Channel Frederator Blog

New York Comicon (February 6-9 at The Javits Center) has posted most of its schedule and here are some top events for animation addicts. (Just my own personal picks. Complete schedule here.)

Friday 3:15-4:15: WILDBRAIN: Head of Creative Bob Higgins, CMO Mike Polis, and some artists showcase W!LDBRAIN’s animation work, including Yo Gabba Gabba!

Friday 4:45-5:45: SUPERJAIL: Christy Karacas and Stephen Warbrick, the creators and executive producers “speak about the most intense, violent, and complicated jail in the universe.”

Friday 8:39-10:30: WONDER WOMAN: Big screen premiere. Panel with Bruce Timm and some stars after the film.

Saturday 1:45-2:45: MARVEL ANIMATION: Iconic heroes; you know the drill. Wolverine and Iron Man become Nicktoons. A Black Panther show for BET. Thor is awarded his own animated series. Get yer hype here!

Saturday 1:45-2:45: ROBOT CHICKEN: Can you believe this is up against the Marvel event? The weird folk (I mean, cool people) will be in attendance.

Saturday 4:00-5:00: J.J. SEDELMAIER: With Howard [Read more…]

The Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco (655 Mission Street) has just announced that it will present an exhibition of original artwork from the feature film Coraline from January 24-February 15.

“The exhibition features drawings, storyboards, puppets, sets, costumes and more from this groundbreaking movie, the first ever stop-motion animated film to be shot in 3D…this exhibit includes almost 80 pieces from the extraordinary world of Coraline, created by a team of over 300 artists bringing to life the vision of the world’s foremost stop-motion animation director, Henry Selick.”

For more on Coraline, you can check out the official website. (The image above is from a cool collection of behind-the-scenes stills on that site.) The movie opens February 6th, so the CAM exhibit will make for a great sneak peek.

Here are few other interesting museum shows in SF this month (not about animation, just generally cool):

1000 Journals at SFMOMA

Harlem of the West at the [Read more…]

The Screening Room was a public television program that aired in the Boston area back in the 1970s. Its purpose was to give exposure to independent filmmakers. It lasted ten years, and during that time, host Robert Gardner interviewed some of my favorite animators, back when they were dewy and young and full of enthusiasm.

In the past, it was very expensive to buy or rent copies of obscure programs like this. But now, in the age of digital downloads, the cost has come down to a reasonable level. It’s $6.99 for a 24-hour rental or $15.99 to buy an individual episode. So, on the verge of entering the New Year of 2009, let’s time travel back to the days of polyester shirts and cel-vinyl. You can watch a short sample of each show for free on its respective Amazon page:

George Griffin (1976)

John and Faith Hubley (1973)

Derek Lamb (1973 and 1975)

Caroline Leaf and Mary Beam (1975)

Jan Lenica (1973)

Suzan Pitt (1975)

John Whitney, Sr. (1972)

After the jump, a few screen grabs of AWESOME 70s fashion! [Read more…]

Oh wait… it’s not a turkey! It’s Turducken… What is a Turducken you ask? It’s the infamous yet delectable bird within a bird within a bird - duck stuffed inside a chicken which is then stuffed inside a turkey. Only in America folks!
Steve Stark celebrates the invincibility of the Turducken in his film, Turducken. Turducken takes home the prize for the December Cartoon of the Month - the highest rated cartoon to run in all of November. This includes episodes 152, 153, 154 and 155.  Hailing from episode 155, our Thanksgiving celebration episode, Steve created Turduken because…. well… maybe I should just let Steve tell you. Read his interview below!

What inspired you to create Turducken?

While I was going to school for animation, I was working at Cactus Club here in Vancouver.  My buddy Matty told me a story about how his friend ate a Turducken over the weekend.  It blew my mind.  So I [Read more…]

Us artsy types don’t have a reputation for being punctual… but we still feel bad that we’re late as all get out in announcing November’s Cartoon of the Month!
November’s candidates include episodes 148, 149, 150, and 151 of Channel Frederator. There was some serious competition, but in the end, “Monster Ball“, created by Rajesh. Congratulations Rajesh! A graduate of Vancouver Film School, Rajesh put a lot of work into “Monster Ball” the short where three robots are nothing against an adorable kitty. I did a brief interview with Rajesh, and here’s the lowdown on him and his film:

CF: What inspired you to create “Monster Ball”?

