That New Show Smell

This week has been huge for new shows starting up, and Bill Ho and Raul Aguirre are no exception. After countless (and by countless, I mean at least six or seven) pitches, they hit an Oh Yeah! greenlight with their short, “Hero Heights”. If these guys don’t define persistence, I don’t know what does. Well, I could think of a few things, but I won’t go into them.

Bill Ho worked as a character layout artist on a little known cartoon called “The Simpsons”. He is also a storyboard artist on another little known show called “Family Guy”. Raul worked in the feature department of small company called Disney for 8 or 9 years, animating on films from Pocahontas, all the way up through Home on the Range. He also worked closely with Glen Keane on Treasure Planet.

You guys are impressive. Watching your pitches get better and better was so inspiring, not to mention, [Read more…]

Well! Here she is. The incredible Niki Yang. A storyboard artist on “Family Guy”, and now, during her haiatus, an Oh Yeah! creator! Don’t be frightened. She doesn’t bite or sting. I must say that I enjoy her short, “The Two Witch Sisters”, more and more every time I see it. It’s got witches, hungry rabbit pirates, and out of control bumble bees. I wish you could all see Niki pitch. It’s going to be difficult for me to envision anyone else doing the voices for her witch sisters! Congrats, Niki. We’re very glad to have you here. Buzz Buzz!

I’d like to welcome G. Brian Reynolds and Russ Harris to our group of talented filmmakers. Working from their home office in Indianapolis, they have just started production on their Oh Yeah! short, “Handycat”.

In 1995, Russ and Brian contributed to Cartoon Network’s What a Cartoon! with their short, “O. Ratz in ‘Rat on a Hot Tin Roof’“.

They have written, produced and directed 15 half-hour, direct-to-video and television specials which have been seen here and around the world. In addition, they did a direct-to-video/TV movie called “The Ugly Duckling’s Christmas Wish.”

More recently, they have been involved in a pre-school series of educationally oriented shorts starring Crawford the Cat, which had it’s premiere on Discovery Kids in the U.K.

Welcome aboard!

Yesterday was Anne Walker’s first day in her new office. She is starting production on her short, “Mind the Kitty”, for Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Anne’s short will be produced in Flash at Renegade Animation, where Anne has previously worked on “HIHI Puffy Ami Yumi”. We are excited to have her here! Judging from her re-pitch yesterday, “Mind the Kitty” is going to be great. Anything involving kittens and chainsaw tag is all right with me!

Welcome Doug TenNapel! Starting his first day of “official” production on his CG short for Oh Yeah! Cartoons today, Doug busted out this picture of himself in less time than it took me to steal a banana and some peanut butter from the “Catscratch” kitchen. Yes folks, THAT’S how talented this man is.

Speaking of “Catscratch”– he’s the show’s creator. Yeah. Doug’s got it going on. He also created “Earthworm Jim”, along with countless film properties, and graphic novels (check out “Creature Tech”!)

Doug’s Oh Yeah! short revolves around a teddy bear who wants nothing more than to love the child he is is assigned to. Too bad his “assignment” is a spolied little teddy-bear-loathing brat.

Congratulations, Doug, on a pitch well done. More to come!

It is time. The new master plan for my blog is being unveiled. I am attempting to chronicle the day to day happenings at the studio–be it an exciting discovery in animation to total and complete mental breakdowns. To do this, I have enlisted the help of everyone working on Oh Yeah!–both on the creative and production ends. Each day, they will give me a couple of sentences that summarize their daily grind. And I will publish them. It’ll be more fun than salt on a snail! Let’s see what happens.

QUOTE: “It’s a very straightforward cartoon now. No more of this booga booga stuff” Larry Huber

Kyle Carrozza–MooBeard the Cow Pirate: Kyle isn’t here right now Mrs. Torrance (for those of you who haven’t seen “The Shining”, rent it.) MooBeard is shipped and Kyle is hopefully busy working on his next cartoon to pitch to us.

Andrew Dickman, Ivan the Unbearable Andrew swung by [Read more…]

Or at least…some of them!

We have been receiving requests to begin posting what actually goes on behind the scenes from the production end of Oh Yeah! Cartoons. I thought I would begin by introducing some of our key “Production Playas” in their most recent photo shoot.

Eric Cookmeyer, our incredibly hard working PA, has worked on American Dad, Dragon Tales, Jackie Chan Adventures, Max Steel, and Baby Looney Tunes to name a few. On Friday, he whipped out the quickest PDFs of color art work I have ever seen accomplished by one man in a single day.

MacGregor Middleton, our Production Coordinator has worked on The New Adventures of Batman, Superman, Justice League, and Batman Beyond. I recently found out that along with his excellent coordinating skills, Mac is a supreme golfer. Go figure!

Scott Mouro, Assistant to Larry Huber. Without Scott’s scheduling finesse, Larry would not know when to be at pitches, haircuts, [Read more…]

After patiently stalking–err–waiting outside of Pen Ward’s office for a few days, I was finally able to snap a pic of him just seconds after he put the finishing touches on his Ice Clops. He’s very happy.

For those of you unfamiliar with Pen, he was shipped to Oh Yeah! fresh from Cal Arts, and rumor has it, “Adventure Time” was created somewhere on the white sandy dunes of a beach in Hawaii. Urban legend or fact? Only the Rainicorn knows…

By the looks of this month’s all-staff meeting, Team Frederator is growing faster than a Chia Pet. And that’s the way we like it around here. There are 28 of us in this picture, but given that a few creators reside in Japan, and some folks couldn’t make the meeting, I’d say our numbers are climbing near 40 right now.

Wow. This was a busy week at the Burbank office (which is probably why I’m posting this on Saturday morning!) We took lots of pitches, greenlit shows, recorded “Call Me Bessie!”, came together for an all-staff meeting, celebrated a birthday (Fred turned 35!), got up and running on Deviant Art, and had an excellent Oh Yeah! Extravaganza panel discussion/pitch night Q&A with our friends from Women in Animation. Thanks to show creators Diane Kredensor, Dana Galin, Andrew Dickman, Kyle Carrozza, Aliki Theofilopoulos, and Adam Henry, as well as Fred Seibert, Larry Huber, and [Read more…]

Cartoon Brewmaster Jerry Beck is joining us at the Burbank studio to produce his Oh Yeah! Cartoon, “Hornswiggle”. The “photo” you see here, was “taken” a little while back by Teddy Newton, who is now working his magic as a key creative at Pixar.

“Hornswiggle” has been patiently waiting to come on the scene for quite some time. Jerry mentioned that he had began discussing his ideas for a short cartoon with Fred Seibert a long time before this season of Oh Yeah! started.

We’re thrilled to have you on board, Jerry.