Aquatic Ape Theory

And attentive to our duty. So far, it’s been an enjoyable experience working on these storyboards thanks mostly to the creative latitude that Kevin, Karl and Frederator have allowed for creating stories. I’m left free to imagine episodes both surreal and maritime. The latter kind probably due to constant viewing of the new Popeye set. While reading Tony Millionaire strips . . . and listening to sea shanties. But who knows where these things really spring from.

Serviette rend’ring by Pendleton Ward
Storyboard thumbnails on semi-official stationery.

Karl Toerge’s storyboard critiques have been a great help, spotting fat to be trimmed and smoothing over clunky areas. Maybe some boards will be posted once they’ve been vetted, revised, and approved. Meanwhile . . . here’s a glimpse of another episode in the works.

A million monkeys hammering at a million calculators for a million years will eventually all type in 58008

–A. Muto

Animation is a very visual medium. With animated shorts usually coming in under seven minutes in length, you need to be able to get the audience up to speed rather quickly. If you play upon stereotypes, this is one way to get the audience to understand a character or situation quickly. This frees up some of your seven minutes for more gags or plot points, since you didn’t have to do quite as much building of the character. The audience just kind of gets it, based on what you do with the character. For instance, a larger character might be assumed to be slow. An oafish character may be assumed stupid. It’s when you start to bring in ethnic, religious, or physical handicaps into animation that you begin to tread on thin ice.

Speedy Gonzales was a very popular character for Warner Brothers for many years. You don’t see very much of him anymore though.

Mr Magoo was another character who built upon a politically incorrect trait for stories and plot points. If you aren’t familiar with the character, basically, the man is blind. He stumbles through life, mistaking one thing for another, due to his eyesight.

I’m wondering if characters such as these are possible in today’s hyper PC environment? I think they may be, but it depends upon your audience and how much faith the money people have in you. Have a look at one of the most popular, yet unPC (by most standards), characters in animation today.

Thoughts?
-Floyd Bishop

Jettboy327 is one of the latest members at Channel Frederator RAW, our beta social network, and as he was complimenting us in a post he asked what we’re up to at Frederator Studios. Just answering him wore me out, and you all know most of this stuff, but I thought you all might be interested in the compilation in one place:

Thanks for the kind words Jettboy.

We’re kind of busy at everything right now, including getting RAW right and the http://channelfrederator.com]channel[/link] better. And:

• In two weeks we launch the first Frederator original web shorts series (on CF, of course) called The Meth Minute 39 (created by Dan Meth).

• Production (along with Project 51) is beginning on a series of 2 minute cartoon shorts based on the videogame Ape Escape.

• A screenplay is being written by famed comicbook writer Warren Ellis for our production (with Project 51) of Castlevania: Dracula’s Curse.

• We’re just starting the second season of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! (created by Bob Boyle).

• In May, creator Butch Hartman began work on 20 more episodes of The Fairly Oddparents.

• And then, in June, we announced the formation of Frederator Films to make feature films.

Hmmm, there’s more, I think. Oh yes, we’re still struggling with Nickelodeon to get an airdate on our last shorts series Random! Cartoons.

Click here to see larger image.

Another screenshot from “Crawford the Cat Classics: Cinderella.”

For this background, G. Brian Reynolds chose dark magentas and browns for the walls and floors to help underscore the feeling of this scene. It’s interesting how color can affect one’s emotional response, and color styling is one of the few tools we have to help indicate the starker plot points in our version of Cinderella. Since the show is geared toward younger audiences, the antagonists can’t be too harsh or too mean. I think the color styling works great to accent what is NOT being said or done by some of the characters.

Nice styling G. Brian Reynolds!

To see some MOS frames of the scene, Click Here!

Russ Harris

HANDYCAT Clips
CRAWFORD’S CLASSICS Clips

While most may remember him as the creator of “Lilo and Stitch”, Chris Sanders has recently (as of March 2007) moved to Dreamworks Animation, where he is currently working on “Crood Awakenings”.

I am anxious to see what Chris does at Dreamworks, as “Lilo and Stitch” was seen by many to be a refreshing change of pace to Disney’s standard feature film fare.

