Okay, animation fans. You need to be in front of your television set tonight at 10:00 PM / 7:00 PM for the final screening of this year’s Nicktoons Network Animation Festival. It’s not an all-original epsiode, but rather the best of the season. You’ll see all this year’s award-winners, including Crocodile Journals (Diversity Award), A Great Big Giant Robot Ate My Homework (Producers’ Choice), and Libraryhead (Student Award). We’ll also be announcing the Grand Prize winner. That filmmaker gets a cool $10,000. Yeah, you read right. $10,000. That buys a lot of animation paper.

– Eric

Cyrus, Urban and Squawk caught the premiere of WWW on Nick Jr. on Monday and wanted to congratulate Bob, Fred, and everyone else associated with the show. It looks great and we wish you the best of success!

Just when you thought it was safe for the kids to watch old cartoons, that nice young fella, Flip the Frog, starts dashing around hotel corridors, looking at naked women through keyholes!

Even by the relatively lenient standards of pre-code 1932 Hollywood, today’s item, “Room Runners” is surprisingly racy stuff. There are about seven or eight scenes involving sexy women in various stages of undress, a couple of characters cursing (none of that #!@* stuff either — Flip just ups and says ‘damn!’) and even one clunky bosom and bottom joke involving a poor homely old thing. Of course, keep in mind this is an Ub Iwerks cartoon, and the entire cast, including the nude girlies, have that bulbous character design that vaguely reminds you of the animals circus clowns construct out of balloons.

Since this is Crazy Cop Week, there is a policeman on hand, but he’s as bad a peeper as Flip! All in all, a pretty lively installment — and I love those twisted doorways and moldings! They’re almost as curvy as the ubiquitous nudes!

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Dave Kirwan

PS: In case you were wondering, I insisted that Ed sign his sketch.

Sadly, Ed Benedict passed away on Monday at the age of 94. Please see Amid’s Cartoon Brew write-up on this inspirational artist and one-of-a-kind man. RIP, Ed.

Caption: Three-leg speaks to one-eye. noise made by three-leg does not necessarily conform to word.

Over the years I saved a lot of Marv Newland’s animation art because I like his drawing so much.

The way we would work on MTV and Nickelodeon 10 second network ID’s is that a favorite animator or production company (like Marv’s International Rocketship, San Francisco’s Colossal Pictures, or Washington DC’s Broadcast Arts) would pitch us rough storyboards (since they were already favorite creative partners, we would guarantee a certain amount of IDs up front, and then work out the creative from there). Our Tom Pomposello would make comments and then show all the treatments to Alan and I before we showed the network. Sometimes we’d start with a soundtrack (at Nickelodeon it was often an acapella track from our favorite singer, Eugene Pitt of the Jive Five), sometimes not.

Mostly Marv gave us a few drawings (sometimes sequences, often just cool images) and describe the film. We liked to ‘yes’ as often as possible to Marv.

–Fred

Caption: One-eye responds to three-leg.

Hey Random Cartoon Kids and Kittens!!!!
Hey; I’m still lurking about.
Your big Hollywood cartoons shows are all looking great!!!!!
It was fun seeing finished cartoons at the Nickelodeon screening a couple weeks ago!!! Man. It all looks sooooo good!
Anyway; here’s the Finsters in there hot rod shopping cart.
They decided to go from a rocket-powered shopping cart, like the ones they used in Store Wars; to a blown and injected hemi dragster-motored shopping cart.
I’m doing a lot of drag racing art these days and will post some of that in a couple days.
Enjoy and take care!
Continued fun and success on your cartoons!!!!
Your Cartoon Pals……. Jeff and the Finsters

This week we’re taking a break from our regular scheduled shorts to bring you some of the best animated shorts of the 2006 Nicktoons Network Animation Festival, which premiered Saturday August 26, 2006 on Nicktoons Network. Now in its third season, this first-ever animated film festival on a digital network attracts talented animators from around the world. Get ready for a sample of this year’s top selections, and check out all of the festival’s picks HERE!

Created and produced by Frederator Studios in conjunction with the network, this festival airs August 26th-August 30th. Make sure to tune in on Thursday August 31st when the $10,000 grand prize winner is announced.

Tonight you can catch Episode 6 airing on Nicktoons at 10PM/ 7PM Eastern Standard Time. And don’t forget to vote online for your favorite films! Viewer’s Choice Voting is open from August 31st through September 15th.

To subscribe to Channel Frederator, click here, or visit iTunes!

Melissa

The rats are the top of the food chain in the mall, but there are many inhabitants of the underworld. Here’s a look at a few more.

We have this Crazy Cop theme going, but today it’s more like Cops and Robbers as we present the first of two prison pictures we’ve scheduled for the week. “Jolly Good Felons” finds that funny paper favorite, the Little King taking a tour of the Royal Prison, where everything starts out orderly, but ends up as a knock down riot (not necessarily a laugh riot, mind you, but a riot none the less.)

I’ve always been bowled over by how hard RKO/Van Beuren worked to simulate the original style and humor in the Little King films. By 1934, a whole heap of comic strip creations had found their way into the movies, but the studios usually took drastic liberties with these pre-sold properties. And, let’s face it, the pudgy potentate sure didn’t look or act like a typical animated star of the era — he always seemed like something you could get away with doodling during geometry class. But RKO not only successfully imitated cartoonist Otto Soglow’s elegant, minimalist look, they came up with an odd but appropriate feel to the actual animation. Capturing the Soglow’s off handed wit was a lot trickier, but at least they cooked up something that was pleasingly peculiar if not flat out funny.

I hope you’re enjoying our Crazy Cop Week… more is on the way.

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

Dave Kirwan

Here are some pretty close to final renders of what our set will look like for our portion of “Six Monsters”. Mike Kopa did a great job on textures, and got pretty technical with some of the water attributes. The refractive index of water is 1.33 (in case you ever need to know).

Gailard will be selling these bottles of water right next to the water fountain.

This is the water fountain around which all kinds of cartoon antics will ensue.

As always, let us know what you think!
-Floyd