I was first shown Mortimer & Bracket a few weeks ago by Friend of Frederator (and my friend as well) Avi Tuchman. I really enjoyed this film.
It’s a smart, funny, and engaging way to look at and perceive war.
It’s a long short actually, but one seems to forget that as Andrew Chesworth’s dynamic visual style and cgi work takes hold.
“Tanks” Andrew!

1. How did you come up with the idea for this film?
I came up with the idea for the film back in the fall of 2005, when I was spending a few weeks coming up with possible scenarios for these nerdy little characters I’d drawn months earlier, which would be the basis for my senior animation project at MCAD. Originally, I thought it would be fun to do a mundane humor piece in an office setting, with Mortimer as the intelligent but incompetent cubicle worker and Bracket as the irritating and talkative supervisor. It was hard developing a story in that setting that kept my attention and didn’t smell like cliche’s all over the place, so I decided to take the same personalities and put them in an entirely different context. Since the war in Iraq was all over the news, and the images of tanks, deserts, and weapons were in the public attention, I thought it’d be interesting to do a universal story about warfare, with a broad comic sensibility. The stories I am interested in are stories that clearly define both sides of an issue, and in this case the extremes of the warmongering generals versus the friendly and pacifistic protagonists. Everyone thinks their agenda is for the best, for better or worse. The film is certainly a quirky and eclectic combination of things I am fondly interested in: genre film, history, dinosaurs, physical comedy, satire, adventure, and big musical scoring.

2 Who are some of your influences?
Because I watched their cartoons religiously as a kid, I have to at least mention my strong and obvious love for Chuck Jones (western landscapes are a favorite of mine in animation), and more recently Pixar directors John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Brad Bird, who I also thank for keeping American feature animation a high quality arena for good, honest storytelling. In the live action world, my favorite directors are Steven Spielberg, George Lucas from the days of American Graffiti and Star Wars, and Robert Zemeckis from the days of Back to the Future and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Sam Mendes is a contemporary favorite of mine, and the film “Road to Perdition” is high on my list.

3. What do you do when you get stuck creatively?
When I get stuck creatively, I do something physical where my mind can be active, like riding my bike or running long distances, or swimming. Anything to be as far from the animation desk as possible, where I can absorb things from the world, and return with a reinvigorated mind. And it seems obvious, but drawing everyday, always coming up with new characters, and always thinking of them as creatures with personalities. You never know if one of those hundreds of Joe Shmoe’s in your sketchbook will suddenly leap off the pages and say, “Remember me? I’ve got a story for ya!” It’s fun to challenge yourself with the question, “What’s an idea that I think would be really cool, that no one else has done lately that I know of?” and try to draw something from that. It’s really hard!

4. To quote Edwinn Starr, “War. What is it good for?”
Well, without getting too political, I’ll just say that I think time, effort, and human life could be directed in more healthy and productive directions than war. War is simply hell. I’m a “make love, not war” kind of guy, but unfortunately not everyone is. And that’s what the film is all about, really. Somehow we all have to co-exist on this crazy planet full of angry, hate-filled people.

5. What are you working on currently?
Currently, I’m working on another short film I started conceiving of earlier this year, a classical hand-drawn animation called “Mrs. Butter’s Baby”, a domestic comedy involving almost 100% physical humor, in the vein of the old shorts of the 1940s. It’s about a plump Minnesotan mom, and her even more hefty baby boy, whose unruly behavior leads to some pretty outrageous scenarios. While not nearly as violent as the Baby Herman/Roger Rabbit cartoons, there is definitely a lot of influence there. Stylistically, a huge inspiration for the project is Brad Bird’s 1987 short “Family Dog”, from the Amazing Stories television show.
[*ED.Note: Tim Burton is also involved!-JX!]
A lot of comedy can be mined from basic family situations. The film will be about three minutes, and will probably be done sometime in late 2008. In the meanwhile, I’m working on several projects at Make, LLC in Minneapolis. I’m designing and animating the intro for AICP with a few other guys at work, and in the coming months I’ll be directing a 4 minute CGI short for the company. Recently, my friend Aaron and I just finished animating this PSA, which we also conceived: spilledoil.com. A lot of animation will be churned out in the next year! Thanks for reading, and thanks for watching!

We’re looking forward to it Andrew! Make sure to drop us a line here at Frederator so we can feature you and your work again!

Thanks for submitting Andrew!
-Jeaux Janovsky

PS- Please remember to take some time out and fill out our Channel Frederator Survey. Every one of your opinions matter to us.
For more info: please go to the Channel Frederator page, www.channelfrederator.com, and click on the banner or enter the following address into your web browser: http://www.otxresearch.com/channel

Episode 90 is an interesting episode.
One of these cartoons is short and sweet. The other is long (also, sweet).
Much like war, I guess. (except for the sweet part) Some wars can take a short amount of time, others can last a while.
But I don’t want to talk about war. That’s too depressing.
Instead, let’s talk about these films you’re going to be seeing!

—Bobble and Sqweek, submitted by Choom Lam
Choom Lam presents us with a short and simple, well designed tale about a monster and his little dog friend-monster. They like to play and it’s very cute. It makes great use of the program flash, and it’s nice to see someone using it creatively. Thanks Choom!

