Fred Seibert's Blog

I suppose you’d have to be a certain age to appreciate this Bewitched poster my old ad agency created in the 1980s for Nick-at-Nite. Or any of the other ads we made for them. But I wanted to put it up anyway because it’s some of my favorite work from those days (and it’s funny). My partner Alan Goodman and I conceived the idea for the network and built it for Nickelodeon in 1985, and Fred/Alan Creative Directors Bill Burnett and Noel Frankel created the campaign. (You probably know Bill from his cartoon life as the co-creator of ChalkZone and a number of Oh Yeah! Cartoons.)

For whatever it’s worth, I’ll throw in the first written description we put together for Nick-at-Nite, two or three years after it went on the air. You might note that it’s also the first linking of Nick-at-Nite with TV Land (”Hello out there from TV Land!” a variation of the 1950s original “Hello out there in TV Land!”), the precursor to MTV Networks spinning off the 24 hour network called TV Land.

Positioning Nick-at-Nite

In 2001, ChalkZone was the second series put into series production out of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. But CZ was one of the first shorts we produced; I greenlit storyboard soon after we started production in 1997, and production chief (and prime OY! supporter) Albie Hecht fell in love with the idea from the board alone.

Here a short interview with the creators and a scan album of the pages from Not Just Cartoons: Nicktoons!. Only MLaaTR to go; and here’s Oh Yeah!, Random!, and FOP.
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Larry Huber, Co-Creator: It would be hard to find two guys with such incredibly diverse opinions–political, social, and otherwise–who work so well together that they can make a show as creatively in sync as ChalkZone. We drew on each other’s talents and styles, as well as our own eclectic viewpoints, to produce an entertaining, well-rounded show that features many different perspectives.

Bill Burnett, Co-Creator: Larry is a mountain man who loves to go hunting and camping. He uses flintlocks, like they did in the 1860s, and when Larry shoots a deer, he uses every last bit of it, down to the marrow in the bone. He’s conservative and methodical, always doing things strictly by the rules. The word “virtue” hangs above his door.

Larry Huber: My specialty is graphic drawing, and Bill’s is music. As a musician and performance artist, Bill is a boisterous, outgoing type of guy. I’m a little more laid-back and reserved. But our personality differences are really the strength of ChalkZone, because if two partners think the same way, then one of them is certainly unnecessary.

Bill Burnett: We found ways to work our different backgrounds and personalities into the show. My mother was an opera singer, and so is Rudy Tabootie’s mom. She sings in a high, sing-songy voice when she wants Rudy to come to dinner, just like my mom used to do. Larry’s father was a butcher, and so is Joe Tabootie, Rudy’s dad. Larry actually worked in his fathers’ shop and knows how to butcher animals.

Larry Huber: Bill brings experience from his days in an advertising agency, and he’s kind of like the grandmeister of jingles. I’ve heard kids in the playgrounds humming these songs in English. I’m talking about kids who don’t speak English as a first language–that’s how catchy they are.

Bill Burnett: ChalkZone is where Larry’s interests and mine converge. It’s a high-concept show about an alternate universe that’s really trippy when you think about it. In this universe, any place on Earth–a classroom, the “specials” board at a restaurant, or a hopscotch court–can be a portal to another world, where all the things that people have drawn over the centuries still live. The idea of ChalkZone is very empowering to kids: when they create a work of art, they’re actually bringing something to life.

Larry Huber: I’m a little emotional about the characters on ChalkZone. Rudy, Penny, and all the other characters are like living creatures to us, just like Rudy’s drawings of Snap are real to him. Bill and I are just two big guys who never grew up.

Bill Burnett: With our own magic piece of chalk.

Tuesday night, September 18, 2007
Eric, Kevin and I went right from our feature meeting with Doug TenNapel to the last screening for Random! Cartoons, featuring Doug’s Squirly Town, Karl Toerge & Jim Wyatt’s Ratzafratz, and 6 Monsters. We’ve now screened all 39 Random! shorts for the LA studio (as well as a New York ASIFA screening in May), and it’s sad they’re over, everyone did such a great job on their films. Nickelodeon’s been having a hard time scheduling an air date, so in the meanwhile we’ll do with the good feelings from our private screenings.

Karl and Jim prepped a great surprise for their honored guest June Foray when they pulled out a cake for her 90th birthday. My pictures weren’t too great, but they capture some of the wonderful mood, June looking better than anyone has a right to look, and many others having a good time.

Wednesday
Early day again when I make a reference call on one of our great interns to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. It’s always feel good to give a solid recommendation for a hard working intern. Then it was breakfast with my former Hanna-Barbera colleague, Julie Kane-Ritsch who now, as part of the Gotham Group, represents creators like Bob Boyle, Dana Galin, Diane Kredensor, and too many others to mention in a blog post less than 1mm characters long.

I’d met Baby Prodigy creator Barbara Marcus at New York’s BrainCamp two years ago, and she came by the studio to chat on Wednesday.

Afterwards, I zoomed over to Cartoon Network Studios to take Ramsey Naito, head of their long form development, to Starbucks. As we’re getting fired up on the Samurai Jack feature I like to keep her up to date.

The Market City Diner was across the street from Starbucks, and lucky thing too, since that’s where I was to meet Scott Greenberg, Film
Roman/Starz production president, and our fantastic partner on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! We never seem to spend enough time together in the office, so this lunch was a good chance to catch up.

Director/artist Howard Hoffman and I have worked together since back in the day starting on MTV and Nickelodeon network IDs. we’re working together again on Ape Escape Cartoons, and it’s always good when he drops by Frederator when I’m in Hollywood.

Speaking of back in the day, Bill Burnett, creator of ChalkZone and eight other Oh Yeah! and Random! cartoons came by too. We first worked together at Fred/Alan in New York, and then again at Hanna-Barbera and Frederator. We’re working on a lot of stuff at Next New Networks. We have so many things to talk about, cartoons and more, I won’t bore you with all of them.

Finally, it’s a great dinner at Firefly in the Valley. With great friend Rita Street, our Radar Cartoons colleague on the Nicktoons Network Animation Festival, Boneheads, and more.

A little sleep, and Hollywood continues Thursday.

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.

Bernie Petterson has been one of the stellar artists on various Frederator cartoons (among others) for longer than anyone would like to admit. Brought into the Oh Yeah! Cartoons by Dave Wasson, he became a key part of the teams on ChalkZone and My Life as a Teenage Robot. Here are two typically wonderful illustrations Bernie’s done of ChalkZone creators Bill Burnett & Larry Huber.

I’ve qvelled about Larry Huber before on this blog.

But writer/producer Bill Burnett (or Billllll, as he sometimes goes by) is probably someone new to most of you. Our long and wonderful relationship began when Bill was a writer at my advertising agency in New York in 1988. He eventually became our Creative Director, creating some groundbreaking campaigns for Nick-at-Nite, Sassy Magazine, and Nickelodeon; he even named a network called Comedy Central. The two of us bonded over our mutual belief in popular music as a supreme cultural force, and I found out that after songwriting, his next passion was for cartoons.

Against all logic, I was named president of the venerable Hanna-Barbera Cartoons in 1992, and, no surprise, one of my first creative hires was…Bill Burnett. Officially, he moved to Hollywood to run our marketing department, but he and I both knew that he would make his way into production. He became story editor on Dave Feiss’ legendary Cow & Chicken, and went on to create a record eight shorts for Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Including, of course, ChalkZone. And I’m happy to announce that along with co-creator Jaime Diaz, Bill will join the Oh Yeah! team again to produce Dr Froyd’s Funny Farm.