Anne did a sweet little sketch of Teapot and crew while we were at the booth at Comic-Con. Figured I’d share it! I tried my hand at one of Anne’s characters. I did a very…interesting Tabby.

-Dahveed!

Whew! The MTK gang just got back from Comicon last week…and we’re just now getting around to doing all-important things like unpacking! And updating the blog!

Here’s a picture I snapped of the Friday crowd. As Raul and Bill put it, Mama Mia! And this wasn’t even the most crowded day!

I don’t have a picture from the R!C panel but I have to say that I think it went spendidly! Everything looked really awesome…this season of R!C is going to be the best yet! (My co-creator Melissa Wolfe was up there with me…basking in the glow of our half-completed short…and operating the slide projector.)

The obligatory photo of yours truly, grinning like an idiot–as my better half looks on in bewilderment–in front of the not-quite-set-up MTK booth! Why am I grinning, you ask? Because this booth almost didn’t happen. And WOULDN’T have happend if Claudia, Fred, Eric and Therese weren’t there on Wednesday afternoon to help me smooth out the bumps. Thank you SO much, guys!! I’m totally in your debt.

We shared our little corner of the convention center with the infamaously ambitious (and talented) Stephen Levinson and Teapot co-creator Dahveed! Tons of people came by…and some of them even left with a t-shirt! Stephen did his part by walking all over Con in his stylish MTK outerwear. I did my part by saying “New Cartoons On Nickelodeon!” until I was hoarse.

One of the best about Con is the opportunity to meet so many other talented artists! (And cool people from work, and cool people from school I haven’t seen in a year, and Kingons….) I read a blog where an artist called it Nerd Prom. I think that description just about sums it up nicely.

That’s about it for now…I’ll share some more comicon pictures next post! Right now, it’s time for another cup of tea with honey to try and get my voice back.

-Anne

When the cute toys in Our Fair City start attacking, Super Santa gears up to confront Bedlam Bunny—an adorable bunny with a not-so-cute mean streak. Filmmaker Mike Bell, as usual, impresses the heck out of us.

Says Frederator’s very own Fred Seibert, “We first met Mike at Hanna-Barbera when he pitched us his short Commander Cork (which we stupidly did not make), and then he joined our OY! team as a writer on Dave Wasson’s Goose Lady fairy tales. That led him to a handful of solo cartoons for us, Super Santa being the first.

Mike’s gone on to develop a live action Santa film for Paramount and Nickelodeon, and boarding and writing for (among others) Spongebob Squarepants and My Life as a Teenage Robot.

And as we always remind, you can see all the Channel Frederator episodes from our Website, or subscribe to the whole series through iTunes.”

Thanks, Mike, for the terrific Christmas in July!

Melissa

and no one noticed.. because it stinks at comicon.

This post is for people who saw Adventure Time at comicon and wanted to write a comment about it.

I had a really swell time at comicon this year. The warm applause at the Random Cartoons screening after my cartoon played gave me a little boost of confidence so I was able to walk amongst the tables, free of guilt when I didn’t buy.. every comic at every table. At the past 3 cons I would start to get really freaked out by all the people and especially all of the artists behind tables that want you to buy their comics. This year I was oky doky.. and I did buy a ton of a comics. A pile - shin high.

Thanks Claudia for putting it together.

So HERE is some more animation for Buck. It’s actually the rest of the sound clip I posted yesterday animated the rest of the way through.

Tests like these help us put the rig through it’s paces before we get into production with it.

-Floyd

Well, I’m finally done with my exposure sheets! Whew! It was a lot more work than I anticipated! My friend Alex asked me a few days ago to post some more Exposure Sheets and seeing as how I ain’t gots nuthin’ else to post today, I figured I would do just that. If you hate looking at sheets or are an old hat at this kinda schtuff disregard this post because you probably already know all this. If you think it’s interesting read on!

As I said in my other post on Exposure Sheets, I like to add drawings that I missed on the board and I have to say that I missed a lot in Flavio’s board. I was surprised to see how long it took for him to say things. I guess it’s because of all the “a’s” after each word but I found I had scads of time to add subtle acting and little nuances for each scene. Just nods and tilts of the head plus places where I could get Flavio to use his hands as a good Italian goat should.

Plus when I originally did the board I didn’t know how Mr. frank or Bossman would sound so I didn’t do many poses for them. this was my chance to polish it up as well.

This time around you will notice in the center of the page, there are some red letters in a column, which is the “Mouth Charts exposures”. Last post I hadn’t had a chance to do expose the dialog yet. For those uninitiated, we use these to help the overseas studios (who usually do not speak English) how the mouth should look for each word.

It’s funny but most overseas studios don’t even animate to a soundtrack! They don’t listen to the dialog because there’s really no point. I know it wouldn’t help me much with animation if I had to listen to a Chinese soundtrack. Maybe a bit for inflections etc. but in the end I’d probably get confused.

Even more of a reason to do detailed exposure sheets because if you think they’ll hear that great little “sigh” that your guy does in the soundtrack… it ain;’t gonna happen unless your director exposes it on the sheets.

