Fred Seibert's Blog

Anne Denman came by Frederator a while back to catch up and introduce us to studios she’s working with like MonkeyPaw Media, Sketch Engine Studio, Spank Productions, Harbour Block Productions, and Denman Wilde Productions.

Anne was the delightful person who helped us so much with the Drinking & Drawing event at last June’s Platform Animation Festival (she’s the Director of the Student Program and Panel Coordinator) and put neat bow on things, she’s worked a lot with our great friend Marv Newland at International Rocketship.

We really like monsters here at Frederator, so imagine our delight when the monsterously smart Sarah Szalavitz introduced us to the monsterously cool Daily Monster by Stefan G. Bucher. And then we found out he was publishing a monsterously (OK, I’ll stop now) cool book of his monsters.

Stefan filmed himself for 100 days drawing 100 monsters. The book has them all with 257 stories and all the videos on a DVD. Buy it now, you won’t be sorry.

Eric had his Irish studio visit and I had mine. Caboom produces animation, live action, TV, film, commercials, digital…they *produce*. Creative Director/owner (and animator) Damian Farrell and producer Joanne Roboz stopped by during Kidscreen to show us “A Beary Bootiful World” (bootifully design by the wonderful Anna Chambers) and some of their other projects. (They left a DVD, but I couldn’t rip it properly to show you.)

Thanks to Caboom for kind permission to show their artwork.

David Cowles has long been a personal favorite illustrator, but unitl Sally Anne Syberg called to bring him over (from Rochester, NY) I had no idea he also did animation. It was great meeting him (and seeing Sally again) to get the down low on his ideas for series.

David’s such a great artist I thought I’d only pull out his best illustration and point you to the rest.

Adrian is founder of the Bloom Animation collective in Denver. We met when I spoke at ASIFA/AIGA/Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design last year. He stopped by Frederator/Burbank to show me one of his projects and find out a little about the cartoon biz in Hollywood.

Our good friends Rita and Hadley from Radar Cartoons came by Frederator/Burbank to tell us some stuff about their Radical Cute project, and talk a little bit about plans for Boneheads.

Jim Mortensen stopped by to visit Eric and me at Frederator/Burbank with his storyboard for “Suzy Backwards.” It’s always good to see Jim, an early contributor to Channel Frederator and a talented, nice guy.

Thanks to Jim for his kind permission to use a frame from his board and this special illustration.

Joe Schiappa is a comedy writer who likes cartoons. He came by my New York office today to say hello and introduce himself and his work. Hi Joe!

Back to my week. By the way, I don’t want to leave the wrong impression here. My average week is no busier than anyone trying to keep their productions and businesses going. But, for those who wondering…

Thursday, September 20, 2007

I wanted to get this picture from the Nicktoons Studios up. It doesn’t have much to do with the post other than I took it during my trip and it reminds me of the evolution of even the best cartoon shows.

Kent Rice is the new CEO of Starz Entertainment (formerly IDT Entertainment), so he now represents our major production partner on Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! We’d met briefly in New York but I wanted us to get to know each other better, so we met for breakfast at the Graciela, my home away from home, and coincidentally Kent’s too when he first started working in LA.

On my way over to Sherman Oaks for an early lunch meeting, I called into a conference call with Dan Meth, Jeaux Janovsky, Eric Homan, and Carrie Miller about the show packaging for our impending weekly launch of the Meth Minute 39. As usual, we don’t all agree on everything, but I think there’s a solution everyone’s happy with in the end.

Peter Lee is in the LA office of Boston’s Prism VentureWorks. We met for lunch to give me my perspective on Next New Networks and Channel Frederator.

Over the hill from the Valley into West Hollywood to meet author/singer Barney Saltzberg at the Urth Cafe. Barney and I met about 10 years ago and like each other’s work a lot. As with others, we keep struggling to find stuff to do together and haven’t licked it yet.

I didn’t leave my seat for the next meeting, this time on Next New Networks business again with Damien Somerset, the creator/producer of Zaproot, our cool new green show on Viropop. We’d only met briefly before, and in case I haven’t made it clear, I really like getting to know the people with whom I’m doing things. Damien’s a nice, smart, talented guy.

East on Melrose are the Paramount Studios and the production offices of J.J. Abrams‘ Bad Robot Productions. We’re starting work on a movie and this meeting was the first time we’d met in person. Later on, Bryan Burke, JJ’s longtime producer and collaborator, and I had a great first dinner on the Sunset Strip.

Friday

Art’s Deli for a turkey sandwich for JetBlue, and home to New York.

Gavin Logan was in New York the other day to show us an animated show he’s been working on with some friends, and a few comedy ideas for Next New Networks. Bill Sobel is a friend of ours who teaches at SUNY Albany in his spare time and he was kind enough to give us an intro to Gavin. Thanks for coming by.