Frederator-Studios

Design Eye For the Robot Guy

Arlen Schumer of Dynamic Duo Studio designed our robot in 1997 (and Patrick Raske colored it), and we were thinking it might be time to add some new versions to the original. And who better than some of our new friends at DeviantArt?

So we'd like to ask you to design your version of our Frederator robot, and we'll pay $100 each to the versions we'd like to use. We're interested in any style interpretation you like to draw in: traditional, illustrator, water color, sculpture, CG, anime, cute, mean, whatever.

I'm putting up a poster of the different version we've used so far and the artists who created them. We'll decide on final selections about once every week.

You can send your jpeg files (300dpi please) to hey@frederator.kz. We'll post all entries and announce the winners as we get them.

Thanks in advance. You guys have all been great to us.

--Fred Seibert
President, Frederator Studios

Dr. Froyd's Funny Farm Hits Oh Yeah!

This week, Bill Burnett and Jaime Diaz start production on their Oh Yeah! short called, "Dr. Freud's Funny Farm". Bill Burnett, the writer and co-creator for "Dr. Freud", was also the co-creator of the hit Nickelodeon series, "Chalk Zone" (which had it's beginnings as an Oh Yeah! Cartoon.) Bill is also writing music for the short. Jaime Diaz has had a long career in animation, directing Chalk Zone, The Fairly OddParents, and Duckman, and also working on countless other animated series.

Congratulations guys! We're looking forward to seeing all of this come together.

28 found, 11 to go

This pitching process for Oh Yeah! cartoons has been grueling at times, and very rewarding at others. Right now we are taking about 30 pitches per week (that's a LOT!) Some people are coming back in to re-pitch their story boards, and others are completely new ideas that we have never seen before.

What I'm learning is that there is no set formula to picking a short. The ones we pick usually just "click" with us. They resonate in some way, be it with the writer's point of view, the unique characters, or the artist's style. I think a good creator has the ability to take a character or duo of characters that we think we all have seen a million times, and turn our perceptions of the way things are "supposed" to go around.

And that is my shpeel for this evening!

Melissa

How long is a 7 minute short, anyhow?

Well, truthfully, it's 6 minutes and 40 seconds (we need time for title cards and credits!) Fred Seibert is flexible on many many things when it comes to the production of an Oh Yeah! short, but the length of the cartoon is something he will not bend on! If we get a pitch board that takes up all four walls of our room, and takes 30 minutes to pitch, chances are it's longer than 7 minutes. The trick to knowing if your board is to length? Time the dialogue. If you were to stopwatch only the lines of your characters, it should time out to no more than 5 minutes. This leaves room for action, expressions, etc.

The past couple of days we have seen a few production board re-pitches from "Handycat", "Mind the Kitty", Teapot, and "Hero Heights". After the short has been greenlit, and the artists have had a chance to flesh them out, we get a re-pitch before they record their dialogue. It's important that the short is to length before dialogue recording because it's a lot harder to trim (and definitely to re-write) after the actors have already recorded their parts. I would say that 90% of our creators (dare I say, all?) have had to cut out precious panels from their final storyboard for the sake of time. If any of our show creators would care to post on what favorite parts they've had to trim, please enlighten us!

So as we approach the holiday season of excess--keep in mind that there is a lot of fat being trimmed at Oh Yeah! Cartoons. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!