#random! cartoons

[disneytva]

Wanted to share a little bit of fun fact in why as opposed to Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network that Disney Television Animation dosn’t have a anoimated shorts program specially with the rise of Cartoon Cartoons & Nickelodeon’s Intergalactic Shorts.

[fredfilmsblog]

Best of Original Cartoons: Fanboy and Chum Chum

FredFilms Postcard Series 8.9

Creator Eric Robles pulled something off with his Fanboy & Chum Chum (one of the wonderful Random! Cartoons that made it to series) that I’d bet most people would think is not possible in a cartoon for kids. He used his own, personal story as the basis of a rip roaring, CG comedy. 

Eric grow up in LA’s San Fernando valley as a latch key kid, someone most of us can relate to. Everyday after school he’d hang at his neighborhood’s 7-Eleven with his buddies and crack jokes, talk about comics, video games, TV and cartoons. Together, they created a community. In my town, it was the local record store, in others it was an ice cream parlor, but wherever it was for you, those people made life worth living. 

.....

From the postcard back:

You are one of 125 people to receive this limited edition FredFilms postcard!

www.fredfilms.com

Fanboy & Chum Chum Created by Eric Robles premieres on Nickelodeon November 6, 2009

Executive Producers: Eric Robles, Fred Seibert

Best Original Cartoons Series 8.9 [mailed out October 10, 2023]

[coekj]

[fredseibertdotcom]

Illustration of Eric Homan + Fred Seibert by Natasha Allegri.

Eric Homan.

Soon after I got to Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, my Fred/Alan colleague, Tom Barreca, joined up, running the Enterprises group (he developed our characters into award winning partnerships), and he introduced me to a recent hire in his group, Eric Homan.

And a wonderful 30+ year cartoon relationship began.

"The World of Hanna-Barbera" edited by Eric Homan

Eric and I played a lot of roles together, from animation art to Frederator-on-the-internet (he critical to the founding of Channel Frederator and Cartoon Hangover). But, really it’s the cartoons.

Eric is most known and successful because of his development of the entire Frederator slate from 2004 on, starting with the Nicktoons Film Festival, and on through Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Random! Cartoons, Too Cool! Cartoons, and GO! Cartoons. And, not for nothing, Eric and Kevin Kolde double handedly ran Frederator Studios when I lived on the East coast and was starting up our YouTube channels, among other things.

But he’s rightly most revered for his roles in Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time and Natasha Allegri’s Bee and PuppyCat. Networks and streamers like Netflix, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Max, Amazon Prime, Cartoon Hangover, and Channel Frederator owe a lot to Eric Homan.

(And lest you be skeptical about the work that goes into the “development” of cartoons led by such stellar creators, remember that Eric personally sifted through at least 5000 shorts pitches for our 60+ creator led shorts and honed in on the creators that created the series that spun off. I might have founded the studio, but Eric carried the weight.)

By the way, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you the crucial role Mr. Homan played in Adventure Time’s life. As part of his constant search for special talent at Frederator, Eric visited end-of-semester student film showcases at CalArts outside of Los Angeles. In the early aughts, he caught a film of junior Pen Ward’s and introduced himself; the next year, they bumped into each other again and a month after graduation, Pen pitched his AT board. A few weeks later, Pen pitched me. 

And I turned it down.

At the end of a long day of not-so-great presentations, Eric, Kevin Kolde and I retreated to my office to review. I made the classic executive mistake of thinking I knew what was right.

“He doesn’t have any professional experience. His drawing is primitive. We don’t make student films here.“

Eric and Kevin were surprised, they loved Pen and his idea. They pushed. I pushed back. And then Eric delivered the zinger.

“You try to be polite, you usually have a fake laugh in our pitches. But you actually laughed with Adventure Time.”

Busted. Eric knew me better than I did, and he knew a great piece of work when he saw it. The rest is history.

There are more stories that I can tell you. It comes down to the fact that’s Eric’s role in the modern history in cartoons is unique. Bottom line, it’s been an honor to work with Eric Homan, and not for nothing, we continue to collaborate in the wide world of cartoons. Thanks bud.

PS: Eric doesn’t love having his picture taken, hence Natasha’s illustration up above. But, I thought I’d share this snap of Eric, Pen Ward and me from 2008.

