Fred Seibert's Blog

I can’t begin to express how proud we are of all the Random! Cartoons creators (take a look for them all in the right hand column—>) and of course it’s true, they’re all fantastic. But I wouldn’t be out of place to be particularly proud when we get our first nomination of the season: the Annie Awards has nominated Pendleton (Pen) Ward’s Adventure Time as Best Animated Short Subject.

You can judge for yourself why Pen’s cartoon deserves all the accolades it’s going to get (don’t let our opinion about it’s vision, style, freshness, originality, timing, irony, humor, heart, and soul influence you in any way), but I’m going to ask you to watch it now in anticipation of cajoling ASIFA-Hollywood members to vote for it on Monday.

Watch it now! Before it’s too late! Don’t be surprised if you’re looking at the future of the cartoon business (no snarky comments to be inserted, please). Buy your tickets now to be part of history.

I’ve written about my admiration for Jeff Jarvis here before, but I don’t think I properly conveyed just how visionary he is. It’s not only his ability to articulate his view of the media world we’re hurtling through, but his true capacity to see how we’re all going to see tomorrow.

Aside from my personal interest in his view of what he calls exploding TV Jeff spends time thinking, writing, and now doing about journalism and how people are changing their relationship to the news. An early proponent of Digg his venture Daylife is bringing some great revolutionary thinking to daily news. I don’t really have a handle on it yet (it’s new) but it feels smart, and fun. Truly a new way to news.

See what you think. No matter what you think about news in your life, you might surprise yourself.

This month our friends at Animation Magazine are celebrating their 20th birthday, and we were thrilled to honor their request to design this ad for inclusion in the special issue.

It’s hard to me to believe I bought an issue during their first year, over at the newstand and Laruel Canyon and Ventura Boulevard during one of my trips to Los Angeles. I had a most tangential relationship to the industry at the time, with my only involvement being the commissioning of 10 second network identification pieces for small cable networks. To my delight I eventually became friendly with founder Terry Thoren, his first editor, Jerry Beck, and then Rita Street, Ron Diamond, Sarah Baisley, Jodi Bluth, Ramin Zahed, and finally President Jean Thoren.

All of them, and everyone else involved, deserve incredible kudos for the sacrifices they made personally and professionally to aid our business. We’re all richer for their contributions. Here’s to another 20 guys.

….:::Later: Our commenters made realize I neglected to credit inestimable Lee Rubenstein for the great Photoshop work on the robot in this ad. Sorry bud.

As I wrote to the Cartoon Brew guys today:

Thanks guys, as usual, for the thoughtfulness you put into recognizing all that made a difference in the cartoon world.

And jeeezz, did Joe make a difference.

Leave out all he did to make my childhood happier (and everyone else’s for that matter). Joe and Bill made almost 20 years of great feature shorts and then, at almost 50 years old, started a company that redefined the way the business worked forever –and I absolutely will not countenance an argument on the quality of the cartoons, no. That much joy in the world is quality enough for everyone– and kept themselves and most of the industry working for 40 years after. Hell, most of the industry is alive and well today because of the groundwork these two guys laid.

And Joe himself! Jordan Reichek said it right, there were many opinions about the man. But what self made man, a supremely creative man, a leader and an innovator, got somewhere without shaking a few trees?

Creativity? Jeeeez, again. So first he leads the creative effort on 20 years of basically silent films, almost no words of dialog from anybody. Then he goes and adds dialog galore, dialog in every frame, and the cartoons stay funny, relevant and saavy. No one else did it. No one.

So, I’ll say something I’ve said over and over to almost deaf ears. Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna were two of the greatest film comedians of the 20th century. Fine Chaplin, fine Keaton, fine Lloyd. But Tom & Jerry are star in some of today’s most beloved films in world, that’s right, today’s, while the others live on mostly in museums, libraries, and colleges. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just sayin…

This picture from 1988 pretty much shows you the Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna I met when I was unexpectedly tapped by Scott Sassa and Ted Turner to run the famous Hanna-Barbera studios. I became a quick study on both of them and soon commissioned Bill Burnett to write the following essay about the studio to straighten out a few miscomprehensions about their company.

Limited Animation…Unlimited Imagination

Here’s the true story: When theatrical cartoons were on death’s door, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera single-handedly (or, rather, double-handily) rescued cartoons from oblivion. As a cartoon blues man might say, “If it wasn’t for limited animation, we wouldn’t have no animation at all.”

(continued here…)

Word was posted on the internet about 10 minutes ago that cartoon great Joe Barbera died Monday at 95 years old.

Joe changed my life forever, twice. Once, over a period of thirty years of his career, he partnered with Bill Hanna and gave me and millions of others laughter and joy with the thousands of cartoons they created. And then, when I was blessed enough to get the job as President of their namesake studio, he came to my rescue again, with stories, advice, and insight. Over and over again.

‘Pat’ Ventura told me once, when I asked why on earth he’d left the famous Disney feature unit to work on ‘Tom & Jerry Kids’, that sitting at the feet of a story and character master like Joe was worth giving away many careers. I couldn’t agree with him more.

R.I.P. Joe. Thanks for a better world.

The New York :: Media Information Exchange Group (NY::MIEF) talk I mentioned last week is being streamed by a group called TV Mainstream. Here be I, warts, umms and all.

For all you serious eaters out there (and this time of the year, that even includes me) your ideal site has launched. Welcome Serious Eats.

Ed Levine started his career as an awesome music producer, sequed into advertising and brand consulting to make a living (he ran the account department at my agency for a few years), and finally realized his passions were the best directions to follow and ended up writing about eating, his most obvious addiction.

Now’s he’s launched his most serious effort yet, a boradband food network and community. (Full disclosure: I was one of his first angel investors, and he launched Serious Eats out of my New York office.)

You love to eat? You’ll love Serious Eats.

Lee Rubenstein spontaneously entertains. Marco Arment photographs.

Thursday was the Frederator holiday party in New York. Many of the friends we worked with in the East were there from Bolder Media, Kick Design, Mixed Media Group, and Next New Networks. Eric and Melissa came in from the West, and since some won’t be able to make our wrap party in January we hosted some of the great Random! Cartoons contributors (Bill Plympton, Floyd Bishop and his team, Diane Kredensor and Dana Galin, Alan Goodman, and Dan Meth). And let’s not forget Lee Rubenstein and surprise guest Laura Levine.

Thanks for everything, everyone. We’ve been working on lots and lots of projects all year, so everyone deserved the good time.

Mike Glenn and Carrie Miller pulled the whole thing together, and I think it’s an understatement to say everyone was pleased and impressed with all their hard work.

A colleague of mine from back in the day, Bill Sobel has been running a great networking breakfast called the New York :: Media Information Exchange Group. He was kind enough to have me as his speaker last week and my first TV boss and current investor Bob Pittman was kind enough to introduce me — that’s part of his quote in the title: “Lots of fun…even though it was at an unGodly hour! :-)”.

I mainly spoke to traditional media folk telling them not to be worried about what they dont’ know about new media. No one else really understands anything about it either, so they’re not alone.

Stick to the things you understand and the media will take care of itself.