Talk to the Snail

My fifth and final (sorry, folks) post re-capping last week’s Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Codename Kids Next Door

Just three nominees here, and I missed seeing one of them (my apologies, Tom: Tom in the Woods — you can watch Tom here, but it’s in German). The other two were Cartoon Network shows, episodes of Camp Lazlo and Codename Kids Next Door. I like a lot of Camp Lazlo, but this episode (“Tree Hugger”) I don’t think ranks among the strongest. The KND episode, “L.I.C.O.R.I.C.E.”, on the other hand, I absolutely loved. Unlike last year when creator Mr Warburton clearly bribed the festival jury to have his show beat out Frederator’s My Life as a Teenage Robot for top honors in this category, this year’s KDN entry deserved the win. The jury and I agreed. “L.I.C.O.R.I.C.E.” won.

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I love the music of Brian Wilson like nobody’s business. By extension, I’m a fan of Mr Darian Sahanaja and the Wondermints (Darian has served as Brian’s musical director on tour for the past few years). Since maybe 2003 or so, I’ve been thinking that if I ever were in a position to bring in someone fresh to compose for a cartoon, I’d plead for the musical services of Darian. Then, people would say, “Gee. That Frederator guy has fantastic taste! He’s ahead of his time! What a find he found in Sahanaja!” Well, the sad story here is that someone at Disney felt the same way. The Wondermints keyboardist has gone ahead and written the theme song to the network’s latest show, The Replacements. You can hear it (and see the opening titles) here. Congratulations, Disney, you jerks, for glomming onto the one idea I thought was original to me.

PS It appears that Darian has composed only the [Read more…]

Part IV of my salacious re-cap of my trip to the Ottawa International Animation Festival last week.

It’s Jerrytime!: The Brute

This category, New Media Competition, absorbs the category of Animation Short Made for the Internet. In fact, the terms ‘New Media’ and ‘Internet’ were both used in describing the fourteen films.

Even though these cartoons were made for the Internet, most were new to me, and, after doing cursory googling, I could dig up few on the web (even images were hard to find). Our Friends of Frederator© Tom Kyzivat and Zee Risek had their films, “Prey” and “The Z-Files”, included (Zee – why was this version of your film longer than the version we screened in last year’s Nicktoons Network Animation Festival?). The JibJab boys were represented, too.

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Part III of my mouth-watering thoughts on this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival.

FedEx: Stick

The category of Commissioned Animation was broken into three sub-categories: Promotional Animation; Music Video; and Television Animation for Adults.

Promotional Animation I.E. commercials. Going back over the list of these 17 spots, ranging from 15 seconds to a minute, it’s sort of tough to remember all them. I mean, heck, I saw them for just a few seconds a week ago, after all. There were some nifty ads, promos, and PSAs by J.J. Sedelmaier and our friends at InterSpectacular. We saw two of the United Airlines ads and a pair of Dodge spots. Basically, everything was pretty much fun (the fact that I, along with clearly a lot of people, have the attention span of a poodle often makes these shorter films come as a relief). Ultimately, my favorite spot was David Hulin’s spot for FedEx, “Stick”. Watch this film here. If you’re like [Read more…]

“Robot Tea Party” by Amanda Visell

Hey, Chicagoans. One of my favorite artists ever – Amanda Visell – is in a group show with Jimmy Pickering and Michael Slack at DvA Gallery, 2568 North Lincoln Avenue. For those of you not in the Chi-town area, you can view the art online here. If you go (and you should if you can), make sure you steal me something. Thanks.

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Part II of my re-cap of the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Mr. Schwarz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker

Okay, So this category is divided into three sections: High School; Undergraduate; and Graduation.

High School Animation The main thing here, the very best thing, is that there are high schools out there dedicated to encouraging their students to make cartoons. And pretty good ones, too. My favorite film here was by Hye Jin Park, Hyun Joo Song, Ji Na Yoon, and Min Hee Jang from Korean Animation High School. “Black Box” featured a TV-addicted bear finding out what really goes on inside the black box.

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Part I of my Ottawa International Animation Festival re-cap.

“Rabbit”

There were a few films I really enjoyed in this competition, which is divided into two sub-categories: Narrative Short Animation and Experimental/Abstract Animation.

I’m not a huge fan of experimental animation, and although the programmers divvied up just eleven nominated shorts across five screenings, it still seemed there were a lot more than that (maybe it’s because the student experimental films were thrown in the mix as well). Most of them I forgot quickly, but the one I remember most was “Jeu” by Switzerland’s Georges Schwizgebel. The festival’s jury awarded “Jeu” Best Experimental/Abstract Animation under 35 Minutes.

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So Melissa, Fred, and I are back in the States now that the 30th Ottawa International Animation Festival is over and done with. For a variety of reasons, I had a much better time at last year’s shindig. Over the next few days, I’ll give a re-cap of what my favorite films were and what I would’ve chosen as the winner of each category. I’m sure you’re all on the edge of your seats.

Festival Highlight: Why, the Channel Frederator party Thursday night, of course. Crush, Kill, Destroy indeed.

Oh, and the city of Ottawa is too gorgeous for words.

Festival Lowlight: Literally minutes after a fatal traffic accident, with the corpse still lying outside the screening theatre, misanthropic festival director Chris Robinson, in his opening remarks, making a joke about the tragedy.

More fun and games to follow throughout the week.

So, with yesterday’s recording of Maurice LaMarche as Pickle Cop in “Bit Boy”, we wrapped up all the recording for this season of 39 Random! cartoons. According to company records, tt looks like Kyle first recorded his MooBeard cast last August 24. In just a bit more than a year, 119 voice artists lent their talents to our season. That’s a lot. And you need to remember, for every one of those actors (including some who worked on a few shorts), there were several more who auditioned in one way or another.

The biggest thanks, by far, go to Nickelodeon voice caster Meredith Layne. She took on the Herculean task of accommodating the casting needs of the Random! creators, all of whom are notoriously needy. Thanks, Meredith, to you and your trusty sidekick, Erin Giesenhagen. We could not have done it without you.

And, now, thanks to the 119 folks whose voices you’ll hear this season on Random! Cartoons. (The numbers [Read more…]