In my case I created three different sets of mouth charts, one for Happy expressions, one for Sad expressions and one for Freaked Out expressions.
Anyway, here’s some more sheets to look at if you like…

The first of two clips shown at San Diego Comic-Con 2006 for the upcoming Simpsons movie, in animatic form with some animation.

Click here to view clip.

Tell us your thoughts about the upcoming Simpsons Movie.

I know you have some! Call the toonfuse hotline 888-810-6906

If Bronk is angry look out. He may be small but he’s got a lot of attitude and something to prove. Although he never really takes his anger out on anyone but Bongo, who is usually the one to make him mad in the first place. Don’t get him wrong, he loves BONGO like a brother and if anyone but he were to take advantage of him, well, Bronk would be all over them like white on rice in a glass of milk on a paper plate in the middle of a snow storm. He’s like a tiny Tornado of anger.

And speaking of tornados, (bad segue) I’m sorry we haven’t posted in a while. Not only have Alan and I been swamped but we had a small tornado hit my town in NJ last week and I lost power for 4 days and it will be about a month before I have cable and internet back. A ton of giant trees fell down and crushed stuff, but we escaped with our lives and minor property damage thankfully.

Bronk and Bongo has continued though. We are just about to cut an animatic. BG designers and painters are being lined up as well. We hope to be posting more soon.

Click here for the song of the day.

Bloggingly yours, Manfred Man and Alan Brady

There was a time when ninety percent of all the medical research in this country was focused on the tricky subject of brain transplants: armies of renegade surgeons with thick Hungarian accents were forever yanking out brains from the skulls of guys, and popping them into the skulls of different guys, and those different guys were always wearing gorilla costumes. No, really.

Our film, “The Mad Doctor” is the Disney version — a nutty medico wants to switch the heads of a chicken and Pluto Pup. It’s up to the kid with the bowling ball ears and nifty red shorts to come to the rescue in today’s 1933 classic directed by David Hand. For a Mickey Mouse cartoon, this is pretty potent stuff, full of scary flourishes and gruesome details — the crazy scientist shows us an explicit diagram, complete with bloody saw! The Disney team may have been emboldened knowing (WARNING: SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER!) that the whole thing turns out to be a dream in the end. Ummm…nice twist! M. Night Shyamalan would be proud.

ReFrederator rides again with Science Friction Week. Tell us how we are doin’!

For your free subscription to ReFrederator, click
here, or visit iTunes!

Dave Kirwan

Greetings True Believers!

Well we’re back from the 2006 San Diego Comic-Con and let me tell you it was bananas! My lovely wife Hortencia, Bill and I had a great time. Sure it was hot, crowded, and even a bit stinky, but it was good times nonetheless.

The Random Cartoons Panel was so much fun. Jerry Beck did an awesome job as the moderator and our fellow Random creators, Anne Walker, Pen Ward, Kyle Carrozza, and Eric Robles were super panelists. We got to see some clips from some of the shows and we also ran into Adam Henry, Greg Eagles, Dahveed, Claudia Spinelli, Eric Homan, Therese Trujillo, and Melissa Wolfe! Everyone was so excited; you could feel the buzz in the room! Bill and I felt proud to be part of such a dynamic group of creative goofballs!

As you can see the Comic-Con was insane! I heard that on Saturday there were close to 150,000 people in attendance! Mama Mia! That’s a lot of nerds!

Here we are with the lovely and vivacious Therese Trujillo. She is the glue that holds the gears of Random Cartoons together! We love you Therese!

Bill and I were lucky enough to get a snapshot with the legendary creator of MooBeard: The Cow Pirate, Kyle Carrozza AKA TV’s Kyle before the throng of groupies and paparazzi got to him.

We finally got to meet The Great Stephen Levinson! For months I’ve been impressed with this kid’s talent and enthusiasm and it was a real treat to finally see him in person. All weekend Bill and I kept running into him at panels or at the Random Cartoons booth. It seems that everywhere we looked there he was! On Monday we had a pitch at Cartoon Network and believe it or not we ran into him in the lobby! If Stephen keeps up the hard work I see a big future for him in the animation biz! Kudos Stephen!

We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw Batman! Not just any Batman, it was the 1960’s Adam West Batman! Wow! This guy nailed the replica costume! Big props to homeboy!

Here we are with our agent Matthew Ellis of the Metropolis Talent Agency. We bumped into him on Thursday and had a delightful lunch in downtown San Diego. Boy talk about schmoozers! Matt’s a great guy and we hope to make him very rich very soon.

Bill, my lovely wife Hortencia and I paused for a minute to take this photo. Not bad considering I was holding the camera myself.

Attention K-mart shoppers! Hero Heights baseball caps were all the rage at this year’s Comic-Con. Pretty soon you too will be able to purchase your very own Hero Heights baseball cap! As soon as we figure how to get them out we’ll let you know!

That’s all for now folks! So until next time this is Raul Aguirre Jr. and Bill Ho saying Excelsior!!