Fred Seibert's Blog

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.

It’s been a couple of months, but these are my sporadically continuing postings of how we starting producing original cartoons. As usual, feel free to interrupt with any questions.

So, Nickelodeon was not going to exactly follow my suggestions as to how they should get into original animation? So, I was frustrated beyond belief? So, what was I going to do about it?

Nothing.

We weren’t in the animation business. Sure Fred/Alan had a small production company run by our college friend Albie Hecht, and sure, we wanted to produce anything we could, including cartoon shows. But, our main business was network consulting, branding, and advertising, and the animation we were involved with was mainly 10 second network IDs and commercials. And it sure wasn’t the first time our clients had ignored our advice and gone their own way. But, as usual, it wasn’t completely their own way, and they felt like they were following what they saw as the best part of our approach. As we had inculcated into their culture, the network would go off the beaten path looking for skilled talent who could make fresh, animated series that wouldn’t look or feel anything like the mainstream (i.e. Hanna-Barbera), without sacrificing quality. The shows might have a new look, but they’d follow classic entertainment values, they’d include great characters and great stories. And instead of relying only on an in-office pitch, they’d make short pilots to see whether the final film would really ’sing’ before committing to a series.

Fine, I thought. A tenth of a loaf is better than none, better than the times they ignored us completely. And besides, the network production executive was on the phone offering us a deal to make one of the pilots!

Usually we jumped at these kind of phone calls, but this time I was unsure. As I had told Debby and Anne at the very first breakfast, we knew nothing about character based cartoon shows, and while my partners Alan and Albie would probably vehemently disagree (Let’s get a shot at fiction! Any shot!), I felt like it was too complicated for us to come up with an idea, write it, and find one of our animator friends to execute. I told this to the executive, he flatteringly disagreed, and I said send over the deal memo.

(More next time.)

Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.

Devin Clark came into the New York office today to show us a pitch on his cartoon Go-Wheely Rilla (with a script by Alec Coiro).

Devin animates Comedy Central stuff for our friends over at Interspectacular. And coincidentially, he’s college friends with Dan Meth who was in to see us earlier in the week. Go figure.

Thanks to Devin for his kind permission to post his artwork.

Dan Meth is an animator/artist/musician based in Brooklyn and came to my attention when my lovely wife received one of his fabulous viral films by email, which we promply sent off to all the rabbis we know.

His writing partner is Jeff Somogyi, the proprietor of Peeper Radio Theatre -The Penultimate Radio Comedy.

Together, they came in yesterday to pitch Kwurg for Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

Thanks for kind permission to post a frame from the Kwurq pitch.

Diane and Dana were in the New York office today to show a pitch for a second cartoon they’d love to do for Oh Yeah!. It’s called The Life of Frank.

(And have you checked out the posted piece of their animatic?!)

Thanks to D&D for kind permission to post the title page of their pitch.

One of the great things about this season’s development is opening up the field much wider in New York, where I’m currently based.

For instance, Robert Teer & Damiam DeMartino are a team who come out of playwriting, graphic design, and comics. Today they came in to pitch their cartoon Gloom & Dread.

Thanks to Robert & Damian for kind permission to post one of their pitch drawings.

Manny and Alan came back to our New York office to show us their storyboard on Bronk & Bongo.

Thanks again to Manny & Alan for their kind permission to show some of their storyboard.

Justin Simonich works with our friend Dave Levy over at Cartoon Pizza in New York. He came by on Friday with his designer and storyboard artist Dagan Moriarty and pitched us a show for the 4th season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. He calls is Bayou Acres.

Thanks to Justin for kind permission to post some of his show’s artwork.

I’ve been a huge fan of the cartoon music ever since I was a kid and realized there was a difference between Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera. I had an essay written once about the greatness of HB’s Hoyt Curtin (there was already plenty on Carl Stalling), and when I started making cartoons I vowed to pay special attention to the scoring, since I felt it was an essential ‘character’ in a film. So, every once in a while I’d like to pay homage to the great contemporary composers who work on Frederator cartoons.

Guy Moon has produced more scores for us than any other composer; we met through Bodie Chandler, Hanna-Barbera’s music director, a great champion of new artists. Starting with The Addams Family, Guy went on to really prove his chops on the deceptively challenging What A Cartoon! shorts, which led to Cow & Chicken and Johnny Bravo. When we moved over to Nickelodeon Guy would hold the record for the most scores for Oh Yeah! Cartoons, and those in turn led to the lead chair on The Fairly Oddparents and ChalkZone, in addition to one of our movies, The Electric Piper. And Guy’s been no slouch working on other shows and films either. Whew!

Growing up in Wisconsin, going to college in Arizona (loving Chick Corea’s Return to Forever), Guy and his family live in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.

Thanks Guy, for all your great work.

Become a part of cartoon history, and win a buck in the process.

As many of you know, we’re in production on 39 brand new short cartoons for our partners at Nickelodeon (their blogs are over in the right hand column). We’ve already done 99 shorts over the last 10 years; the first bunch for Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network were named What A Cartoon!, and the ones for Nick were called Oh Yeah! Cartoons. We’ve launched our effort for this new crop under the Oh Yeah! name (Season 4), but, the time has come to break it to our fans that we’re looking for a new name for our shorts series.

And you (that’s right–you!) get to name the show.

Here’s how it works:

You send us as many ideas as you like (only to hey@frederator.kz). We’re going to post them all, with your name attached (unless you’d like to remain anonymous, which we’re happy to respect). You absolutely must include your email address and phone number, which will not be posted. If you do not, do not expect to see your entry posted ever.

A winner(s) will be picked by October 31, 2005.

The winner will receive $500, a credit on every episode, and of course, a chance for animation infamy. Remember, this is an ‘open source’ contest, and all the entries will be publicly posted; it’s possible the winning name will be a combination or morphing of another, earlier name. If the judges arbitrarily decide this to be true, said same judges will just as arbitrarily decide how to split the winnings between the affected entrants. Same thing for multiple entries of the same name; if it wins, we’ll decide how to split the winnings amongst you.

The judges will be the current Frederator Studios staff, and our Nickelodeon partners.

The winner(s) will be chosen on a completely whimsical basis, that is, the winning submission will be what we say it is. It’s not a drawing, not a judgement on the “best” name, we’re not throwing darts at our favorites. The name will be the name we pick for whatever reason we pick it, and that’s the story.

The winning entry will become the 100% property of our partners at Nickelodeon. The winner will not “own” anything, they will not receive anything but our gratitude, the prize money, and any notoriety that come his or her or their way. Anything Nickelodeon choses to do with it is completely their business. (And we have nothing to say about it either, in case you’re wondering.)

OK, that’s it, you’re off to the races. Entries will begin posting tomorrow.

Send your naming ideas to hey@frederator.kz and win $500.

We like Ryan Sias’ comics. And so we were happy when he came in again to pitch us a new short called Fergison for the new season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

Thanks to Ryan for his kind permission to post some of his storyboard pitch.