August 2006
17 posts
Katrina.
In a post last year it was remarked that Katrina’s devastation would be visiting us for years -decades- to come. On this first anniversary it’s all too evident that it’s true. Sure the Latin Quarter is a little bit back but the rest of New Orleans, and much of the Mississippi Coast is still in ruins. I know we’re in cartoons and we like to block out a lot of the world. But...
Hello.
A few of you have been asking why I’ve been MIA the last several months from my regular West Coast trips. Truth be told, I’ve been laid up with a spinal problem which finally looks like it’s been fixed with an operation and a long recuperation this summer. I’ll be showing up semi-regularly in my office soon, and should be back in Cali in the next month or two. And...
Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! launches Monday.
Tomorrow morning from 11-12am ET, our new production Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! simultaneously debuts on television both on Nick Jr. and Noggin (here’s the press annoucement) and I couldn’t be prouder of any achievement in which I’ve been lucky enough to be included. Every show is the result of seemingly Herculean effort, and Wubbzy is no exception. Susan Miller and I got together in...
Thanks Katie.
It’s that time of summer again, when all interns return to school. Boo-hoo. (For them, that is. Never getting me into school again.) Katie is studying animation at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, like her pal Lee, and has been incredibly helpful on all of our projects, especially her pinching in on the ToonFuse Podcast. Thanks Katie. Hope we’ll be seeing you again soon.
The Channel Frederator Awards.
You might have read on the Channel Frederator blog that we’re letting you know before the public announcement that we’re going to do the world’s first broadband network awards show. And that we’ve our viewers to help us decide exactly what awards we’re giving (we haven’t really decided whether the statue is spelled “Freddie” or “Freddy”....
What makes a team?
Having had partners for most of my adult life, with all the attendant joys and horrors, I’ve always admired what Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera accomplished in their almost 60 years together. Sure, I heard a lot of rumors about what they really thought of each other (saw some of it first hand), but a team doesn’t create as many laughs and films together without a real bond. WHAT MAKES A...
Thanks Lee.
Lee Rubenstein has been our fantastic intern over the last six months, and we’ve been lucky enough to have him full time during the summer. This week was his last full time, so I wanted to give him my personal thanks for being such a great addition to our office. Interns are often better in principle than practice, but at Frederator Studios we’ve been lucky enough that everyone that...
Actors with a pencil.
One of my biggest frustrations with executives outside the animation industry (particularly network executives) is the basic misunderstanding about the role of the artist. And the multiple leveled value of the artist in cartoons is one of the first lessons I learned. ACTORS WITH A PENCIL. We’re accustomed to think of a TV character being played by an actor. But an animated TV character is...
Blog History of Frederator's original cartoon...
Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12.
Within months of arriving at Hanna-Barbera I had greenlit two series in the traditional way. But all I could think about was the idea of doing shorts the way I had pitched to Nickelodeon in the late 80s.
Impressed by the...
A trick question.
I’ve always loved cartoon music and when more and more public information starting coming out about it during the 80s, I started forming my own theories about it all. Here’s the result of my survey of Hanna-Barbera’s Hoyt Curtin.
A trick question:
NAME THREE COMPOSERS WHO DEFINED CARTOON MUSIC?
(Hint: You cant. There are only two.)
Ask any reasonably well-informed...
Blog History of Frederator original cartoon...
Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11.
I started as the new President of Hanna-Barbera in June of 1992.
First of all I need to get to know 300 new employees, in a new industry, in a new city. Within hours the development department was coming in with new pitches for...
Is There a Style in the House?
The other day in our shorts stories I referenced an essay called Limited Animation…Unlimited Imagination. It reminded me of the time we were at Hanna-Barbera and how I always felt the studio was undervalued because they’d never ‘told’ their stories to the world. I asked then-Creative Director (now cartoon creator and composer) Bill Burnett to write a series of pieces...
Blog History of Frederator's original cartoon...
Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10.
After suddenly closing my ad agency, getting divorced, and moving to Los Angeles after 25 years in New York, I found myself running a famous company that hadn’t had a hit in over a decade, in a business where I knew almost nothing and no...
Blog History of Frederator's original cartoon...
Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9.
After trying, and failing, to convince Nickelodeon to go “back to the future” of animation, and use classic cartoon style shorts to create their innovative entry into the animated programming biz (they did better than great without me), my...
Blog History of Frederator's original short...
Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8.
Our career making cartoons was over before it began. We continued to consult on cable network branding and promoting Nickelodeon’s first original slate of animation, but it looked that our idea of using shorts to find the new generation of stars was going to...
Blog History of Frederator's original cartoon...
Blog History of Frederator’s original short cartoons. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7.
When we last left off our story (before yesterday’s philisophical diversion), in 1989 Nickelodeon had decided that our idea of doing 1940s styled short cartoons was mostly wrong, but kind of right. Instead, against current TV tradition, using our advice they were...
Blog History of Frederator's original short...
Over a year ago I started what I figured would be a quick round-up of how we got to where we are today in the short cartoon game. But with the launch of Channel Frederator in November things got a lot busier than I would have ever imagined. And we haven’t even gotten to the first short we made. So here’s the first six posts and we’ll pick up where we left off.
Blog History...
