those two shows were very liberating for me as a director and a timer. Maxwell Atoms, the creator of Billy & Mandy spoiled me rotten in that he actually let me do my job and trusted me to do it – can you imagine? LOL! That’s also where I met Carl Greenblatt, creator of Chowder, he was one of our board artists and has one of the best and most creative senses of humor I’ve come across in this business, and, he’s a great guy.

Mild-mannered Eric Robles and Shaun Cashman

Frederator: It’s been fifteen years now (!), but can you still point to your layouts in Simpsons episodes like “Deep Space Homer” and “Two Dozen and One Greyhounds”?

Shaun: Closer to seventeen actually, and yes, I can spot my animation poses and layouts in those early Simpsons episodes. The other side to that is, when I was a Character Layout Artist on the show, I worked on so many different episodes that I’ve actually watched them on television and NOT remembered that I did work on it until I saw my name in the end credits!

Frederator: What excited you about working on Fanboy & Chum Chum?

Shaun: When I was asked to direct the original short, it was the aspect of helping out a friend as well as getting my feet wet in the CG arena. Now, as Supervising Producer on the series, again, it’s to help out a friend to expand the world of the characters and to help bring to life that world and be involved creatively on a series from the ground up and to get more CG experience under my belt career-wise.

Frederator: Where do you get your creative inspiration?

Shaun: Other artists or an idea that makes me want to create. Yes, I do get inspired by other artists’ work, but usually it’s an idea that I want to create and see. I put myself in the audience’s place and think about what I like as a TV viewer or if I’m in the audience at a movie.

Frederator: Which artists, living or not, would you most want to meet?

Shaun: John Singer Sargent, Edward Hopper, Norman Rockwell, Walt Disney and any of his “9 Old Men”.

Frederator: Any advice for those considering a career in cartoons?

Shaun: To quote Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest, “…never give up, never surrender!” I think that spells it out – persistence is the key! I started my career in animation later in life, I was 36 when I shifted career paths, because it was something I always wanted to do. I even tried breaking into it in the late 70’s but didn’t actually make anything happen until the early 90’s. I tried it again at that point because that drive, that voice inside you that says “Do It!”, won’t go away until you do and give it your best shot! You can’t make things happen or change your life without making an attempt to do the things that you feel, inside, are right for you!

Superhero team of Ericboy and Cash Chum

Frederator: What would you say if one of your kids one day says, “Dad, I want to be an animator?”

Shaun: I don’t think I’d try to talk them out of it. Because it’s been very good to me and I’ve been very fortunate in the business, I would tell either one of my children that if that’s what really interests them and that’s what they feel they have a drive to do, then go give it a shot, at least trying to make it happen is better than going through life with the “what if’s” rolling around in your head because you didn’t try.

Thanks a ton for the time, Shaun.

(And thanks to Angie Polk for the interview work.)

– Eric

Steve Lambe by Steve Lambe

This week’s interview victim is Mr Steve Lambe who pulls double duty as both character and prop designer on Fanboy and Chum Chum. This is the first of two parts with Steve.

Frederator: Where were you raised?

Steve: I grew up in Newfoundland, Canada. A long, long way from Burbank, California.

Steve’s Fedora Man expressions from Fanboy and Chum Chum

Frederator: What was your favorite cartoon as a kid?

Steve: Great question! Hard to pick just one, though. I’m an 80’s kid so I grew up watching tons of toy cartoons like He-Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Visionaries, Thundercats, Sectaurs, M.A.S.K., etc. From a technical point of view, they weren’t great cartoons, but they were really imaginative. Not everything revolved around high school, like today’s cartoons.

Steve Lambe

Frederator: How’d you get your education in cartooning? Did you go to school for animation?

Steve: Well actually I fell asleep in a boat in Canada, and woke up off the shores of Malibu. Fred Seibert was fishing on the beach, and offered me a job on his new show. I keeed……I keeed….

Sure did. I went to a small community college in Miramichi, New Brunswick (Animation in Canada isn’t taught in universities for some reason). I was part of the second generation to take their new Animation and Graphics program. It’s goal was to train students in both the 2D and 3d realms, so we were taught both how to animate classically on paper and in Softimage/Maya on the computer.

It was a great training ground as an artist. Top of the line animation equipment and software, affordable tuition, and lots of talented artists (both students and teachers) to learn from. One of the faults of the program however was that you never had enough time to focus on one area. Once you got into your 2d animation, you had to drop everything to go to your 3d classes, and visa versa. So upon graduation, we were all pretty tech savvy, but not necessarily the best trained animators. I hear the program is structured much differently now (2D and 3D are two separate programs), so I think all those kinks have been ironed out.

