Channel Frederator Blog

Rhubarb Zoo’s second film,”Entropy” is featured in this week’s Channel Frederator episode. Director Dane Jacobs tells us a little about the studio, the film, and what’s next.

Channel Frederator: What can you tell us about Rhubarb Zoo?

Dane Jacobs: Rhubarb Zoo started when I met Jeremy Hay at Freelance Animation School. I went around like a crazy person telling everyone “I want my OWN STUDIO to do my OWN THINGS MY WAY!” Jeremy was the only one who fell for it. So it’s just the two of us, and primarily we work on writing and directing our own animated films.

CF: What has influenced your style the most?

DJ: As far as “Entropy” goes, one of the biggest influences was a little known Japanese animation called The Diary of Tortov Roddle. It’s a collection of 2-3 minute episodes that are really surreal, simple and touching. The other major influence that everyone recognises instantly is Tim Burton. Also, a lot of anime influenced the style of “Entropy”. I like the elegant costume designs in Revolutionary Girl Utena and the weird, quirky worlds of Studio 4°C films like Noiseman Sound Insect.

CF: Where did you get the idea for “Entropy”?

DJ: I’m not really sure… it started as just a bunch of different ideas and images that, through a lot of development and script rewrites, eventually came together into one thing. Also, after animation, music is probably my second biggest passion, so I think music will often (if not always) play a big part in any film I have my hand in creating.

CF: Do you have any upcoming projects you can tell us about?

DJ: I have a solo project that I’m working on, a web series that doesn’t have a title yet. I don’t know how far off that is from being released so I’d rather not say any more about it.

CF: Most distracting/awesome/weird daydream you ever had?

DJ: I really wanted to make an animated feature film of Earthbound (the SNES game, or Mother 2 as it’s known in Japan). I imagined it being really long and epic… I started planning out how different scenes would play out, wrote down some ideas and stuff… but I know it’ll never happen so I decided to re-direct that creative energy into my web series instead.

Thanks for the interview, Dane!

You can check out Rhubarb Zoo’s “Entropy” right here on Channel Frederator!

-Bailee DesRocher