“Monster Ball” was a short comic I created during my days at VFS (Vancouver film school ) , The story was of a boy playing soccer with his cat ,however more and more characters kept adding on to the story till it became the short it is [Read more…]

If you crave an antidote to the sappier side of the Holiday Season, you can find a daily dose of grotesque greeetings over at the Creepy Christmas site. Beck Underwood heads this online project which will release one new short film every day up until Christmas. The series launched December 1st with Electrifying Holiday Spirit by illustrator David Goldin. Read about how he made this film over at his Drawger blog.

It’s all very low-budget and home-spun (yet high quality!) and I will definitely be checking in each AM to see what daily disturbances are unwrapped.

A full list of the filmmakers can be found at the Glass Eye Pix site. Upcoming creators include Voltaire, Peter Sis, and Mary Haron. (Glass Eye Pix is a production company run by Beck’s husband Larry Fessenden. They are a super creative couple and Beck was the publisher of a great kids magazine from the late 90s called ZuZu. They [Read more…]

In case you missed it in the frenzy of holiday happenings, there was a great article about animation in last Wednesday’s New York Times. “Cartoons Without Computers? Silly Animators!” features the “insurgent element” of modern animation. As far as I can tell, that just means interesting animators of an indie bent, though big budget Henry Selick seems to qualify. (Odd title as well, since many of the artist mentioned DO use computers in one way or another.) But anyway…faves Bill Plympton, Don Hertzfeldt, Signe Baumane, and Alex Budovsky are featured.

In case you were wondering how Bill Plympton gets so much animation done (while managing to actually get out of the house and socialize, and also make appearances at all the major cons and conferences) one tip is that he gets up early!

“I do about 100 drawings a day, which is about 10 an hour, and if I can do that times [Read more…]

In 1952, the Tex Avery directed a short Rock-A-Bye Bear premiered. The short, written by Heck Allen and Rich Hogan featured a simple premise: Spike has a job running a house for a hibernating bear, who insists on quiet. Tex was strained by the amount of work, so he left MGM shortly after completing the piece (the film was actually completed in 1950, but not released until two years later due to the backlog of cartoon shorts).  In Tex’s absence, his unit was directed by former Walter Lantz director, Dick Lundy.

Tex returned to MGM in 1951,  where he took back his animation unit. He went on to direct eleven more cartoons. Most of these had a similar look to the UPA cartoons that were gaining popularity at the time. In March 1953, MGM closed down Tex’s unit, believing that 3D films that were quickly taking theaters by storm would end the [Read more…]

It’s a big week for two of today’s top cartoonists fixated on centuries past. Last night was the premiere of Tony Millionaire’s The Drinky Crow Show on Adult Swim. Five episode summaries are currently posted including the intriguing-sounding “Episode Four: Organs” where “Drinky Crow infuriates his brain by quitting drinking, Gabby dates a sexy French spy trapped in a cage, and a young syphlis [sic] with a lot to prove fights his bladder.” Learn more, if you dare! Catch future episodes (but not syphilis) late Sunday nights at 12:15 AM.

Also, here’s a two-part- interview with Tony Millionaire and co-producer Eric Kaplan: Part One, Part Two.

And the more land-based creative storm Dame Darcy has a show up at Sloane Fine Art on the Lower East Side (until December 20th) which displays artwork from her new graphic novel Gasoline, about a family of orphaned Gothic witches.

The ever eerie trailer is here. Or on YouTube here. (Embedding is “disabled by request” so you have to go through the effort of clicking!) For another animated/puppeted take on Darcy’s dark and ornate world…after the jump, view “Golden Shoes” animated by Adam Gravois back in 1996.

[Read more…]

I heard today that one of our favorite CF contributors, Joel Trussell is doing his first solo gallery show. Congrats Joel! The show starts December 4th at the Grassy Knoll Gallery in Portland, OR. I so wish I had plans to visit Portland over the next few weeks, but alas, I do not. I hope that any of you Portland-based CF-ers that might attend will comment about the show.
If, like me, you can’t get to Portland make sure you stroll on over to “Joel Trussell’s Scribble Dumpster” where Joel blogs about the many things keeping this Tennessee-based artist busy. Joel goes way back with Channel Frederator. His cartoon, War Photographer was the fifth cartoon to ever air on Channel Frederator and since then we’ve shown a number of his films. He’s also a two-time Channel Frederator Award recipient.
Good luck Joel!- Carrie