Another Lambe original

Frederator: You made the move from Chicago to Burbank to work on El Tigre, right? How’d you get that gig and what was the experience like?

Steve: Sure did. I was working for a video game company out in Chicago at time, and got an email out of the blue from the creator, Jorge Gutierrez. I guess he had seen my blog on the internet, and thought I’d be a good fit for the show. At first he asked if I was interested in doing some freelance design, and I said most definitely (having been a huge fan of his work). So six months went by with no word, and then I finally hear from him again, but this time asking if I would consider moving out to Los Angeles. Well long story short, one month and 2000 miles later, I was living in Burbank and working at Nickelodeon on El Tigre. Working on the show with so many talented people was a truly amazing and educational experience, and I really have to thank both Jorge and Sandra for giving this humble little Canadian such a great opportunity.

Some of Steve’s El Tigre work

To be continued…

David Hornsby

Mr David Hornsby’s lengthy resume includes acting gigs in the feature films Flags of Our Fathers and Christmas with the Kranks. On TV, he’s appeared on Six Feet Under and The Joe Schmo Show (he was ’the Asshole’). He’s played Matthew Mara on Eric Robles’s favorite show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a project on which he’s also been story editor and supervising producer. While he’s been busy lately on the new FOX pilot Boldly Going Nowhere, David’s destined to be best remembered as the voice of America’s most-beloved cartoon character, Fanboy. Here, we tried his patience with this brief but wildly informative interview.

Frederator: What’s the David Hornsby Story, in 150 words or less?

David: I’m a Southerner. I grew up going to private school in Houston, Texas where, in high school, we’d wear what we call a ‘Texas Tux’ to proms. (Top half tux, cummerbund, bottom half jeans and boots.) At one point when I was younger I seriously contemplated being an animator, as I’ve always drawn, but ultimately ruled it out when I fell into acting. I ended up becoming a total theatre geek in high school. I went to drama school, moved to New York, then LA, yada, yada, yada. And finally, after being a temp, a nanny, a caterer, valet, food expeditor on the Sunset strip, a waiter and a telemarketer, I started to gain some momentum acting and writing and landed where I am today: A grown man playing a ten year old boy. I couldn’t be happier.

Frederator: What was your favorite cartoon growing up?

David Hornsby: Robotech. On Channel 39 in Houston, after school. I liked it because it was a cartoon of epic scope that covered three generations of galactic fighters. It was actually pretty dark stuff. It also had a motorcycle that wrapped around your body into a suit of armor. (Still waiting for that technology.) Also, when you’ve got a story editor as good as Carl Macek on a show, you know you’re in good hands… I just looked that up on the internet to sound smarter. (I think it totally worked.)

Frederator: Where do you get your creative inspiration?

David: Tough to say where creative inspiration comes from. Surrounding myself with talented, ambitious friends who make me laugh and raise my bar inspires me. Also everyday life. There are so many great interesting characters in the world. (Especially in my neighborhood.) I can definitely answer where I don’t get creative inspiration from: internet message boards. They can be brutal. I say avoid them.

David with Paul Giamatti and Billy Crudup in Pretty Bird

Frederator: Any words of showbiz advice?

David: Do it yourself and be persistent! Don’t just wait around for someone to hand it to you. There’s no right path so just create what you want… preferably in a form that can be viewed on a dvd player by someone important who’s probably gonna watch/listen/look at it at their convenience at two in the morning in their underwear.

Frederator: If you could meet any artist, living or not, who would it be?

David: Are we talking a time-travel situation? Cause if that’s the case I’d probably utilize that technology to win a lottery or invest a buncha money into the stock market. That seems much more beneficial. Then again, there’s the whole butterfly effect… this scenario you’ve proposed is a dangerous game.

Frederator: What excited you about working on Fanboy & Chum Chum?

David: The level of talent behind this show is extremely high. The scripts are very funny and character-driven, headed by Steve Tompkins and his small crew of writers who are working at breakneck speeds. Creator Eric Robles’ talent and enthusiasm could power Ventura County alone. Plus, the animation is at a level I’ve not seen on TV before. Nickelodeon’s first original creator driven CG show in HD.

Frederator: If you had any super power what would it be?

David: The power to make my 89-year-old grandfather vote Democratic.

Thanks for your time, David.

