Ryan Sias. Oh Yeah!

We met artist Ryan Sias through our friends at Silver Lining Productions. Ryan came over to our New York office to show us his storyboard for Courageous Critters for Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

Thanks to Ryan for his kind permission to post a frame from his storyboard.

Grrrl Power!

It's been an incredible 13 years to be in animation. After 99 shorts (48 What A Cartoon!s and 51 Oh Yeah!s), countless sequels, and hit series, there's one thing I can tell you for sure. With great humiliation, I confess: We haven't made one short with a woman creator. And, believe me, not for lack of trying. We pushed, we prodded, we begged, but out of the more than 5000 storyboards we looked at throughout the years, I don't think we even had a couple dozen pitches by women; the industry just hadn't been hospitable enough to front-line female animators who wanted to step up.

Well, I'm here to tell you, the world's changed. Day after day, Frederator's Oh Yeah! Cartoons development team is seeing that metamorphosis first hand.

You can see it too, just take a look at our blog. On this page alone there are four woman who've come to us to show their ideas. There are dozens more on the other pages. And, take it from me, there are some fantastic cartoons in those ideas. Some great talent.

It's about time. Cartoons need to reflect the diversity in our modern world. It's the way our children are growing up. Women aren't the only reflection of that breadth, but they're the biggest tidal wave of the moment. Here's to Grrrl Power finding the next great cartoon hit. Or maybe it'll be somebody else we haven't heard from before. I'm sure of it.

Jill Friemark. Oh Yeah!

Jill Friemark's been a valued Frederator colleague for years, on ChalkZone and, most recently, on My Life as a Teenage Robot. (Check out the iconic MLaaTR poster she created in her first week on the show!) Not only was Jill nice enough to introduce us to many of her talented friends, but she came over and pitched Oh Yeah! her cartoon The Silver Spatula. Thanks for everything Jill.

And thanks to Jill for kind permission to post some of her beautiful frames from The Silver Spatula.

Oh Yeah! Jay Morales.

From our Hollywood development colleague Melissa Wolfe: "Jay is a very talented (and young!) artist/creator. So young, in fact, that she has one more year to go in art school, and was commuting from San Diego to intern two days a week on Cat Scratch when she decided to pitch to Oh Yeah! Cartoons."

Thanks to Jay for kind permission to post a page from her pitch.

Andrew Dickman. Oh Yeah!

This post is overdue. Andrew Dickman has been in a number of times showing us always improved variations on his very funny Ivan the Unbearable. Andrew is working over at Warner Bros. Animation as a character designer.

We're very lucky that Oh Yeah! Cartoons keeps getting so many excellent pitches. Keep 'em coming!

Thanks Andrew, for kindly letting us post some of your Ivan models.

Original Cartoons:The Frederator Postcards.

Our book has just been listed on Amazon, reminding us to remind you that it'll be officially published by the Easton Studio Press in November. In the meanwhile, as many of you know, there's a free (large) PDF preview we posted a few months ago. Keep your eyes glued, because we'll be offering early, signed copies here as early as September.

Oh Yeah! Larry Huber!

Larry Huber is the unsung hero of the modern animation business. He's my hero. Without Larry Huber, my whole approach to cartoons would have been derided as Fred's Folly.

Now that we're moving into the fourth season of Oh Yeah!, I wanted to give Larry his well deserved props.

Larry and I have been the co-executive producers of Oh Yeah! Cartoons since it first went into production. Before that he oversaw our shorts at What A Cartoon!/World Premiere Toons! at Cartoon Network and Hanna-Barbera. Between the two he was responsible for developing the teams that created 100 original cartoon characters, 11 hit series (including his own ChalkZone), and 3 feature films. Geez Louise!

Think about it. Larry guided the now recognized talents of Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCraken, Butch Hartman, Rob Renzetti, Bill Burnett, David Feiss, and dozens of others through their first professional, solo films and series. His tutelage virtually populated the cartoon industry with its new generation of star talent.

Excitement, optimism, hope, animation skills and talents, and an unerring sense of story have been the hallmarks of Larry's bag of tricks in these enterprises. Don't underestimate how challenging it is to balance the needs of all these filmmakers, each with a laser-like focus on doing a picture just their way, and that way happens to be completely different than the person in the next office. It requires a fortitude that few people have. Larry's got it.

Clearly, our production teams, led by Debby Hindman and Sherry Gunther, had the patience of Job themselves. And Buzz Potamkin, who identified Larry as the right guy in the first place, deserves more than a little credit here in believing that our approach could make a difference. But Larry was the man.

Whenever you write and thank me for our cartoons and what we've been able to do for the industry, remember, it's Larry who made the difference.

Thanks bud, I'm looking forward to another wild season.

(By the way, regarding the illustration up above: Butch Hartman, then a 'fist' in the Hanna-Barbera bullpen, proved his unique ability to capture a personality in a flash with this 1990 sketch of Larry hard at work.)

Oh Yeah! Hiroshi Chida & Shuzo John Shiota.

