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Online Cartoon panel at Ottawa Animation Festival
In all my recent posts about Ottawa, I completely forgot to mention the panel I sat on. On Thursday the 18th, AWN.com’s Dan Sarto skillfully moderated a panel called “LAUNCHING INTO ONLINE SPACE: INS AND OUTS OF WEB SERIES” in the opulent ballroom of the Chateau Laurier (above).
I shared the panel with Mark Bishop, Jason Chaney, and legendary director J.J. Sedelmaier. J.J. is perhaps best known for his years of hilarious Saturday Night Live cartoons and he brought a really articulate and honest point-of-view about how the Internet is changing the way he does business.
J.J. has been creating animation for TV for decades and is now adapting to the Internet. I, on the other hand, have only made cartoons for the Internet and I’m just now heading towards TV. Our reverse experiences are different, but we both agreed that the Internet is an extremely positive and powerful outlet for cartoons and any type of creative expression.
Later in the week, J.J. told me that I was a dead-ringer for Buster Keaton. “If the animation thing doesn’t pan out, you could get work as a lookalike. You won’t have to talk or smile or anything,” he quipped.
Here’s me doing my best stone-faced Buster impersonation. What do you think?:
Hmm… let’s see what Buster Keaton would like with my hair:
Oh my god.
Canadians
Here’s what I learned about Canadians this past week in Ottawa:
- Canadians are nice. (not a big surprise there)
- Canadians really do pronounce the word “about” as “a-boot”
- Canadians really do finish sentences with “ay?”
- Canadians almost never jaywalk.
- Canadians take for granted the fact that their government gives them money to make cartoons.
- Canadians has new immigrants from countries that America rarely does. (such as Slovenia, Finland, and Eritrea)
- Even Canadians don’t listen to Rush.
Some Ottawa People
At the Ottawa Animation Festival last week I hung out with tons of animation people and I wanted to remember them all. But I didn’t want to ask everyone if I could take a picture of them. I didn’t want to be THAT GUY. So instead, I just kept track of everyone I met by making a list. Here are some of those people, with each name linking to their individual site.
Saxton Moore
Azarin Sohrabkhami
Dan Sarto
JJ Sedelmaier
Christy Karacas
Lisa Furlong jones
Willy Hartland
Tammy Semen
Ward Jenkins
Emma Tripp
Derek Roczen
Skip Battaglia
Hobo Divine
Lizzi Akana
Zee Risek
Stephanie Yuhas
Fran Krause
Will Krause
Dave Levy
Chris Dainty
Dominic von Riedermann
Stu Wenschlag
Justin Simonich
David Wachtenheim
Natella Kataev
Henry Thurlow
Obi Onyejekwe
Katie Cropper
Tony Lamberty
Javan Ivey
Isam Prado
Alisa Stern
Jessica Plummer
Kevin Gamble
If we met and you weren’t on the list, it only means I must have lost you card at the parties!
Some Memorable Films from Ottawa
I saw so many films at the Ottawa Animation festival, that it’s hard to remember them all. But here’s just a couple of the ones that stuck in my mind (and that are also on youtube). Watching these blurry little web-compressed videos is obviously no substitute for seeing them projected in a theatre, but I wanted to share them with those folks who couldn’t make it.
“REVOLVER”: Swedish director Jonas Odell gave a lecture before blowing my mind with this short.
“Rocket Robin Hood”: Director Daniel Barrow played an episode of this 1960’s Canadian cartoon before he showed his own. It must have been an early influence for him. The below clip isn’t the episode he showed, but you’ll get the idea.
“Peace On Earth”: This 1939 anti-war cartoon was shown at a showcase of propaganda cartoons. Post-apocalyptic squirrels looking back on extinct humans. Effective.
I Like Ike”: Can you imagine McCain or Obama doing something like this? How times have changed.
“Kool-Aid Go Go”: Something about Bugs Bunny dancing with real kids is memorable.
“OKTAPODI”: A wonderful new CG film from Europe.
“SUPERJAIL”: I hadn’t seen a full episode of this Adult Swim show until Ottawa. My mind was, once again, blown away. I got to hang out with director Christy Karacas afterwards, and he’s as entertaining as his work.
“BUNJIES”: a great short from the Kids TV animation showcase.
“THE THEIF AND COBBLER”: The highlight for many of us was watching John Canemaker interview legendary director Richard Williams and seeing clips from this never-completed masterpiece.