(And thanks to Angie Polk for the interview work.)

– Eric (Homan)

Octavio Rodriguez

Fanboy’s lucky to have Octavio Rodriguez as a storyboard artist. Besides boarding on shows including The Mighty B!, SpongeBob, and Johnny Bravo, Octavio’s publishing Plat & Dave, “the intergalactic space adventures of bounty hunters for hire, brothers who happen to be Platypuses.”

Frederator: What was your favorite cartoon growing up?

Octavio: Disney’s Gummi Bears… just kidding. Robotech, I love the idea of episodic plots.

Frederator: What’s your schooling background?

Octavio: Bio major in my first two years of college, then switched to computer programming. At that time I was a PC consultant at 21 for the city of Glendale. I always drew so I finally gave in to the itch and switched my major to Fine Arts at CSUF (they were just starting a animation program)

Frederator: Tell us about Plat & Dave.

Octavio: Plat and Dave was an idea from one of the several projects that I created way back when, which lent itself better as a comic. It’s the first of three limited editions comic books I plan to put out this year.

Frederator: What is one thing you’ve learned along the road to get where you are that you would share with anyone?

Octavio: Networking. You can be an amazing artist but if you don’t put yourself out there, most likely they may never see your work.

Frederator: If you could go back and meet any artist, living or not, who would you meet?

Octavio: Nicolai Fechin.

Frederator: What excited you about working on Fanboy & Chum Chum in particular?

Octavio: I loved the look of the show and I wanted to see how it would translate in 3D. From what I’ve seen it works!

Thanks for the time, Octavio.

(Thanks to Angie Polk for the interview work.)

– Eric (Homan)

Mairghread Scott puts the clamp down on writer Itai Grunfeld. TREAD!

Frederator: Describe your chores on Fanboy & Chum Chum, please.

Mairghread: My job is Executive Assistant to Eric (Robles) and Steve (Tompkins), so I’m in charge of making sure the guys know where they’re going, which people asked them for what (and when they need it by), and in general handling the chaos that comes with cartoons. And yes, I do keep a pad of paper by me to write it all down.

Frederator: Where did you grow up?

Mairghread: I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan. It’s a nice town right outside of Detroit where everything is named after the Ford Motor Company. Oh, and I’m told we have the largest Arabic population in the country, so there’s that too.

Frederator: What was your favorite cartoon as a kid?

Mairghread: Batman: The Animated Series (and if no one’s around, Sailor Moon).

Frederator: Did you go to school to be doing what you’re currently doing?

Mairghread: Pretty much. I went to NYU (ooh, fancy), and studied Dramatic Writing, with a focus on Television Writing, with a focus on Animation. Anyway, Fanboy is exactly the type of place I want to be working. Of course, since I’ve only been out of college for a year and change, they don’t let me write the episodes yet, but I do get to pitch jokes and story ideas sometimes. Maybe if one of the writers meets with some kind of accident…

Frederator: Where do you get your creative inspiration?

Mairghread: I get a lot of ideas from reading the paper. I think people think that ideas for a kids’ show have to come from kids’ stuff, but most problems we faced when we were little are the same problems we face today. So when I think of an idea or joke I just use class president instead of nation’s president, bike crash instead of car wreck and Spider-Man collectable instead priceless work of art.

Frederator: Name one thing you’ve learned along the road to get to where you are.

Mairghread: Always try. There are so many things I didn’t try because I was sure I’d get rejected, only to see other people just give it a whirl and succeed. Plenty of people in life will tell you “no.” Don’t tell it to yourself.

Frederator: Are there any artists, present or past, you’d like to meet?

Mairghread: I can’t draw, so talking to artists is a little intimidating for me. (ex. Big Name Artist: So, what do you want to comment on in my body of work? Me: You draw real nice!). But I have always wanted to see the sculptor Daniel Chester French at work. A copy of his “Mourning Victory” is in the New York Met, and I’d love to see how anyone could pull that much emotion out of stone.

Frederator: If you had any super power what would it be?

Mairghread: Wings. Not just magical levitation like Superman. I mean, big, Hawkman-style wings. I want to fly, but I also what to know how the heck I’m doing it.

Thanks, Mairghread.

(Thanks to Angie Polk for the interview work.)

– Eric (Homan)

Niki Yang

If you’re like we are, you’re already a big fan of Niki Yang from her Random! Cartoons shorts, “Two Witch Sisters” and “Victor the Delivery Dog”. Since March, this Seoul-born artist has been busy storyboarding for Fanboy and Chum Chum. She took a break from her drawing responsibilities to answer a few questions for the blog.