Look for “Crood Awakenings” sometime in 2010 or 2011.
-Floyd Bishop

James “Bad Ass” Jaculina is like the Quentin Tarantino of the animation world. He has a wicked design sense and great retro-fu sensibilities, not to mention a twisted sense of humor. He handed out some action packed answers to a few of our Channel Frederator questions.

1. Who are some of your influences?
Well, I think some of my major influences are pretty obvious. I watch alot of musicals with Julie Andrews and Ann Margret. LOL Man, they were so hot back in their day…yummy!!!

The Martial Arts of course is another one. I actually trained at the Inosanto Martial Arts Academy for a couple months, so I wouldn’t feel like such a poser. That place rocked, The stunt men from Big Trouble in Little China and bunch of 80’s action stars had trained there at some point. very Awe inspiring.

Some of my work experience had a hand in my development, I used to work in a Karaoke Disco tech before I did the art thing full-time.

If it had to be a movie genre: Action (mid 60’s-Now), Horror, A lil’ drama if it’s DePalma, Comedy like Stephen Chow, The 3 Stooges, bolo from Bloodsport. All kinds of Anime and Classic Animation. I probably lean toward the Warner Bros., MGM, Hanna Barbera, Universal stuff.
Videogames,Rock & roll , Bed Bath & Beyond, Books, etc.

2. How did you come up with the idea for this film?
How I came up with the idea? It actually came to me in a dream, seriously. That and I really miss the old “EXPLODY-DEATH” days with the Gore, The One-Liners, The infinite body-count with the infinite bullets being fired–KA-BLAM!!! Boobies ( Even though I had to censor mines.) Oh there are a few out there now, but for the most part it’s sort of like softcore porn for the ladies.

3. Bruce Lee, Sonny Chiba, Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, Steve Mcqueen, Richard Roundtree, Ron O’Neal, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Mr.T, Pam Grier, Uma Thurman, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sean Connery, & Lee Majors all in a steel cage match to the death.
Who would be ultimate Victor- GO!!! (No ties allowed)
Bruce Lee hands down man…He’d Kill ‘em all with Charisma and have them laughing in stiches…then he’d give them all Cha-Cha lesons…especially to the governator and his performance in True Lies… sssssssssssssss…A Little Stiff.

4. Do you kick some ass when you get stuck creatively or what do you do when you get stuck creatively?
Do I get stuck creatively or kick ass when I’m stuck? hmmmmmm I do what most artists do , I usually just walk away then come back to it later. Karaoke,The Bar, Strip Clubs, & Comicbook Stores. However, I do get a nice blood flow after a jog or a few rounds of sparring. Well taking your lady dancing helps too. OH YEAH!!!!!!!!!
WHAT’S UP HOUSE OF SECRETS!!!!!

5. What are you working on currently?
Currently what I’m working on? Hmmmmmm I am working on a few show pitches for The Mouse with a couple of the coolest cats from my BVG days. I am also picking up Flash, so that I can do another short. My efficiency time is cut in half. Oh Yeah!!! Badass Mofos in Flash would be simply BADASS.
Well Mr. Jeaux that about does’er. Thanks again.

The Pleasure is all Ours James. AWWW YEEEAAAAA!
-Jeaux Janovsky
Do you like Your Cartoons RAW? Check out Channel Frederator Raw Today!
http://raw.channelfrederator.com/

Some of the canine stars of the latest “Meth Minute 39″ cartoon:

Only 13 days left until the premier!
Last night there was a spontaneous live screening of four “Meth Minute 39″ cartoons at the basemant bar of 2 Boots Pizza in NYC’s East Village. There was laughter from the two dozen or so viewers! Watching your cartoons with a live audience is a great way to see where the timing issues of your cartoon lay. I’m going to re-edit some of the spots that need longer pauses before these cartoons hit the internet. Next Thursday I will probably screen a couple more so if you’re New York feel free to come. There is also stand-up and sketch comedy!

Dan Meth

Long before the new movie, there was Shoe Shine Boy, better known as Underdog.

In 1960, handling the General Mills account as an account executive with the Dancer Fitzgerald Sample advertising agency in New York, W. Watts Biggers teamed with Chet Stover, Tread Covington and artist Joe Harris in the creation of television cartoon shows to sell breakfast cereals for General Mills.

