Tuesday, January 30, 2007

NATPE 2007 | VIVA LAS VEGAS!

This year we'll be attending several festivals conferences and tradeshows, hell in a week a whole slew of us will be in NYC for the annual Kidscreen Summit. This year's NATPE show in Las Vegas was extra special, not because we scored some amazing gigs, or the fact that we are on the cusp of signing some of the biggest deals in our company's history for OUR own shows! No, it was extra special, because we got to show off our new booth!

Once landing in vegas, the first thing any good producer of entertainment should do is grab some beer and ice cream and continue to chase one with the other until a refill is needed.

The second thing that should be done is to begin the set up of the new booth! How cool is that?! We went with a hockey theme, because we're uhm, Canadian and those that are not Canadian would expect us to do such a thing. Play to the stereotype is necessary sometimes.

The third thing that anyone who has some self respect would do is pack the kitchen sink with beer. That's just a no-brainer.

What a neat booth! That's me in net letting in a goal as all the kats from the studio go wild at my defeat!.. buggahs. :o)

Speaking of defeat, shortly after Buddy posed for this picture with Chuck "The Iceman" Liddel, buddy broke out of one of Chuck's leg locks and proceeded to pummel him with the thick end of a champagne bottle.

We showcased several of our live action and animated shows at our booth, the "My Adventures with Cloe" pilot that we created with Big Hug Productions caught the eye of the head writer for the Tonight Show! They plan to feature a bit of it on the show tomorrow night! Wednesday January 31st at 12:35 AST! Set your VCR'S !!

We also had the pleasure of sharing our booth with the great folks at Cinema Management Group who represent the Mondo Media series Happy Tree Friends! Man I love those guys, good people, great projects and the smell great too.

In the middle of the conference, Keith Bryan, Tracy and Buddy all decided to stop what they were doing and climb a 112 story tower to ride the Big Shot amusement ride. Well, well, don't they look amused?! Check out Buddy, he looks calm enough about it, moreso then Bryan, however look how white his knuckles are as he clings tenaciously to the undersides of the armrests. hehehe.
Buddy was so worked up about that ride that he actually lost his dress shoes, he had to wear soccer shoes to the tradeshow the next day.

Tracy tried to make him feel better, but it was no use. Don't worry Buddy, we'll get you some new shoes.

Thanks for an amazing NATPE everyone!

Much Love,

Gene.

Monday, January 22, 2007

FATKATS HIT THE HILL!

A weekend ago Keith Fukumoto got this crazy idea that some kats should strap planks to their feet, find an icy hill and see who can go the fastest and the longest without falling over.

Well they all did just that and funny enough, I guess it's an actual sport! can you believe the crazy things that humans will do?

Not this human, he went for two planks, and some poles.

Pierre getting his poop together.

Arsenio getting some air.

Oh yes, we're quite impressed too. Mexicans know how to snowboard.

Pierre got his poop together and then realized he had to go pee.

Arsenio points the way to the restroom while Jon signals that he has to go potty.

A hard faught day twas, and in the end, jimmy succumbed to it all. Hell after some nutty moves on a deck and a couple o' forties, you would too!

Nice,

gene.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

RON CROWN VISITS FATKAT!

Our old buddy Ron Crown came back to Fatkat last week for some fun and to kick off a new project.
Senior dudes Big Show and Dan Theriault came out to play some pool with Ron and I, new fatkat Gui Parent also showed up to get an ass whoopin from Billiard specialist Mr. Crown.

It all ended with this.

Dan hit this ball so hard it sunk the 8 on the next table over.

Gui, being an American had never experienced Canadian pool before. We made him eat some bacon and kiss a salmon before every shot.

Crown killed all of us. Undefeated in like 10 games. "I haven't played in awhile, so take it easy on me". What a line. We'll never believe that one again.

The following night Salma, Dan, Erika and Dermott took Ron out to the Opera House, a favorite watering hole here in Miramichi.

The opera house is captivating, filled with movie memorabillia. It sure got the attention of Erika. Dermott laughed as she went all googlie eyed at a wax statue of Michael Buble.

After a night of some beers, Ron and everyone called it a night.

But Tracy seems to think otherwise!