Frederator: What was your favorite cartoon growing up as a kid?

Niki: Miyazaki’s early work such as Conan, the Boy in Future, Anne of Green Gables, A Dog of Flanders, Little Nemo, Tezuka’s Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion and some more animations which I lost in translation…

Channel Frederator: Tell us about your schooling.

Niki: Believe it or not, I was in art school and film school for 11 years and I also trained to be a classical violinest in my early years. It sounds like a joke but these experiences made me who I am now. 7 years of strict academic art school in Korea gave me great craftsmanship, 4 years of CalArts animation school opened my eyes as a filmmaker and 7 years of violin training gave me a bohemian spirit!!

Frederator: You were a storyboard artist on Family Guy. What’s the biggest difference between boarding on that show and Fanboy and Chum Chum?

Niki: For Fanboy and Chum Chum, a die-hard, cartoony show, we still stick to the script but we have room to breathe. I often put my own physical jokes (including fart jokes with surrealistic touch added on) and my acting ranges from a serious Sean Penn style of acting to a cartoony Bugs Bunny style of acting. Yeah, we are talking about freedom! Our brain has to work out various aspects of filmmaking from composition, comedic timing, different shots and of course acting.

Frederator: Where do you get your creative inspiration?

Niki: People, by just observing them… and occasionally from my dogs.

Frederator: What is one thing you’ve learned along the road to get to where you are?

Niki: Believe in yourself either people think you are the next hot thing or total loser, just focus on who you are and what you want. And don’t forget to HAVE FUN with what you do! That’s where true creativity comes from.

Frederator: If you could meet any artist, living or not, who would it be?

Niki: Stanley Kubrick, Yuri Norstein, Quay Brothers, Jim Jarmusch, David Linch, Henri Matisse, Ben Shahn, John Hubley, David Hockney, William Steig, Robert Altman, Ridley Scott, Andre Tarkovsky, Richard Williams, Gene Wilder and Charlie Chaplin, so many!!!

Dorothy, from Niki’s Witch-Diculous series pitch

Channel Frederator: Your super power of choice?

Niki: I would like to have a “Botox” power. So no mater how old and saggy you are, as soon as you received the tiniest touch from me, you would be as youthful as you wished!!!

Thanks, Niki. That Botox power will make you a very wealthy woman here in L.A.

(Thanks to Angie Polk for the interview work.)

– Eric (Homan)

Chad Woods

Chad Woods was one of the first artists Eric Robles brought on board for Fanboy and Chum Chum. In fact, Chad worked on the original Random! Cartoons short. We asked Chad a few questions about his work, inspiration, and super powers.

Frederator: What’s your job on Fanboy & Chum Chum?

Chad Woods: I’m the color stylist/background painter for the show. In addition to painting mattes/concepts for the CG texture department to refer to, I also do the color scripts for each episode. The color scripts provide direction for the lighting department for how to light key moments in each episode.

Color script from episode #117, “Viking”

Frederator: Where did you grow up?

Chad: I moved around a lot as a kid. I was born in Indiana and have lived in Florida and Texas, before moving out to California in the mid 80’s.

Frederator: What was your favorite cartoon as a kid?

Chad: As a kid, I loved GI Joe. In hindsight, I’m glad I never had to work on that show (or most shows from the 80’s for that matter.)

Frederator: Did you go to art school?

Chad: I went to Cal State Fullerton because they have a great animation program, plus it was a lot cheaper than my original choice of Art Center. I originally wanted to be a car designer, but instead made to change to illustration / animation being there was more variety in what I could be doing. I like to work on my car as kind of a hobby, so everything works out!

Frederator: Where do you get your creative inspiration?

Chad: Being around such talented people in this industry, it’s easy to get inspired every day (cheesy but true!)

Frederator: Any words of wisdom for young cartoonists?

Chad: The best advice I could give is that you need two things to sustain a career in animation, a strong network of people and a skill set to back it up.

Frederator: If you could meet any artist, living or not, who would it be?

Chad: I’d love to have a talk with Maxfield Parrish about his use of color.

Frederator: And, finally, the one super power you’d love to have…

Chad: I would love the power of teleportation so long as I could take my loved ones with me. Let’s all have a drink in Tokyo! Floooop! (that’s the sound of me teleporting out of Burbank.)

Thanks, Chad. Now get back to work.

(Thanks to Angie Polk for the interview work.)

– Eric (Homan)