The shows introduced such characters as King Leonardo, Tennessee Tuxedo and Underdog. Biggers contributed both scripts and songs to the series. When Underdog became a success, Biggers and his partners left Dancer Fitzgerald Sample to form their own company, Total Television, with animation produced at Gamma Studios in Mexico. At the end of the decade, Total Television folded when General Mills dropped out as the sponsor in 1969.

In 1995, Biggers, Stover, Covington and Harris negotiated a sale of their creations to Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels, who later sold the rights to Golden Books. Classic Media currently owns the underlying rights to Underdog.

“Underdog” parody from “Robot Chicken”

-Floyd Bishop

Sometimes, birds just oughta leave a monkey alone to relax and sculpt a tiki god head.
But Noooooo.
They don’t.
Alex Donne Johnson shows us a dirty birdie doo doo combo that is a one-two punch of cuteness to the face.
He also took some time to answer a few Channel Frederator Qs. Thanks Alex.

1. Who are some of your influences?
I’m not saying i consider myself an illustrator but I really admire the work of alot of illustrators such Pete Fowler and James Jarvis, mainly for their simplistic yet imaginative characters and the different mediums in which they apply them such as the whole vinyl toy craze, I’ve heard they are working on some animations so i can’t wait to see them. Maybe they will make their animations out of the actual vinyl toys using stop-motion, that would be cool! Also Psyop, everything they seem to do is just mind blowing.

2. How did you come up with the idea for this film?
I wanted to make a comment to the way in which when one party disrespects another’s beliefs, and that party gets angry, as soon as they retaliate, the original offender goes overboard and calls all out war. This could relate to the situation with America and the middle east, or it could just relate to a monkey with a purple statue and some birds. Either i wanted to try and express the silliness of the situation in the simplest of forms.

Also after coming up with numerous really terrible ideas, which i was dillusional enough to think were decent, but luckily enough had people around me to tell me they weren’t. However at the time i felt like they were just ‘pooping’ over my ideas. Luckily for me and thanks to them, i never made ‘Minja - The Midget Ninja’ or ‘Robo-Hoes The Movie’.

A funny thing that didn’t really help the idea, but definitely enforced the theory, were the amount of complaints we got from neighbours whilst working on the soundtrack, one old lady even come round and did an angry impression of the ‘BOMP! BOMP! BOMP! BOMP!’ sound that prevented her from watching her television and getting to sleep at night. It got to the point where they would come round in advance to complain before we even started, one classic complaint was ‘Ok well its 11:30pm on a Sunday night now, I’ve got work tomorrow, you’re probably going to start making all that noise again all night, so we’ve come round to ask in advance if you can keep it down’. By the time they had made enough complaints to warrant a possible eviction and the landlady was sent round, we had finished the animation and she managed to see the funny side!

3. Have you ever been poo-pooed on by a bird? (I only ask, because it happens to everyone at some point in time and it always makes for an entertaining tale. Plus, it happened to me.)
In England if a ‘bird’ poo-pooed on me it would probably mark the end of our relationship…

4. What do you do when you get stuck creatively?
Switch to doing something really technically boring and mind numbing, sometimes this even involves doing stuff like cleaning (not that often)…

5. What are you working on currently?
I am working as a freelancer mainly gaining clients through my website, www.alexdonne.com. I do alot of design work for print, but i am hoping now i have a few films under my belt that i can start to break into the animation industry and learn alot of new animation skills. I have a music video in the pipeline for a client and i am looking to explore applying my personal work into more live music performances or print/animation based installations.

That’s what I get for not following up on my English Slang and terminolgy. How was I supposed to know a Bird was a Girl? All this time I thought Mick Jagger was just an avid Bird Watcher…
Thanks for the great short Alex. We hope to see more from you in the near future!
-Jeaux Janovsky, avid Bird Watcher

For purposes of happy provcation, filmmaker Doug TenNapel asks on the new Claymators group on Channel Frederator RAW:

Is there a reason for puppet (or clay) animation now that computer technology is getting easier, cheaper stronger faster? I’m split on the issue because of the inherent charm of puppet animation that is readily accessible to the amatuer which is difficult to acheive in CG even by seasoned professionals.

[i}I’ve got my own opinions on the subject, but I’d love you to join the conversation at RAW.

–Fred