Talk to the Snail

“Solomon Fix”
Random! Cartoons
Created by Doug TenNapel
Directed by Doug TenNapel
Premieres Saturday, December 6, at 1:30 p.m. ET / 10:30 PT on Nicktoons Network
Frederator Postcards Series 7.1, mailed November 13, 2008.

– Eric

Frederator Postcards Series 1, 1998
Frederator Postcards Series 2, 1999
Frederator Postcards Series 3, 2000
Frederator Postcards Series 4, 2003
Frederator Postcards Series 5, 2004-2005
Frederator Postcards Series 6, 2007-2008
Frederator Postcards Series 7, 2008-2009

Click here to see a Washington Post review of the recently published book, Not just Cartoons: Nicktoons! by the ubiquitous Jerry Beck. The article mentions a couple of what Scott Moore calls the book’s highlights, including “A history of Oh Yeah, Cartoons! The series’ 120 shorts included the first appearances of future hits Chalk Zone, Fairly OddParents and My Life as a Teenage Robot” and “title pages of the first five years of Fairly OddParents.” It’s a Washington Post Book of the Week!

(Scott, Scott, Scott. They’re called title cards, not title pages. Sheesh.)

– Eric

If you missed Tuesday night’s ASIFA-East Random! Cartoons screening, you missed ten shorts and some talk with questions and answers. It was extra cool to see our New York City-based Random! creators. Thanks to all the filmmakers, ASIFA-East, SVA, Dave Levy, and the 100+ folks who turned out.

Three things that came up during the Q&A you might want to know: Frederator’s trying real hard to get another order of shorts; the latest from Nick is that this latest crop of cartoons will air toward to the end of the year; and Bill Plympton animated “Gary Guitar” by himself in about a month.

From left to right, the folks in the above shot are: Bill Plympton, Manny Galán, Dave Levy, Alan Goodman, Dana Galin, Tom Selleck, Fred Seibert, Diane Kredensor, (not in picture, but who were there: John Dilworth and Dan Meth).

Thanks to Ryan Sias for taking the picture.

– Eric
[Read more…]

While the short she created, “Mind the Kitty”, is the 13th Oh Yeah! cartoon to go into production this season, Anne Walker is the 1st OY! creator to jump into the merchandise shop Fred has set up for us over at Cafe Press. Go here now to be the among the first to buy OY!4 buttons, stickers, and shirts (oh my). And be the envy of your friend(s).

Someone asked me this past week what was the biggest problem that, in my opinion, I saw in the tons of Oh Yeah! pitches we’ve seen this year. Easy: they’re often too complicated. It seems we’re always suggesting to creators that there’s way too much going on in their pitches, and that the best course is almost always to be as simple as possible (while true for seven-minute cartoons, this really goes for just about any art form, I think). Then I generally use as example one of my favorite shorts of all time: “Bully for Bugs”, directed by Chuck Jones in 1953. Bugs meets bull, bull ticks off Bugs, Bugs belittles bull. Simple. Pretty much just two characters, one of whom doesn’t speak. No B (or C!) story. Of course we wouldn’t want every short to be just like “Bully for Bugs”, and while this cartoon has tons of great stuff going for [Read more…]

Here�s a picture Melissa shot at last week�s re-pitch of the Teapot! storyboard. It shows some of the key talent creator Greg Eagles has assembled for his crew so far: Bill Flores, Greg, Dahveed Kolodny-Nagy, Robert Alvarez, and Alex Almaguer. I’m sure Greg and Dahveed will post more about these guys, but I wanted to introduce you briefly to these artists, highlighting their past work for Frederator.

Alex Almaguer. Alex is busy polishing up the �Teapot!� storyboard. His relationship with Frederator goes back a bit � as a storyboard revisionist he was one of the key artists on My Life as a Teenage Robot. (He�s also newly married to the former Holly Kim, a color stylist over on Frederator�s Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!)

Bill Flores also put (and, once in a while, continues to put) his time in at Teenage Robot. Many of the fantastic background designs you see on the show are his work. Like Alex, Bill�s currently over [Read more…]

It’s been a busy week. We saw the big re-pitches for “Adventure Time’ and “Teapot!”, sat in on a couple of pitches by a few of our favorite artists and people, including Alex Kirwan, Eric Robles, and Pat Ventura among others, and were in a bunch of meetings about something we’re working on outside Oh Yeah! but which may be just as cool. Last night Frederator was out in full force for a smashing party celebrating the end of series production of The Fairly OddParents. It was in downtown LA at the ultra-hip Hotel Figueroa. Most importantly, I got to hear Fred’s story of his having to kick Eric Clapton out his seat at the Concert for Bangladesh. We’re continuing to have a blast here, and are looking forward to the next two weeks which will have us put five new shorts in production. Stick with us.

PS The image above is from “Krunch and the Kid” by Adam Henry who [Read more…]

Let’s all give a big OY! sa-lute to Mr Pen Ward, the newest creator at Oh Yeah! Cartoons! He’s dripping wet from CalArts and is now busy working on a little short he calls Adventure Time. Out of all the cartoon companies in town, Frederator’s the one lucky enough to have him. I, for one, hope to be riding his coattails to cartoon superstardom for a long time to come.

A) 50
B) 100
C) 150
D) More than 300

A: D, more than 300

Mind-boggling, isn’t it? But remember, Oh Yeah! isn’t a production, really. It’s actually 39 productions, each one with it’s own crew of artists. Sure, there’ll be some crossover between cartoons, but when you begin to add up all the drawers, production folk, post-production people, voice actors, etc., the number grows kind of quickly. Oh, and I’m not even including all our international support from various animation studios overseas.

So maybe it’s appropriate to tip our hat now to Therese Trujillo, OY!’s busy Line Producer. It’s her Herculean job to keep tabs on all these OY! citizens (and to make sure they get paid). Thanks, Therese. Better you than me.