Shuzo John Shiota is the Executive Producer & President, and Hiroshi Chida is an award winning director, at Polygon Pictures in Japan. Polygon is a 25 year-old CG animation house based in Tokyo; they've done everything from commercials to TV shows to feature films. They've pitched Oh Yeah! Cartoons the very funny Boneheads.

Thanks to Shuzo for his very kind permission to post these frames from Boneheads.

Elanna Allen & Dimitri Ehrlich.

Elanna Allen is an animator and artist and Dimitri Ehrlich is a writer. Together they came in with a very nice, fun, picture book called Captain Fun and Tiny Special Pants for our Bolder Books for Boys & Girls project with Random House.

Thanks to Elanna & Dimitri for kind permission to post am illustration from their book.

Last Chance! 5 days left!

That's right, last chance. There are 5 days left to enter and get the $10,000 first prize.

And maybe more importantly, it's the last chance to get your animated film in front of a large, national, discerning audience. (And remember, this festival is for your completed films.)

June 17, 2005, will be the last day we're is accepting submissions for the second annual Nextoons: Nicktoons Film Festival.

Last year, Frederator Studios proudly started The Nicktoons Film Festival. We had literally hundreds of submissions from all around the world, selected almost 100 for the actual festival, and screened six hours of cartoons for an audiences of millions across America on the Nicktoons digital animation channel. We had two incredible winning films: Timmy's Lessons in Nature, by Mark Simon and Travis Blaise; and Welcome to My Life, by Elizabeth Ito.

It's amazing to me, after 25 years of looking at literally tens of thousands of films, to see the great quality of expression that continues to come in to our offices every day. Nextoons is really becoming one of the most interesting venues for recent animated pictures. My fellow festival directors, Eric Homan and Rita Street, and our colleagues at the wonderful Nicktoons channel, are waiting with baited breath for your new cartoons.

Enter and win! The Nextoons Film Festival. (Did I mention there are only 5 days left?)

Bill Burnett & Jaime Diaz. Oh Yeah!

Bill Burnett and Jaime Diaz are great friends of Oh Yeah! Cartoons, both of them being contributors to the original three seasons; in fact, Jaime's son Bill was part of our original production team. Bill, of course, created ChalkZone with Larry Huber, and Jaime joined their directing team.

Together, they created and pitched Oh Yeah! the very funny Dr. Froyd's Funny Farm. Thanks guys.

Thanks to Jaime & Bill for permission to post Jaime's original cartoon that inspired their idea.

Oh Yeah! Mikhail Shindel, Slava Ushakov, Glenn Buswell.

Mikhail, Slava, and Glenn were nice enough to come and show us Shapito for consideration in the fourth season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

Mikhail Shindel founded Kinofilm in Los Angeles in 1996. The new company quickly landed a deal to produce Mike, Lu, and Og on the Cartoon Network.

Since 1998, Slava Ushakov has been based at Kinofilm in Los Angeles, where he works as a director and storyboard artist.

Glenn Buswell started working at Kinofilm in 1997. He moved to development where he, Slava, and Misha continue to create projects from animated series to features. Currently he is the Production Coordinator on Nickelodeon's Catscratch which bows July 9th at 8:00 pm.

Thanks to Mikhail, Slava, and Glenn for kind permission to show a storyboard frame from Shapito.

Last chance! 10 days left.

That's right, last chance. There are 10 days left to enter and get the $10,000 first prize.

And maybe more importantly, it's the last chance to get your animated film in front of a large, national, discerning audience. (And remember, this festival is for your completed films.)

June 17, 2005, will be the last day we're is accepting submissions for the second annual Nextoons: Nicktoons Film Festival.

Last year, Frederator Studios proudly started The Nicktoons Film Festival. We had literally hundreds of submissions from all around the world, selected almost 100 for the actual festival, and screened six hours of cartoons for an audiences of millions across America on the Nicktoons digital animation channel. We had two incredible winning films: Timmy's Lessons in Nature, by Mark Simon and Travis Blaise; and Welcome to My Life, by Elizabeth Ito.

It's amazing to me, after 25 years of looking at literally tens of thousands of films, to see the great quality of expression that continues to come in to our offices every day. Nextoons is really becoming one of the most interesting venues for recent animated pictures. My fellow festival directors, Eric Homan and Rita Street, and our colleagues at the wonderful Nicktoons channel, are waiting with baited breath for your new cartoons.

Enter and win! The Nextoons Film Festival. (Did I mention there are only 10 days left?)

My heroes. Postcards, Series 5.

It's postcard time again! The bottom one's pretty obvious; as you probably know, we're taking pitches for 39 new shorts for the fourth season of Oh Yeah! Cartoons.

The other two? Well, frankly, they're indulgences of a nostalgic, sentimental producer.

The top one is my grandfather, Pancho Nakashev, pharmacist, linguist, nationalist, inventor. It's been said from him I got my eyebrows and entrepreneurial spirit. The other, American Gothic in the 50s, is my parents posing in their Long Island pharmacy for a magazine article (hence, the photographer posing my dad in a goofy smock he really disliked). From them comes a love of hard work, fair play, and creativity. Thanks everyone, I love you.

Click here to see all our Frederator card series from the past seven years.