Channel Frederator Blog

Self taught animator and soon-to-be DJ Michael A Chico tells us a little about himself and his film for Ratatat’s song “Seventeen Years”.

Channel Frederator: Where did you study animation?

Michael Chico: In my room with a bunch of books, most notable of which, was The Flash MX Bible. This video was literally my second animation (my first one had a running time of 30 seconds). Furthermore, I was/am not a very good artist, so it took me awhile to do all the drawings inside of the program, which I later came to find out was a bad idea. I was studying film in college at the time and I appreciated the challenge of being able to tell a short story starting from scratch. This fueled my motivation to learn the animation process and the program itself.

CF: Who or what has influenced your work the most?

MC: The majority of my past projects in film/video are basically music [Read more…]

Greetings, Earthlings.

We care about our home planet. This week’s filmmakers do, too. Even The Robot cares about it (he’s a robot, yes, but he’s still from Earth).

Let’s celebrate and protect our critter-friends in the forests, rivers, mountains, and oceans. Take public transportation, walk, turn off the lights, plant trees, buy locally grown food – however, you should know the single most important thing you can do for the planet today… is watch cartoons.

Ratatat - “Seventeen Years”, submitted by Michael A. Chico – Fun flash film where cute fuzzy animals are pitted against vicious forest chopping robots! Go Earth!

“Our Little World - The Climate Movie”, submitted by Josef Buchner - A group of multimedia and communication design students combine ethics and animation in this fun (but crazy educational) short.

WARNING: Channel Frederator is rated EXPLICIT. Spring has sprung, people. You don’t know what you’re gonna see. Just promise us you’ll get permission [Read more…]