So there you have it, just a few of the things we watched in Ottawa. I’m still trying to scotch-tape my mind back together.
Ottawa Animation Festival (part 1)
I’m back from the Ottawa Animation Festival, and I already feel like booking my flight for next year. It was so fun! I have the same elated feeling that I had returning from last year’s Platform Festival. There’s just something about being immersed in an environment of fellow animators and sharing hundreds of hours of the world’s greatest cartoons that makes you feel really positive and inspired.
Some general observations about animators.
- Animators are really nice and down to earth. They can only get so famous. Unlike Hollywood directors or rock stars, they rarely are arrogant jerks who won’t associate with up-and-comers. Even the most legendary icons of animation like Richard Williams were kicking back and exchanging business cards with students. I talked to some heroes of mine and within moments I realized that they are just regular dudes. The egos don’t get too big in animation, I guess.
- Animators love to dance. And they can tell you how many frames per second they are dancing on.
- Animators don’t get tired of watching cartoons. After 5 days straight, people were still filling up the theaters.
- Animators are everywhere. I met directors and saw films from every continent this past week.
- Animators almost always grow beards by their later years.
- Animators are child-like.
After this past week I’m very into the whole animation communty feeling, so I’ll be attending the ASIFA East screening tomorrow night. Hope to see you there!
More posts about Ottawa to come.
Rob and Corinne, the hosts of Threadbanger, asked me to play the role of Franc DeZank in their latest episode (it’s the first scene). It’s always fun portraying a jerk.
In the latest ep of Nite Fite I got to do some fake photo style stills. Adam created the characters in flash and I took them and airbrushed them in photoshop, putting them on a photo collage background and playing with colours to make it look dated.
Daisy, Adam, and Dagan always succeeded in bringing my vision to life. I told them I wanted to make it look like Penalty got married in 1979 and they nailed it. You guys were fantastic on this series!
Meth Minute Cartoon Predicts Historic Kosovo Independence
The Meth Minute predicted a historic event!
(If you consider “predicting” an event being so ignorant to European politics that your creative choice of a “random country” happens to be one that’s going through massive political upheaval).
Last week’s Meth Minute cartoon featured an Albanian boy named Agron whose friend is Kreshnik, the two-headed eagle on his national flag. If you watch carefull, you will see Kreshnik fly out of the flag and into open air… liberated at last.
3 Days later: Albanian Region of Kosovo declares independence! Looking through the recent news sites you’ll see Kreshnik everywhere!
Meth Minute 39: Creating new countries one cartoon at a time.
Here’s the cartoon in question:
Intern Spotlight: Mike Zimmer
Yesterday was Michael Zimmer’s last day of interning at Frederator after only about a month or so. But within that short time he helped on all kinds of things. When he wasn’t putting together the Drinking and Drawing film, he was making great title screens for various Meth Minute cartoons and often dressing as a gorilla. Here’s a couple examples of Zimmer’s excellent work for Meth Minute:
-Dan
Meth Minute Soundtrack By Grandpa Meth
The newest Meth Minute Cartoon is my tribute to the strange animation of Eastern Europe. I’ve always been interested in all things Eastern Bloc, probably because my family lineage originates from Hungary, Belarus, Romania, etc. If we had never immigrated to America, I might be making cartoons like this:
When I had finished the animation and was looking for a background soundtrack, I knew it needed some E. European instrumentals to keep it authentic. The choice was obvious: My Hungarian-born grandfather Abraham Meth’s very own opera overture.
This past November, we flew to Arizona to see Grandpa’s opera (composed in the late 1950’s) performed by a professional orchestra. Although it’s the story of Moses and the Exodus, I had a feeling it’s instrumental overture would be perfect for my cartoon about anthropomorphic hands that spill coffee on each other!
The performance was recorded and the CD came to me in the mail hours before the cartoon needed to be edited and distributed all over the internet. A couple splices of the music with the cartoon and it was appeared to be cosmically destined.
Collaborating with my 95 year-old grandfather on a film was awesome. He was a student of Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly at the Budapest Acadamy of Music in the 1930’s and wrote music and drew all his life. Abraham Meth is where I inherited any of my musical and artistic traits from so I guess it’s all come full circle.
Space Cowboy Storyboards Drawn When I Was 13
As I mentioned in a previous post, the newest Meth Minute cartoon was written as a comic book when I was in eighth grade. It’s been in the works as an animated cartoon since 1991.