Much Love,

gene

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

BUDDY BOLTON IN THE HOOD

ARTICLE ON HAPPY TREE FRIENDS | MONDO MEDIA

Dot-com crash survivor Mondo reanimates itself on Web and off

The studio's funny but grisly cartoon series 'Happy Tree Friends' is big on the Net. Can it be a hit on other screens?
By Chris Gaither, Times Staff Writer
December 31, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO — During the dot-com bust, Mondo Media almost befell the same fate as the adorable animals in its "Happy Tree Friends" cartoons: brutal death.

The animation studio — specializing in funny, violent and politically incorrect programming aimed at teens and young adults — took in $30 million in venture capital from 1999 to 2001 to distribute its content on the Internet. Then the bottom fell out of the online advertising market.

"We were the butt of everybody's jokes about what happened to the entertainment business on the Internet," said Chief Executive John Evershed. "That can be a great motivator."

Mondo keeps coming back for the next episode, just like Nutty the candy-addicted squirrel and the other cuddly critters that, in gruesome fashion, lose their limbs and lives in "Happy Tree Friends."

Even as traditional media companies are moving online, companies such as Mondo are building viable entertainment businesses in the other direction, from the Internet out — to mobile phones, video-game consoles and even television.

The cartoon series, which its creators warn is "not recommended for small children or big babies," is one of the most popular shows that parents don't know their kids are watching.

Happytreefriends.com attracts 1.2 million visitors a month, with the vast majority of its traffic coming from overseas, according to research firm ComScore Networks Inc. The show's episodes, which generally run between one and seven minutes long, are watched a total of more than 5 million times a month on the website, and 3 million via iTunes, Evershed said.

Privately held Mondo has been breaking even for the last year and a half through online advertising, sales of "Happy Tree Friends" merchandise and distribution deals to get the show on as many types of screens as possible, Evershed said. He declined to disclose Mondo's revenue.

The series made its domestic debut as a TV show in the fall, when cable channel G4, which is owned by Comcast Corp., bought 13 half-hour episodes. "Happy Tree Friends" also appears on MTV in Germany and Latin America, and is being picked up for broadcast in Israel, Greece, Brazil and Canada.

"They have just stayed focused on being a creator of original content, and the market has come around to them now," said Mika Salmi, president of global digital media for MTV Networks Co. and former CEO of Atom Entertainment Inc., which helps distribute Mondo's shows online.

Evershed and partner Deirdre O'Malley were working in advertising when they started Mondo in 1988 to create content for Prodigy and other pre-Web interactive services. They began to work on computer games and other animation projects before switching gears in 1998 to fashion Mondo as a provider of cartoons to syndicate to other websites. They created more than 20 series, such as "The God & Devil Show" and "Like, News."

Venture capital poured in.

"The audiences were coming in bigger and bigger numbers," Evershed said. "It's just that there was no underlying economic underpinning."

After the online advertising market, whose torrid growth Mondo and many other companies had been betting on, tanked in 2002, the company sharply cut its payroll and other expenses, and began hatching a plan to escape the mess. The then-budding market for DVDs persuaded the company to focus on what had become its most popular series: "Happy Tree Friends."

The show is an over-the-top take-off of the cartoon violence pioneered by "Tom and Jerry" and other series, said "Happy Tree Friends" animation director and co-creator Kenn Navarro. It started as a joke, when Navarro and fellow animator Rhode Montijo would try to crack each other up by drawing cute animals being maimed and murdered in increasingly grisly, blood-spurting ways. They put it online in 2000, and teenagers loved it.

"I can't even imagine this show passing through network censors," Navarro said. "The Internet was the only place it could have thrived."

Because Navarro's team didn't feel like writing scripts, the show has no real dialogue, and the lack of a language barrier has helped "Happy Tree Friends" spread overseas.

There are more than 670 reviews of the series on Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes website, where episodes can be downloaded. A few viewers have registered their repulsion by giving the show one star out of five: "It is just pure MEAN, CRUEL, WRONG and PATHETIC!" one person wrote. "There is NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING funny about cute little animals murdering themselves and each other. You people disgust me. UGH!"

But the series enjoys an average rating of four stars, with the target demographic becoming quickly evident through the reviews: "This podcast is twisted, gory and downright wrong. Awesome!!!!!!!!!!"

While sales of "Happy Tree Friends" DVDs, T-shirts and stuffed animals initially kept the company going, Mondo has generated additional revenue by selling the rights to distribute the show on mobile phones overseas and in the United States. The company also has "Happy Tree Friends" video games in the works: Sega is developing one for Xbox 360, and Disney is making a game for cellphones.