I’ve posted often about my mentors, the people I’ve learned the most from. And I’ve noted how often how many of them beg to differ as to whether or not I should credit them as such. So, I’ve calmed down in my titling. But still...

[fred-frederator-studios]

The Frederator Archives Library 

One of the wonderful side benefits of being in a visual medium is the partial archive that we’re able to compile over time, with special emphasis on Natasha Allegri’s Bee and PuppyCat, Butch Hartman’s The Fairly OddParents, and Pendleton Ward’s Bravest Warriors and Adventure Time. And in a digitized world, paper ephemera has become more and more rare. Over the past several years Frederator has been compiling themed books from our cartoon and channel repositories to share with our hardcore fans.

A couple of notes of note: Most of the books in the library are full color and printed at Amazon’s on-demand service. There’s no economies of scale, as in traditional printing, so you’ll find certain of the pricing pretty expensive. When available, I’ve also included links to downloadable PDFs for a quick advance read. 

Original Cartoons, Vol.1: The Frederator Studios Postcards 1998-2005

Our first book is a collection of our first five full size, limited edition postcards featuring all the Oh Yeah! Cartoons, including the world’s first look at images from Butch Hartman’s The Fairly OddParents, Bill Burnett’s & Larry Huber’s ChalkZone, and Rob Renzetti’s My Life as a Teenage Robot. Plus a look at the Hanna-Barbera/Cartoon Network posters from What A Cartoon! including Dexter’s Laboratory, Cow & Chicken, Johnny Bravo and The Powerpuff Girls; an AWN interview with moi, and an essay by graphic design historian Steven Heller.

Amazon paperback 256 pages $7.99     PDF

Original Cartoons, Volume 2:    The Frederator Studios Postcards 2006 - 2010  

Series 6 through 9 include all the Random! Cartoons cards, with the world’s first looks at Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time and Eric Robles’ Fanboy (but without Chum Chum). And an entire series of beautiful Frederator series title cards. 

Amazon paperback 158 pgs $29.95 (used from $5)     PDF

The MLaaTR Sketchbook: By the artists from My Life as a Teenage Robot 

I like this book so much I can’t believe we haven’t made one for every Frederator series. Creator Rob Renzetti and Art Director Alex Kirwan oversaw a crew of dozens of world class artists at My Life as a Teenage Robot. We curated their best pencil sketches into this compendium that should be on every aspiring artist’s bookshelf. 

Amazon paperback 122 pgs. $9.99      PDF

Original Cartoon Posters: From Frederator Studios 

I’ve been collecting posters for a long time, and producing original ones for almost as long. This poster archive book features our (almost) annual Frederator New Years set, and promotional posters from some our best shows. And there’s the added bonus of a handful of fan art posters for Adventure Time. 

Amazon paperback 122 pgs. $24.95     PDF

Wit and Wisdom in the Land of Ooo: Great Quotations from Adventure Time 

Frederator executive Eric Homan was getting such a kick from the first sets of Adventure Time storyboards that he started collecting the best at our Flickr archive. He selected the very best and the very funniest into this Wit and Wisdom. 

Amazon paperback 264 pgs. $10.00     PDF  

Original Cartoon Title Cards: From Frederator Studios 

...:::Update: 90 new pages, 300 color illustrations. 

Frederator loves title cards. We’re one of the only cartoon studios in the 21st century still using them for almost every episode we’ve ever produced. So why not show off our best from The Fairly OddParents, ChalkZone, My Life as a Teenage Robot and Adventure Time? And more! 

Amazon paperback 248 pgs. $30.99   PDF

The Declaration of Cartoon Independents: The Channel Frederator Network & Cartoon Hangover: Selected Postcards 2008-2015 

As Frederator dropped its own media channels like Channel Frederator and Cartoon Hangover, our postcard collections told stories about our fans as much as about our cartoons and their creators. More than 120 full color postcard illustrations our online animation network. Over the past 10 years, Channel Frederator's become the world's biggest animation network, built, film by film, by thousands of animators across the globe. Each of the creators completely controls their own channel, makes all their own decisions. There are no filters, no gatekeepers, no barriers to the expressions of these intrepid souls. Just the raw, direct, and often sophisticated moving picture expressions of the characters they love, the worlds they inhabit, and the stories they tell.        

