Channel Frederator Blog

CalArts student Marcos Cohen’s film “Madame Babette” is all at once retro, cute, hilarious, and dark. Check it out…

Channel Frederator: Where did you get the idea for Madame Babette?

Marcos Cohen: First off, I’d like to thank you guys for showing “Madame Babette”. It’s such a great honor to share it with you.

It took me a while to come out with the main idea for this film. I spent countless days thinking about what kind of story to make. The idea for “Madame Babette” actually started while watching a movie from one of my favorite Spanish filmmakers, Pedro Almodovar, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. There is a scene in this movie in which the main character throws a phone or answering machine out of the window. It was so hilarious the way the actress did it that it sparked in me the idea of making a short film about [Read more…]

“Does a Ross Bolinger animate in the woods?” Yes, yes he does. Here’s the scoop on your new favorite animated web series, Pencilmation.

Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation?

Ross Bolinger: I’m going into my senior year at the School of Visual Arts.

CF: What has influenced your style the most?

RB: Graphically, I would say a lot of early animation has influenced my work…the early Mickey Mouse and Felix cartoons–back when Ub Iwerks would sit down and whip out an entire Mickey cartoon single handedly, drawing straight ahead and not planning so much. Capturing that spontaneity interests me.

Buster Keaton sought to preserve that same spontaneity in film, and I try to aim for some of that as well since my style is so simple and because I am working alone. I also get a lot of influence from listening to music and reading. I read ten times more than I watch cartoons or draw. (Maybe [Read more…]

If you get OVATION on your cable television line-up, this is a special animation-themed weekend. I just watched Hand Behind The Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story (again). Here’s what’s left for the rest of the tonight and tomorrow (at least on the East Coast, where I am):

8 PM, 11 PM: Tokyo Godfathers

10 PM, 1 AM: Chuck Amuck

2 AM: Triplets of Belleville

SUNDAY

1 PM: Wallace and Gromit Go To Hollywood (doc about Aardman)

2 PM: The Ub Iwerks Story

4 PM: Tokyo Godfathers

6 PM, 2 AM: Dante’s Inferno (with puppetry by Paul Zaloom)

And then–in case you are in the mood for some creative despair–at 8 and 11 PM they will be playing the documentary Crumb.

(At top, a somewhat loosely-related YouTube clip for PES’ free holiday “Yule Log” screensaver.)

—Anne D. Bernstein

Mark Twain was born on this day (November 30th) in 1835. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens,Mark Twain went on to write and inspire generations of artists.

The above clip is from the 1985 film The Adventures of Mark Twain, created by Will Vinton. Chuck Jones is another of animation’s Mark Twain fans.

Chuck Jones segment on Mark Twain and his inspiration for Wile E Coyote

Perhaps the biggest Mark Twain fan in animation was Walt Disney, who created a steam boat in his honor, which circles Tom Sawyer Island in Disneyland.

-Floyd Bishop