Fred Seibert's Blog

Here’s another of my irregularly appearing features on composers who are working in cartoons, one of the unsung (bad pun intended) areas in animated filmmaking.

Geoff Levin is the rare artist who’s made a career for himself in a multitude of areas. Of course, he’s composed for cartoons, but also for live action feature films, TV series, and documentaries. And he’s a songwriter, guitarist, and recording artist to boot. In fact, he’s scored the Academy Award nomiated animated short The Janitor as well as James Cameron’s Last Mysteries of the Titanic.

We first met Geoff on some projects at Hanna-Barbera in the 90s, and then again as the guitarist and mixer on our original seasons of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. And most recently he did over 20 episodes of the Bill Burnett & Larry Huber creation ChalkZone, where he worked overtime to compose each score with a completely unique style suited to the individual theme of an extremely diverse series (unusual by any standards of TV production).

Thanks Geoff, we look forward to hearing your work on our productions again.

Pages 46 & 49, Original Cartoons: The Frederator Postcards

Alex Kirwan was one of the first creators signed up for the original season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Executive producer Larry Huber reminded me of the 16 year with the dyed red hair who should have taken 2nd Place in our Hanna-Barbera storyboard competition (he was too young!), who we’d then hired right out of high school to draw props on Johnny Bravo. Larry thought his boards showed incredible promise. I agreed and Alex started his first cartoons.

Carlos Ramos is one of the best artists I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. So we’re all thrilled that he launched his first series as a creator –The X’s, on Nickelodeon– this past Friday night.

Carlos was one of our first hires at Oh Yeah! Cartoons (Larry Huber to Fred: “Are you nuts? Why haven’t you hired him already?!”). He designed the Oh Yeah! logo, art directed and designed the original ChalkZone, and stepped up and created two incredibly distinctive shorts.

Congratulations Carlos. We’re proud to have worked with you.

Busy day for pitches in New York. Same thing in Hollywood they tell me.

11am: Who would have thought that funny creators from two pitches two weeks ago would have gotten together? But Devin Clark, Dan Meth & Jeff Somogyi put together Truckadillos.

2:30pm: Xoop Studios in New York is Kartik Mohan & Man Kim; together with Lisa Goldman & Ram Mohan (from his studio in India) they showed us Deep South.

3:55pm: Robert Teer & Damiam DeMartino redeveloped a board and came in with Gloom, Dread, & Fred.

Thank you for the hard work everyone. It was a good week.

Thanks to all the teams for kind permission to post your work.

Two old friends stopped by today in New York to pitch us some Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

John Dilworth and I worked together at Hanna-Barbera Cartoons in the mid 90s on Courage, the Cowardly Dog, and today he brought by a storyboard on Garlic Boy.

Voice actor and producer/writer Joe Bevilacqua pitched us a story of Willaby & the Professor.

Thanks to John and Joe for kind permission to post images from their storyboards.

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.

On a whirlwind one day trip to Hollywood last week for a wrap party for Butch Hartman’s The Fairly Oddparents (the second successful spin-off series from Oh Yeah!), I had a chance to catch up with a new friend, and a couple of long timers.

Melissa will be filling you in on Adam Henry’s Tiffany.

Up next was the unique and talented ‘Pat’ Ventura, the first man I ever offered a short, and the person who convinced me the classic seven minute cartoon would become my format of choice. His love for Laurel & Hardy is contagious, as is his Dangerous Duck Brothers.

I started an international storyboard contest at Hanna-Barbera in the 90s. The first second prize winner was Dave Kirwan. The next year’s winner should have been his 16 year old son Alex, but, when we found out he was below our legal winning age, we hired him instead, as an apprentice on Johnny Bravo. Then he became our first creator in 1998’s Oh Yeah! Cartoons on Nickelodeon, and has since become one of the leading art directors (Frederator’s own My Life as a Teenage Robot and Call Me Bessie!) in the cartoon industry (all before he was 25 years old!). So, I guess we were forced to see Alex Kirwan’s pitch on Mike & the Kingdom of Petunia.

Thanks to Pat and Alex for their kind permission to post their artwork.

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.