Amazon 194 pgs. $39.95 (used from $12)     PDF

Original Cartoon Shorts: From Frederator Studios: Selected Postcards 1998-2015 

...:::Update: A new edition for a $10+ discount.

Short cartoons have been the lifeblood of animation for almost 100 years, and the talent that creates them have been Frederator’s vital spark for over two decades. And for almost as long, the studio has been releasing limited edition postcards honoring their creators, like Butch Hartman's The Fairly OddParents, Natasha Allegri's Bee & PuppyCat, and Pendleton Ward's Adventure Time and Bravest Warriors. 

Amazon 212 pgs. $27.99 (used from $12)      PDF

Frederator Loves You: Best of Frederator: Original Adventures in Cartoons, TV and Streaming 1998-2018  

The Best of Frederator. Adventure Time (Cartoon Network), Castlevania (Netflix), The Fairly OddParents (Nickelodeon), Bravest Warriors (Cartoon Hangover) and Bee and PuppyCat (Cartoon Hangover) are only a few shows featured in this "best of," with 513 color illustrations and 246 pages. Together we stand for independent artists. Frederator loves you! 

Amazon 246 pgs. $39.95     PDF

[lesserknownpumpkins]

Cathy from the Random! Cartoons short “6 Monsters”

[fredfilmsblog]

Best of Original Cartoons: Adventure Time [2010-2018+]

I’ve been public that I turned down Adventure Time when creator Pendleton Ward first pitched it. Luckily, Eric Homan and Kevin Kolde pretty much locked me in my office (not quite) until I finally said yes. Actually, they were pretty disappointed in me (can’t blame them) but one meeting with Pen and I turned around on a dime. Lucky thing. And yes, I know how stupid I was.

I’ll cut to the chase and then fill in the backstory. Here’s an excerpt of the most penetrating, on the nose review that I’ve read about the series, from The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum:

The animated series “Adventure Time,” now entering its sixth season on Cartoon Network, is the kind of cult phenomenon that’s hard to describe without sounding slightly nuts. It’s a post-apocalyptic allegory full of helpful dating tips for teen-agers, or like World of Warcraft as recapped by Carl Jung. It can be enjoyed, at varying levels, by third graders, art historians, and cosplay fans. It’s also the type of show that’s easy to write off as “stoner humor,” which may be why it took me a while to drop the snotty attitude, to open up and admit the truth: “Adventure Time” is one of the most philosophically risky and, often, emotionally affecting shows on TV. It’s beautiful and funny and stupid and smart, in about equal parts, as well as willing to explore uneasy existential questions, like what it means to go on when the story you’re in has ended.  

My version? Pen Ward has created the most emotionally complex shows of the “peak TV” but accomplished something no one else has even attempted. A show with a likeable hero instead of the now typical anti-heroes as exemplified by Walter White and Tony Soprano.

No easy feat. But Pen is not a typical creator. (If you’re an Adventure Time fan you know I’m right. If you’re not, what are you doing reading this anyhow?!)

Long story short, Eric saw one of Pen’s films at the annual end of year CalArts showcase, then again the next year, and invited Pen to pitch us for my upcoming shortsfest Random! Cartoons. I quickly got over my hesitance and we greenlit the short for Nickelodeon. He came in with his school pal Adam Muto (who would go on to create his own cool short for Random! and eventually become creative director and then, when Pen left, the showrunner of Adventure Time). Another pal, Pat McHale, was hovering in the background (for what reasons I never found out) and would go on to a critical role in the series and his own stardom.

The short was done with only a few hiccups (as hands on animators, the team was a little gun shy about doing the animation in Korea; we prevailed since it would be great practice for how the TV industry worked) and Pen had accomplished the (almost) impossible. A cartoon that seemed to be influenced more by early 20th century animations (those spaghetti arms and shape shifting bodies) than Looney Tunes, a film whose surrealism was tempered by an incredibly sly, at the same time, in your face humor. Wow! When Pen’s short was done everyone knew it was something special. 

Except, it seemed, the powers that be at Nickelodeon.

I knew it was going to be a problem. Here was a film that was like nothing else, drawn with a clear, simple and wholly original design. It was funny beyond the beyond, but was that character in pre-school? (”I’m 12 years old!” How much clearer did it need to be?) Was the humor for adults or kids? The executives were completely confused. I anticipated their focus groups by pointing out the four reasons they’d come back with a ‘no.’ They returned with the four, plus one more! Rejected!

