I would move Clayton from Tarzan up to the #1 spot from #4. I half expect to see him hanging from the Tarzan Treehouse (formerly the Swiss Family Robinson tree house) at Disneyland each time I go.
I also wouldn’t have listed Syndrome, and instead filled that spot with the witch/queen from Snow White. That was pretty terrifying. The storm is building, the lightning is crashing all around, and then the cliff edge crumbles, sending the witch down… then the rock falls after her. The scene ends with her two vultures smiling as they descend and the shot dissolves away. Very creepy stuff.
Steve Tompkins in his Nickelodeon writing office, with The Gashlycrumb Tinies poster
If this gets too complicated, I’m sorry about that…
Last week I was walking by the office of one of Fanboy & Chum Chum’s executive producers, Steve Tomkins*. I noticed his cool poster of Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies, which he was obviously very proud of and it got me to telling him of my unusual, casual run in with Gorey’s work back in the day.
My soft spot for Gorey comes from a particular circumstance. In 1976, I was working with the composers and musicians MichaelMantler (who I posted about last month) and Carla Bley, when Mike released his LP which used Gorey’s writings as the libretto for his compositions called “The Hapless Child and Other Inscrutable Stories.”
So, while it’s always fun saying hi to Steve*, I got an extra cultural dose of nostalgic inspiration the other day. Thanks bud.
* By the way, in addition to doing a hilarious job on Fanboy & Chum Chum, I found out about another unsung showbiz story. Who knew that Steve Tompkins created Ari Gold on Entourage?
The m.o. behind the writing on Adventure Time pretty much has the guys working together in the writers’ room coming up with outlines through both words and pictures. Crazy, right? My point is the process has been very collaborative, and ideas are always accompanied with visuals. Above is a page of story notes for “You’re a Beautiful Dancer”, which we may or may not see go beyond this stage. It’s the work of Adam Muto. Click on the image to go to Flickr for much, much larger versions.
“MooBeard the Cow Pirate” Random! Cartoons
Created by Kyle A. Carrozza
Directed by Jeff DeGrandis
Premieres Saturday, December 6, at 1:30 p.m. on Nicktoons Network.
Frederator Postcards Series 7.2, mailed November 17, 2008.
I heard today that one of our favorite CF contributors, Joel Trussell is doing his first solo gallery show. Congrats Joel! The show starts December 4th at the Grassy Knoll Gallery in Portland, OR. I so wish I had plans to visit Portland over the next few weeks, but alas, I do not. I hope that any of you Portland-based CF-ers that might attend will comment about the show.
If, like me, you can’t get to Portland make sure you stroll on over to “Joel Trussell’s Scribble Dumpster” where Joel blogs about the many things keeping this Tennessee-based artist busy. Joel goes way back with Channel Frederator. His cartoon, War Photographer was the fifth cartoon to ever air on Channel Frederator and since then we’ve shown a number of his films. He’s also a two-time Channel Frederator Award recipient.
Good luck Joel!- Carrie
Here’s your first look at some Adventure Time character and prop designs. They’re all by Ms Natasha Allegri, who’s working for the show while still studying in Arizona. Thanks, Natasha.
A “boiling” line is the inevitable wobble seen in animation drawn by hand. The effect has even been exaggerated and used as a style choice on popular TV series like Ed, Edd ‘n’ Eddy and Dr. Katz.
Line Boil is also a great new animation blog about character animation in general, founded by the Cold Hard Flash guys. Besides the cool name, Line Boil will have animation, news, and interviews. The site isn’t limited to Flash only stuff (like Cold Hard Flash), so expect to see a much wider range of animation content.
Hey All You Pre-School Cartoon Kiddies!!! I thought I’d draw something that sort of represents my pre-school days on the animation playground here at Nickelodeon. It’s been a lot of fun, and I would say the biggest and most rewarding challenges in my career, producing Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go and Ni Hao Kailan for Nickelodeon. Since starting here in 2000 during the first season of Dora the Explorer, I’m happy to say I’ve been involved with about 250 combined episodes of pre-school television, along with the best crews anyone could ever be with. You get to use the right and left sides of your brain constantly, in order to “reverse engineer” your film-making knowledge in order to adapt to a pre-schoolers way of thinking and vision. The kids love them, and we make a difference in their lives everyday! That’s the bottom line for me! You’re never too old to be a pre-schooler. As my mentor and good friend Chuck Jones said, “We’re all fake adults” for we all have little kids inside all of us! Take care gang and I’ll see you on the playground. HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! Your Pre-school Pals…….Dora, Kailan, Diego and Jeff
The Daily Mail is reporting that Wallace & Gromit will be making a comeback on television this Christmas season. The special is called “A Matter of Loaf and Death” (sounds Christmas-y enough to me) and will be 30 minutes in length, just like “A Grand Day Out”, “The Wrong Trousers”, and “A Close Shave”.
Maybe it’s my weak American mind trying to take in the British humor (or is that “humour”), but I always thought Aardman’s best work was the shorter format. Both “Chicken Run” and “Curse of the Were-Rabbit” seemed to drag for me while I was watching them. The classic W&G shorts and the Creature Comforts series felt great.
Hopefully the piece will make its way to US television, or at the very least, the US festival circuit.