—Mortimer & Bracket, submitted by Andrew Chesworth
I was first shown this video a few weeks ago by Friend of Frederator (and my friend as well) Avi Tuchman. I really enjoyed this film. It’s a smart, funny, and engaging way to look at and perceive war.
It’s a long short actually, but one seems to forget that as Andrew Chestworth’s dynamic visual style and cgi work takes hold. “Tanks” Andrew!

Thanks for tuning in, and please remember to take some time out and fill out our Channel Frederator Survey. Every one of your opinions matter to us.
For more info: please go to the Channel Frederator page, www.channelfrederator.com, and click on the banner or enter the following address into your web browser: http://www.otxresearch.com/channel
Without furher Ado, let’s get the show on the road people!
Thank you,
-Jeaux Janovsky

Indeed I am. Recently starting as a freelance animator for Animax Entertainment, I find myself extremely busy. Animating for them is great! The cartoon I’m working on is great, it’s funny, designs are beautiful, and what’s better than doing what you love? I didn’t realize how busy I would be animating on this show. I try and wake up at 10 and then end at 6 with a break but sometimes it’s just too hard getting distracted.

Over the summer I’m coming to california. I’m going to be pitching ideas, visiting Cal Arts, and then whatever else I can find doing. Not to mention, still animating while I’m there. Deadlines people, deadlines!

I have these 3 ideas that I will be pitching ( as you see in the image ontop ). I’ve been writing the pitch-bibles for them but I still don’t know if they’ll be done in time. I have 2 of the ideas completely written out, but then comes the art work which takes equally as much time to do- and I haven’t started that yet. I have only acouple weeks to get things done. Here’s the list of what needs to be accomplished incase anyone is interested.

1) Write the pitchbook for my action idea
2) Create the art work, and design new characters for the Ace & Aqua pitch-book
3) Design all the characters for the action show, and then add them to backgrounds my good man Elliot Byrne did for me…they look spectacular by the way. Will post them once I pitch.
4) Design all the characters for my skunk show.
5) Make an animatic of my action idea powerpoint so that a very talented musician knows how long the music will play for.
6) Oh yeah, and I’m animating 10-6 each day which is more than exhausting and time consuming.

I really gotta get on it… wish me luck :{ ( nervous smiley face )

-Steve

Here’s an image from an ancient show on Nickelodeon called “Kid’s Court”. It was early in the career for Tina Potter and Albie Hecht. They’ve both gone on to hugely successful careers.

Every time I almost completely write off the strangeness that is Aqua Teen Hunger Force, they go and do something awesome.

The first awesome thing was to show how much of an over reactive society we currently live in (I’m looking at you, Boston). The second was this intro to the Aqua Teen movie. The animation features Mastodon and their song “Linoleum Knife”.

Great stuff.

-Floyd Bishop

Alright, not animation-related but in the realm of kid entertainment for sure. When it comes to scary kids films, while I do remember going to see Santa Claus Conquers the Martians in the theatre as a kid, I either didn’t see this fairy tale or have since repressed it. A favorite blog of mine, Weekend Stubble, directs us to a Mark Jordan Legan and Slate V piece (watch it!) on this classic movie and its producer, K. Gordon Murray.

Then GO HERE for a list of some fantastic dialog quotes from the movie.

“Zombie Twins? I knew they were ugly, but I didn’t think they were zombies!”

– Eric

Rejects, the extreme art of retail caricature is a collection of caricatures by world renowned caricature artist, Joseph Alexander Bluhm. The book contains a large collection of rejected caricatures and the reasons for why the people did not want to purchase them. The previews looked very funny and his artwork is amazing.

Hadley

Today I wrapped up editing my stop-motion film “Watermelon Nights”. What is this video about? It’s about being young and in love and also about being a watermelon. It’s about summer and innocence. I can’t show the video quite yet but you can hear the soundtrack on musician John Crave’s myspace page. Here’s some images from the shoot:

One actor died during the filming of the video… tragic, tragic incident. Here I am moments after his fatal accident:

Check out these old sketchbook drawings. Apparently I’ve had watermelon on my mind for quite some time.

Steven Segal took on a whole gang of watermelons in the 1992 flick “Seeds of Vengence”:

The video will premier this fall, here on the internet. Stay tuned.

-Your pal, -DAN METH

I really should’ve let a much younger man – like Jeaux – blog this one, but I’ll take the plunge.

Geekanerd, on the Geekanerd blog, has counted down the Top Ten Greatest Classic Cartoon Intro Sequences. Geekanerd’s AHR has admitted most – if not all – on the list are from the lands of the 1980s and 90s, so I’m familiar with maybe one of these particular intros, give or take one. It’ll be up to you whippersnappers out there to agree or disagree with the ranking.

Here’s the list.

– Eric

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A: The 2007 Los Angeles Shorts Fest

Congratulations to Jim Wyatt and Karl Toerge for the acceptance of their Random! Cartoon short, “Ratzafratz”, into this September’s L.A. Shorts Fest, the largest shorts festival in the world. While made up of mostly live-action films, the event always has great animation thrown in (just look at the line-up from one of the programs last year: One Rat Short, Tart Aux Pommes, The Little Matchgirl, All Aboard, Kung-Fu Gecko, Little Blue, Tragic Story with Happy Ending, The Danish Poet, Close Your Eyes and Do Not Breathe, and Delivery).

Best of luck Jim, Karl, Cyrus, Squawk, and Urban. If you win, there will be extra cheese for all.

– Eric