What was wrong with these people?! Nickelodeon had an exclusive option to make a series on Adventure Time. So I went back and back and back and back. Five times altogether. To different executives in different divisions. “It’s not a ‘Nickelodeon’ show.” What the hell does that mean?

What it meant, bottom line, is that 1) that particular executive team was brain dead, and 2) they didn’t really want to produce a show with me. There was a feeling I’d been in business with them for too long and had gotten too much from them and that I was the former management team’s talent. Nickelodeon was moving on.

At that point I’d had an exclusive producing deal with Nickelodeon for several years because I was also a programming consultant to the network; there was a feeling that I knew their secrets and they didn’t want them shared with the competition. This situation usually meant that a rejection of one of our show pitches had no other life. But, this time, I kept going back for more pain. Five times Nick said no to Adventure Time. Finally, I’d had enough and told the president to please, rip up my exclusive. It had been a good decade in their clutches but I was done. Any place that couldn’t see that AT was a winner wasn’t the place to be locked down. Nickelodeon saved a lot of money, and honestly, that management team couldn’t care less about me, Pen Ward, or Adventure Time.

The rest of the saga is, as they say, history. I brought the show over to Cartoon Network. Former programming head, Michael Ouweleen (now the president at Adult Swim). He convinced CEO Stuart Snyder, and with a bit of a push, the new Chief Content officer, and we were off to the races. (Here’s the short oral history the LA Times’ Robert Lloyd ran after the series ended).

It was that rare moment when everything changed. Cartoons were never the same after Adventure Time.

[fredfilmsblog]

Best of Original Cartoons: Random! Cartoons [2008-2009]

What started life as the fourth season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons, for niggly business reasons eventually became my third cartoon incubator, Random! Cartoons (39 shorts in a playlist embedded below). I’m happy that it’s most famous as being the start of Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time and Bravest Warriors, and Eric Robles’ Fanboy & Chum Chum, but Random! was a turning point in our industry for completely different reasons.

When I got into cartoons one of my missions was to bring under represented creators into the industry. I’ve miserably failed with Black Americans , been sort of OK with Latinos, and a lot better with women. With What A Cartoon! I begged folks from those groups to pitch and it was a pretty miserable failure. Oh Yeah! Cartoons improved a tiny bit. But at Random! and then at Too Cool! Cartoons and GO! Cartoons a real stride was started. 

Of course, our crews on various series started having a more female proportion of talent in the shows, but with Random! Cartoons a swirl of our youngest pitches began, and no surprise, the new generation also brought in a lot of women creators, maybe a few dozen pitches. 

Eventually, out of 39 short cartoons we produced, eight were women creators. It might not seem like a lot, 81 original shorts I made from 1998 through 2002 had two women creators, so the proportion of the total jumped dramatically.

And while none of the Random! shorts became series, all of the women –Jun Falkenstein, Dana Galin, Diane Kredensor, Aliki Theofilopoulos, Anne Walker, Melissa Wolfe (yes, an executive[first at Frederator now at Amazon] and a creator), and Niki Yang– became forces in the industry, many with series of their own (and Too Cool! creators broke out big!).

A few notes:

Random! Cartoons was the first show that I produced after I relocated back to New York City. Eric Homan and Kevin Kolde had joined Frederator Studios and ran development and production and put together teams of creators that I would have missed entirely. Those two guys are amazing.

For business reasons –these shorts shows historically have really low ratings and Nickelodeon was rightfully nervous– even though all the shorts were produced in 2005 and 2006, the series was held until 2008 and then ran on Nicktoons.

Eric Robles’ Fanboy & Chum Chum brought a real cartoony squash & stretch to television for the first time. 

I was happy that four cartoons were by New York creators –Dana Galin’s and Diane Kredesnor’s Call Me Bessie, Manny Galan’s & Alan Goodman’s Bronk & Bongo, John Dilworth’s Garlic Boy and Bill Plympton’s Gary Guitar– a vanishing breed.

Most known for his animation historian chops, Jerry Beck was the creator of Random!’s Hornswiggle.

I have commented else where that I was the idiot who almost turned down Pendleton Ward’s Adventure Time. Eric and Kevin pointed out my giant mistake and made sure I sat tight enough to get the series going, and then Bravest Warriors. Thank you gentlemen!