Channel Frederator Blog

Stephen Levinson is 16 years old. He’s working in the animation industry. He makes his own shorts and cartoons in flash, and is pretty darn good too. I feel proud to know him, and even prouder to premiere his fantastic short, Ace & Aqua on this week’s episode.

1. How did you come up with the idea for this film?
Boy do I have a story for you! Well scrolling the Frederator website, I saw many different caricatures of Fred Seibert from artists like Dave Wasson, Carlos Ramos etc.. and thought “I should do one, and show it to Fred”. So while in italian class I was scribbling a crazy looking Fred Seibert with weird eyes, crazy teeth…GIANT eyebrows. Turned out looking nothing like Fred except for the eyebrows . I kept looking at it and thought maybe I could do something with it. I really liked the crazy looking eyes I had and the teeth. After I drew many different versions, I came up with the final design ( of course fixing it here and there along the process of making my cartoon ). His characteristics are completely obvious from the way he looks so I went on that. I always liked Abominable Snowmen and hadn’t really seen it as a cartoon character so I thought he would fit. I wanted the characters to be completely opposite from each other. Ace not so bright but wacky and fun and Aqua bright as can be, very boring, and not so much fun. I stuck to those characteristics and I think it works pretty well even though both characters don’t “seem” to have much in common.

I always wanted to do a short film. I had seen so many shorts on TV and on the internet and really wanted something to show for myself and that I’m a serious animator/artist/writer. First I thought that I’d never really seen when characters meet each other and wanted to show how such unlikely characters become best friends. I figure hide and go seek, and he gets shipped into a box to antarctica. I went off of that. Then it slowly progressed into a full story and viola.

2. Who are some of your influences?
Here are “some” of them. Mukpuddy, Stephen Silver, Dave Wasson, Craig McCracken, Lauren Faust, Eric Pringle, Rob Lilly, Anna Chambers, Chris Battle, Todd Kauffman, Jared Deal, Tyler Schroeder, Kevin Schmid, Ridd Sorensen, Garnet Syberg-Olsen, Steve Lambe, Andrew Langley, Ben Balistreri, Shane Prigmore, Elliot Byrne, Paul Watling, Miah Alcorn, Javier Guzman, Ernie Gilbert, Kelsey Mann, BJ Crawford, Martin Wittig, Miguel Puga, Justin P Smith, Paco Sardo, Boulder Media, 6 Point Harness, Kat Kosmala, Chris Georgenes, Ghostbot, Stephen Hillenburg, John Martz, Genndy Tartakovsky, Bob Boyle, The Kotzebue Brothers, The Random! Cartoon Artists…There are probably tons more but it’s hard to think of them all at once..

3. What do you do when you get stuck creatively?
This is a tough one, since it happens often lol. Most of the time if I’m stuck creatively I try stepping away from the desk, watch TV or a movie, and come back to it in an hour or so. I also try and look at drawings from other artists to try and get me inspired. Recently I was stuck on drawing a young girl. I turned to Miah Alcorn’s blog and he has tons of different types of girls. Different hair styles I feel I could have never though of, different head shapes, etc..

4. What is the backstory of the Squirrel who says, “Loser” all the time?
The squirrel actually has 3 simultaneous purposes. One of them is that it shows how weird Ace is talking to a squirrel. The other reason is to show that Ace doesn’t have any friends so he tried making friends with a squirrel. And the last and probably most important reason is that it shows how Ace thinks he’s friends with everyone but isn’t. In reality the squirrel calling him a loser shows the squirrel really doesn’t like him, even though Ace thinks he does.

5. What are you working on currently?
Currently I’m working a couple things. I’ve recently started animating for a company called Animax, on a show for ABC Family called “Slacker Cats”. It’s really fun, great designs and I have a great time animating the characters. The other things I’m working on are the pitch books for 3 ideas of mine. I only have a couple days left to finish them, and it’s so much work. Those 3 things take up all of my time right now. Even when I wasn’t working on the pitch books for these 3 ideas of mine, Slacker Cats keeps me REALLY busy. There’s a lot of work to be done and I always give 110%. Somehow it’s physically tiring and when the clock strikes 6pm, I get off the computer and relax. I think I’m just going to keep to Slacker Cats for now… working on another completely new short now would be too much work. The process for A&A was longer than expected and it was very time consuming.

6. What has working on A&A taught you, that you would like to share with our readers and viewers who are also making their own shorts?
Working on A&A has taught me a ton of things. I’ve never really done the work on A&A before as far as pre-production and it was a great learning experience. Getting the boards, making the animatic, voice directing, animation, post-production, etc. I firstly learned that it’s the story that matters. You could have the best designs and animation in the world, but if the story falls flat…it’s not going to be good. Directing voice actors was something I had never done before and that was very fun! I had exact ideas in my head about how the characters should sound and the way they should say some things and directing the actors was a great experience. The voice actors did a great job in making my characters come to life. Working with a background artist was also something new to me. Before A&A I had never really worked with any other artists or animators on a film. My friend because of A&A, Elliot Byrne was really great to work with. I drew thumbnails and he drew really nice backgrounds from them. Working with another studio for fixing up background line work and color was also new to me and in the end, I think it came out great. I gained a lot of experience from just this one production over the course of 9+ months, than I had before I started A&A.

My tips for anyone working on their own shorts. Make sure that your story and idea are solid. Make sure thing’s flow well, and that it’s character driven. Make your characters believable and make them strong ( well developed ). Show your friends and family and get their thoughts. You wouldn’t believe the things someone else might come up with that you would have never of thought, that ends up being BETTER than something you previously had. Deadlines are also key. I had constantly keep changing the schedule I worked up because I never made any of my deadlines. In the end I stuck to one date and I kept to it. It’s good to also be organized and take each part of the process one step at a time. Trying to do too much at once, is difficult and your work probably wont come out as good as it would if you dont rush is. My last tip is that even though on A&A I outsourced many people for work such as voice acting, BG design, post production music and SFX, you can make any good film with whatever resources you have. Keep the idea and characters strong and you can have a great short! I might come off as hypocritical for not sticking to what I just said, but there’s a reason for it. I originally made this idea and after I wrote it, I felt it was very strong. I thought it would be great to use this short if I pitch the idea. I wanted it to look as best as it
could and sound as good as it could and in the end I’m happy with the way it came out.”

Thanks Stephen, glad to know you!
-Jeaux Janovsky