Talk to the Snail

The first series created by the wife/husband team of Sandra Equihua and Jorge Gutierrez, El Tigre, has its official premiere this Saturday morning at 10:00 a.m. on Nickelodeon. It’ll be Nick’s first original cartoon series in nearly a year and a half.

Both Jorge and Sandra have worked a little with Frederator over the years: Jorge served as a “guest designer” on a special Day of the Dead episode of ChalkZone years ago and he designed one of our annual New Year’s posters.* Sandra, meanwhile, was a character designer on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! before getting the call to work on her own show. This hardest-working couple in showbiz are hellishly nice and super-talented in the art department.

The only thing more colossal than their art gifts is their talent in attracting other talent. Just look at some of the crew members credited in the first half-hour episode (“Sole of a Hero” and “Night of the Living Guacamole”):

Roman Laney
Fred [Read more…]

Illustrator/animator Luke Feldman was at the Frederator shop yesterday showing off some projects he’s been working on. Luke moved to California from Australia about a year ago and has since been quite busy with a variety of ventures. He’s created skatedecks, prints and skooter adhesives, designed Coca-Cola ads, been featured in art shows, had his own gallery exhibition, and created a few animations for which he also composed the scores.

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“Super John Doe Jr’s” creator, Lincoln Peirce, was in from Maine last week to wrap up production on his cartoon. That’s him, above, between Larry Huber and Molly Maldonado at the final mix session at Advantage Audio, where the different parts of the sound – the dialog, the music, and the sound effects – are balanced.

It should be noted that Lincoln is the only Random! Cartoons creator to have his short greenlit before having to pitch his storyboard it in person. He pretty much mailed in his board, we asked him to shorten it and make it a little younger, he did, then we bought it. He did fly in from Maine eventually to pitch his work to kick off production, so many years ago it seems. He also gets the award for the creator with most air miles used. Congratulations, Lincoln.

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copyright Steve Daye

Mr Steve Daye stopped by yesterday to show off the new project he’s been working on, Weird Wolves. Steve’s an uber-talented creator/director/board artist/design guy who paid his dues at Nelvana where he created The Manly Bee. From Canada, Steve worked up a bunch of storyboards for The Fairly OddParents and Danny Phantom before moving to Southern California to become an integral creative part of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! See his blog Stunt Monkey, here. And thanks for stopping by, Steve.

Thanks to Steve for kind permission to post some of his show’s artwork.

We just got word that Niki Yang’s “Two Witch Sisters” and an episode of Butch Hartman’s The Fairly OddParents, “The Good Ol’ Days”, have been chosen to be included in the International Showcase section of Italy’s Cartoons on the Bay, the International Festival on Television Animation.

“Every year, Cartoons on the Bay selects and presents the most representative entries into their International Showcase section. This section gives a picture of the latest cultural, technological, and industrial trends in the field all over the planet, giving special attention to those that seem most innovative. “

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Congratulations to Random!’s Guy Vasilovich (“Dugly Uckling in: Treasure Quest”). Iggy Arbuckle, the show he created for National Geographic Kids’ Entertainment, has been picked up for European distribution by Jetix Europe. Iggy is produced at Toronto’s Blueprint Entertainment and has been airing on Canada’s Teletoon. That’s big news for any creator.

Yet another great thing about producing 39 Random! cartoons over the past two years is the amount of talented composers who came in to help out the filmmakers by scoring their shorts. It was great to work with some old Friends of Frederator, but it was also fantastic to strike up new relationships with composers with whom we’d never been in business. For the most part, each musician was given less than two weeks to compose and record the soundtrack for a 6:52 short (and a few were working on more than one simultaneously). Thanks very much for your work, everyone.

Andy Paley
Mike Tavera
Randall Crissman
Shawn Patterson
Peter Lurye
Marina Kalantarova
Bill Burnett
Casey Basichis
Jeff Arcio
Geoff Levin
Brad Breeck
Terry Taylor
Guy Moon
Kevin Manthei
Klaus Badelt
J. Eric Shmidt
Luis Narino
Michael Karp

We just finished Random! Cartoons studio screening #6 for Nick employees and the casts and crews of the shorts. Congratulations to Erik, Pen, Jun, and Doug. Fine work all around.

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… as it’s known in our house, Passover.*

While Frederator cartoons came up short in tonight’s Annie Awards, it was still pretty fun and the guys looked very dapper.

That’s Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! creator Bob Boyle, above, with Wubbzy composer Brad Mossman, Wubbzy storyboard artist James Burks, and Bob’s better half, Teri Shikasho, who is also the show’s color supervisor.

Bob was up for Best Animated Production (winner: Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends) and Production Design in a TV Show (winner: Martin Ansolabehere for his work on Foster’s).

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Since it’s February 1, I thought I’d give a quick update on the successful response to Pen Ward’s “Adventure Time” since we put it on the Internet. It was uploaded to Google Video the weekend of 1/12, and in in about four days it hit quarter of a million unique views (it was then pulled by Google – we’re not sure why). By then it had hit YouTube several times. The lead post there’s gotten nearly 182,000 unique views (there were also some additional YouTube posts where the numbers reached 50,000 and more, but they’ve been de-posted, too). It’s currently ranked the #3 favorite in all Arts and Animation, and the #20 in Favorites in all YouTube videos. Annie voting ends tomorrow (Friday) night, the awards are next Sunday, 2/11.

We know the credits are a little tough to read on YouTube, so here they are.

Directed by
Larry Leichliter
Hugo Morales
and
Pendleton Ward

Closing Credits:

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Fred Seibert

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Larry Huber

PRODUCER
Kevin Kolde

CO-PRODUCER
Pendleton Ward

LINE [Read more…]