Channel Frederator Blog

The story behind the color film is a tough one. At first, I thought a color film would be easy. After all, we associate colors with feelings all the time. I thought I’d just grab some colors at random ad then make them act the same way we feel about them. Blue might be sad, red might be angry, etc. I also wanted to make a film that would work in non-English speaking areas, so the film has no dialog. After doing some more research, I found that it does have language in it though, the language of color. This is very specific to the region you live in.

For example, in South Africa, red is the color of mourning. In Russia, red means beautiful. The Bolsheviks used a red flag as their symbol when they overthrew the czar in 1917. That is how red became the color of communism. [Read more…]

In part one of this series of posts, we talked a bit about the idea behind the film. In this post, we’ll talk a bit about the environment and set design.

It’s a pretty basic scene actually. The final should almost feel like a desaturated Mars surface. All the color is going to be in the characters, with the background elements consisting of either warm or cool grays. I really want the characters to stand out against their environment, so color vs black and white will work well.

I did this really quick environmental study using a Wacom and Sketchbook Pro.

The film was the next step for me after a series of posts about color. You can read those here, here, and here. I was also inspired by a book I purchased called “Color Index” by Jim Krause.

I’m currently boarding the whole piece out. Part 3 of this series will talk a [Read more…]

Yes, I purposefully misspelled the word, “About”. But that’s not what this is about.
This is about Channel Frederator’s Brand Spanking NEW About Page!
Here is a handy dandy link to transport you to the wonderful world all About Channel Frederator!
How’z About this?
And special thanks goes out to Bill Burnett for writing up our Channel Frederator Mythology and to Marc Goldberg for tacking it up on the world wide web.
Thanks guys!
Drop us a line and let us know what you think ABOUT it!
-Jeaux Janovsky

I wish I had a story or two about Zac Moncrief to share with you all, but I didn’t really attend his classes while he taught at Calarts. But what I can share with you was how I felt about him, his teaching methods, when I did crash a class or two of his.

Zac is a very funny person, and was a very sharing and encouraging teacher. It’s to bad he’s not teaching at Calarts still, because the kids there need people like Zac.

Zac, himself, attended Calarts and obtained an internship on the animated film, The Pagemaster. Soon after he moved into the role of assistant animator on Cats Don’t Dance. During his time on Cats Don’t Dance, Fred Seibert (who’s that guy?) had bought a pilot from Zac entitled, Godfrey and Zeek, for the Hanna-Barbera What-A-Cartoon Series.

Zac then found himself doing work on another HB series, Johnny Bravo in the story department.
Some time passed, [Read more…]

via Prince of Wales Collegiate

Clay Animation isn’t really a new technique at all. Who doesn’t remember Gumby and Pokey? Technically, clay animation began a short time after the invention of a clay-like substance called plasticine. Plasticine was invented in 1897, and one of the first actual films to use clay was in 1902 using clay for lightning sculpting. This was one of the first steps for clay animation, but it took six more years to make a film that used clay animated sculptures. This happened in 1908 when “A Sculptor’s Welsh Rarebit Nightmare” was released in February.

From that time period, many men and women did obscure work with clay animation. It just wasn’t a very popular technique then. For almost 70 years, it remained that way. It wasn’t until the mid to late ’80’s that this wonderful technique began to turn into the large-scale phenomenon that it is today. Perhaps [Read more…]

After yesterday’s Ninja Turtles post, I thought I’d follow up with a Turtles post of my own.

This clip is one of millions (I’m guessing) of clips on youTube and other places on the web that are known as overdubs. Basically, you get the footage from a tv show, movie, game, etc, and then replace the audio from that footage with the audio of something else. Usually, the more successful edits combine two things you wouldn’t expect, like the Ninja Turtles and The Big Lebowski.

Some of these overdubs have found quite an audience. One of the more successful overdubs is actually a series of overdubs based on the PSAs that ran at the end of the GI Joe cartoon in the 80’s.

The GI Joe parodies were created by Eric Fensler of Fensler Film and were quite popular on the web. In September of 2004, Fensler received a cease and desist letter from [Read more…]

Here are the ten most-watched TV shows by kids aged 6 to 11 for the week of 7/2 – 7/8. Like last week, everything’s a live-action Disney show except #10 (this week, an FOP movie from 1922 on Nick).

1. Cory in the House (7/8; 8:30p)
2. Suite Life of Zack & Cody (7/8; 8p)
3. Hannah Montana (7/5; 4:30p)
4. Hannah Montana (7/6; 7p)
5. Hannah Montana (7/6; 6p)
6. Hannah Montana (7/6; 6:30p)
7. Suite Life of Zack & Cody (7/5; 6p)
8. Suite Life of Zack & Cody (7/6; 7:30p)
9. Suite Life of Zack & Cody (7/3; 7:30p)
10. Fairly OddParents Movie Channel Chasers (7/8; 10a)

– Eric

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Next week is the greatest time of year for comic book lovers everywhere. Free comics day you ask? Nope. It’s the San Diego Comic Con International.

There are all kinds of panels devoted to animation, special screenings, limited edition merchandise, etc.

If you’ve never been to Comic Con, I would suggest bringing comfortable shoes, the asprin of your choice, a decent amount of food money (the food in the convention center is expensive and not very good), and your patients. It’s a bit tricky to navigate the show floor sometimes, but if you take your time, you can have a blast.

If you ARE interested in comics, and you’re looking for a way to kill some time until next week’s Comic Con, why not take a gander at Pulp Secret?

-Floyd Bishop

Today, some of us were talking about our favorite animated movie moments from live action films, so I thought I’d do a post about it.

One of the stand outs in my mind is the ending to “Back to the Future III”. The ending with the train taking off is the perfect capper to the trilogy of films. A few other honorable mentions include the light cycles from “Tron” and the T Rex walking out of his cage in “Jurrasic Park”.

What are your favorites and why?
-Floyd Bishop

If you’ve ever driven through downtown L.A., you’ve seen the big Felix the Cat sign at Felix Chevrolet on South Figueroa. Despite opposition from the mayor’s office and a local city councilwoman, the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission yesterday voted to declare it a Historic-Cultural Monument. This doesn’t mean it’s 100% protected forever, but it does mean it’ll be a lot harder to do away with.

Read about it here.

– Eric

Click here to subscribe to Channel Frederator or go to iTunes. Please send your suggestions to promotecartoons@gmail.com.