Here’s some shots that compare the original art to the accompanying recent recreations. I had fun breathing new life in the characters while assistant Daisy Edwards drew the backgrounds and architecture.
The MM39 Delta Force
Ok, yeah, it’s called the Meth Minute 39, but there are a whole bunch of people who make this show happen, and their last names aren’t Meth. I want the world to know how important the following folks are to making this cartoon series work:
Carrie Miller… my awesome producer. She schedules the upcoming episodes, hunts down interns, and kicks my ass whenever I fall behind schedule. Carrie is key to this whole operation and she does it with a smile!
The one and only Jeaux. He’s the guy who lets every video site in the universe know that there’s a new Meth Minute, and by working his magic, gets them to feature it. He also helps me write those intro-cards where the robot says something smartass about the upcoming cartoon.
Andres Palmiter and Scott Moschella: These dudes talk to the big dogs like Myspace and Youtube. They know everyone in the internet, and give me keen advise on how to present the Meth Minute 39 to the world.
Mark Vitelli: He’s the audio wizard who blends the dialogue, sound effects, and music of the Meth Minute 39 together so beautifully. He’s the ears of this cartoon.
Mike Glenn is the guy who edits the animation, credits, and previews all together in Final Cut and then preps it for airtime.
Eric Homan, he’s the guy to go to for clever episode descriptions and ideas. A cartoon bank of knowledge if you will. He thought of the curious cat in the Dog Dating episode! I run all my ideas by him to get guidance.
And of course Fred Seibert is responsible for the most important part of this whole show: He said “Do it!”. Fred has believed in the Meth Minute 39 from the start and his wisdom,experience, and skillz have made it what it is.
Creating an Acid Trip For Syd Barrett
A couple of blogs ago I talked about creating some fake early-era Pink Floyd songs for this week’s “Meth Minute 39″ cartoon. Now I’ll explain how we made some psychedelic 1960’s backgrounds to go along with the music.
Intern Josh Weisbrod, Lee Rubenstein and I accomplished this within an hour. While they picked up some vegetable oil and food coloring from the Duane Reade downstairs, I stole some half-and-half and dish soap from the office kitchen. We set up a digital camera to look down on this concoction and just started mixing it and blowing it around with a straw.
Instant psychedelia. It’s like having a Jefferson Airplane show at the Fillmore in a bowl.
Then we played around with the colors in AfterEffects and superimposed my Flash-animated Syd Barrett character on top of it.
The moral here is not to forget that cool effects can be made without computer software… and often times they look way cooler.
How To Create Syd Barrett Music
This week’s “Meth Minute 39″ cartoon is about the late great Syd Barrett. For those of you who are unaware, Barrett was the original singer for Pink Floyd until he drifted off into a insane world of LSD fantasy and became a mysterious recluse.
For the cartoon’s soundtrack, I needed to create some songs that sound just like Barrett’s own. I turned to my friend William Rahilly, a longtime musical collaborator. Will has a closet-sized recording space in Brooklyn crowded with instruments, analog-replicating tube amps and more.
First, I had made a list of words and phrases that I felt like Syd would use in his lyrics.
Then Will started strumming his acoustic and I put together some lyrics with the words from the list.
Next, we started recording all the instrumental tracks.
Finally I laid down my Syd Barrett imposter vocals.
And that’s all it took. Without further ado, here is the outcome:
Behind the Scenes Of The Music Nerds
The last Meth Minute 39 Cartoon “The Music Nerds” has turned out to be quite the fan favorite. People have been asking me about how I wrote this one. The truth is I didn’t write anything.
When I brought my friend Matt Dorfman into the sound studio he had no idea what he would be acting in. I told sound-guy Mark Vitelli to be prepared to quiz us beginnings of the entire Led Zeppelin catalog in our headphones. We didn’t even have names for the characters until we started; Vic and Cougar originated in minutes from Victrola record player and John Cougar Mellencamp.
We proceeded to actually have this contest. The trash talk is genuine. The frustrated swearing is real. And the winner was uncertain.
Matt (AKA Cougar) proceeded to trounce me (AKA Vic). It was quite a blow to my music nerd ego. When we had run out of mp3’s we had to think of an ending. What would be the best thing to come out of winning a battle of Zeppelin knowledge? Being carried away by Zeppelin themselves of course.
When the smoke cleared I had 55 minutes of audio to edit down into 1 minute. The result is this:
