You really need to pick up a hefty copy of S Curves: The Art of Shane Glines. I’ve been a big fan of Shane’s work for a long time, and his Cartoon Retro site is a daily stop for me. Seriously, this hardcover book is high-quality, the color’s great, and, or course, the art is fantastic. It’s pricey, but at 400+ pages, worth the money.
The nominations for this September’s Ottawa International Animation Festival have been announced. While no Frederator productions will be in this year, films by two Random! Cartoons creators will be. “Gary Guitar” creator Bill Plympton’s Guide Dog will be in the International Showcase, and Lincoln Peirce, creator of “Super John Doe Junior”, is nominated along with his partner, Dan Sousa, in the Television Animation for Adults category for “The Brothers Pistov” (that title alone deserves an award). Best of luck, guys. See you in Ottawa.
This is just a reminder that if you’re heading to Comic-Con in San Diego this week, you better stop by room #2 on Thursday at 2:30 PM. That’s when we’re having a fantabulous panel discussion revolving around the little thing we like to call Random! Cartoons. You can see an earlier blog entry by moi here, but, in short, you’ll see Mr Jerry Beck (have I mentioned how lucky we are to have the world’s most pre-eminent animation historian in our corner?) moderate a panel consisting of first-time filmmakers, including K. Carrozza, E. Robles, A. Walker, and P. Ward. Clips will be shown, war stories will be told. An entire world premiere cartoon will be screened. And there will be shown a five-minute ‘hot-mix’, a clip compilation of the dozen or so shorts finished so far, assembled by the best network representative a production could ask for, Claudia Spinelli. And if you want to say ‘hi’ to me and tell [Read more…]
It’s been a while since Fred or I mentioned Bob Boyle on this page.
Besides being the nicest guy I’ve ever met (I’m serious), Bob is the creator of two new cartoons hitting the airwaves in the next two months. One of them, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, is a pre-school show being produced by us (Frederator) and Bolder Media over at IDT for an August 28 premiere on Nick Jr (got all that?).
Bob’s other show, Yin Yang Yo!, is in production at Disney and will premiere on Jetix in September. It’s for older kids and much more action/adventurey than WWW! The good folks at the House of Mouse have put online a whole episode of YYY! Watch it here.
Best of luck with Yin Yang Yo!, Bob. I hope it’s the second-most popular cartoon debuting this year.
PS The upfront credits of the episode online, “Dojo Oh No!”, contain the names of both Steve Marmel and John Fountain, two guys who made invaluable contributions to [Read more…]
The folks at Comic-Con have announced their programming schedule. You can check out all the things they’ll have going on via the event website, but here’s the most important. It’s happening Thursday, July 20.
2:30-3:30 Random! Cartoons and Tomorrow’s Hit-makers— Many of today’s biggest hit-makers in cartoons, including Butch Hartman, Craig McCracken, and Genndy Tartakovsky, made their first professional films for Frederator Studios and its shorts programs. Nickelodeon will debut Frederator’s newest anthology series of 39 films, Random! Cartoons, this winter. Here’s your chance to meet the cartoon hitmakers of tomorrow and find out how they sold their creations to Frederator and Nickelodeon. Creators attending will be Kyle Carrozza (Moobeard the Cow Pirate), Eric Robles (Fanboy), Anne Walker (Mind the Kitty), and Pen Ward (Adventure Time), with a panel moderated by cartoon historian (and creator of his own Random! cartoon), Jerry Beck (Hornswiggle). Cartoons and works-in-progress will be screened. Room 2
By the way, although the panel will [Read more…]
So.
This Tuesday, July 11, 2006, marks the one-year anniversary of Random! Cartoons kicking into production with Kyle Carrozza’s “MooBeard”.
Pre-production, the part of the cartoon process happening before the actual animation begins, for all 39 cartoons will wrap up by the end of the summer. At this point, we’ve got fourteen shorts completed and in the can. In fact, the whole season will be wrapped up with a nice little bow on it by New Year’s, only about five and a half months away. Hard to believe.
I’d be thrilled to be a part of this series until I retire. It’s a kick to be surrounded by such creative talent. On any given day, I may get to see backgrounds for “Girls on the Go”, the rough cut for “Two Witch Sisters”, the CG models for “Fanboy”, or hear the record for “Bronk and Bongo”. Everything happens so fast. Random!’s filmmakers are in-house for just about three months before [Read more…]
A big salute to Rob Renzetti and the uber-talented crew of My Life as a Teenage Robot. The show’s “Escape from Cluster Prime” special has just received a 2006 Emmy nomination in the category of Outstanding Animated Program (one hour or more). Being on the periphery of the production, I can only say that Rob, Alex Kirwan, and the rest of the Robot team worked ten times harder than ever on this special, and any accolades they get are more than deserved. Awards are announced August 27.
PS The show’s out of production and the crew has moved on, so this recognition (and the fact that this Frederator co-production is the only Nickelodeon cartoon nominated this year) is bittersweet. But more sweet than bitter, I guess.
PPS Our good friends at the Nicktoons Network continue to show My Life as a Teenage Robot, both the older episodes and new shows that never aired on Nick.