Meanwhile, the Internet advertising market, which started to recover in 2003, is booming. The "Happy Tree Friends" website is peppered with flashing banner ads for dating services and giveaways of iPods. Ad Infuse, also based in San Francisco, inserts short commercials at the beginning of the episodes available on iTunes.

But even as Mondo's cartoon was becoming a hit online, Evershed felt that the show's absence from television had been hurting its credibility with potential partners. For example, he said, it was routine for Mondo to struggle to reach a deal with a distributor of merchandise and DVDs until people at the distributor went home and asked their teenagers whether they had heard of "Happy Tree Friends," Evershed said.

"To get to a certain level, you almost have to have a TV property," Navarro said. Because Mondo is growing an audience from grass roots, he said, "You have to prove to all those old-media gatekeepers, 'Hey, this works on TV, too.' "

Cable channel G4, branching out from its original video game theme, began airing "Happy Tree Friends" shorts in the fall of 2005, then bought 13 half-hour episodes that debuted this year.

"The majority of G4 viewers are also very heavy users of the Internet, often surfing the Web and watching G4 programming simultaneously," said Neal Tiles, G4's president. "Not only had Mondo Media developed a strong online brand that we knew would resonate with our core demographic of young men, but the presentation of the animation itself was something that seemed to bridge a stylistic gap between the Internet and broadcast media."

Since the show's debut on G4 on Oct. 3, an average of 43,000 people have tuned in for each episode, including reruns, with viewership ranging from a measly 5,000 for a 2:30 a.m. broadcast to 199,000 for a Sunday afternoon, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The last episode is set to run Monday. A G4 spokesman said the channel was still evaluating whether to pick up the show for another season. Thinking it's unlikely, Evershed is negotiating with other cable channels.

Josh Bailey hopes the show finds a home. The 19-year-old from Beckley, W.Va., started watching the series online because he likes gory comedy, but he said he had grown to love how the characters interacted — even while they were shedding blood.

"Not too many online cartoons have made the leap to television," he said. "If this show is successful, it could open the door wider."

chris.gaither@latimes.com



Hey! Don't forget who Co-Produced and Financed the entire production!

hehe, what do we gotta do to get some press around here?!

:o)

gene.

Saturday, January 6, 2007

FATKAT NATPE TEASER



Yes, we now produce Live Action shows too. More new stuff coming soon!

Lovies,

gene

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

PRESCOTT WRIGHT (1935-2006)

Karl Cohen (president of ASIFA-San Francisco) reports that Prescott Wright, a co-founder of the Ottawa International Animation Festival and ASIFA-San Francisco, and the original producer of the Tournee of Animation, has passed away.

Prescott had been in slow decline for several years with Picks Syndrome, a form of dementia related to Alzheimer. He died on December 28th at age 71.

In 1998 when I was chosen along with Andre Guy Landry to lead NBCC Miramichi's Animation Program a long with the Province of New Brunswick in a young entrepreneur trade mission to San Francisco I had a chance to meet with Prescott Wright.

He took Andre and I, (then two wide eyed students) to a local deli, fed us some chicken sandwhiches and talked of the days of old. We then went back to his studio and he showed us his old Oxford Camera. At that point in 1998 Digital Animation was taking shape and Andre and I had never even seen an Oxford Camera before.

I have a lot of fond memories of Prescott, I hope I can live up to his legacy in some small by way, even if I'm as nice to students as he was to me.

Thanks Prescott.

gene.


Thanks to www.cartoonbrew.com

Monday, January 1, 2007

FATKAT REVEALS NEW TIMBERWOLVES LOGO!


Just this past Saturday a few of us kats that were still left around for the holidays got a special treat as Fatkat Animation Studios was the home game sponsor for the Miramichi Timberwolves hockey game. At the game Team President Robert Holmes invited me out to drop the puck as they showed appreciation to Fatkat for designing their new team logo.

The logo originally spawned from a sketch that Erika Worthylake a wickedly talented Fatkat Designer did that was totally unrelated. Beans saw it and showed it to me, knowing that I had to come up with a design soon. I loved what I saw, Erika's sketch was much better then anything I had come up with. So we went with it!


I think it turned out really well, a big thanks for Erika Worthylake for the original sketch and a bigger thanks for letting us use it! Thanks to Beans for seeing that sketch and showing me, because it did make a great logo!

Go T-Wolves!

Gene.