#moobeard the cow pirate

[coekj]

[1337thegamer420]

The Moobeard Pirates

[reblog-a-lot-bear]

Just when you think your life is going great

[fred-frederator-studios]

Believe it or not, Frederator’s not looking for hit shows.  

Frederator looks for wonderful creative people so we can be their fans.  

Most all of the Frederator Studios’ series have come out of the 250 shorts we’ve produced over the years*, primarily comedies. I get asked all the time how it comes to pass that we make a particular short. It’s time to share.**

Maybe you’d be surprised, but we have never gone out to creative talent saying “pitch us your ideas, we want hits. That’s the fastest way to get "product," what a potential creator thinks we want to see, rather than what they really want to make. When people are second guessing us or a network or really, the audience, the film is never really original, it’s a rehash of things that have come before. It’s not for Frederator.

Of course, we love hits, we’re commercially oriented people and we certainly want business success (we all need food). But honestly, we don’t see a conflict between making great art and a blockbuster series. (I often blabber how much my teenage fandom for The Beatles and Motown made that clear to me.)

How did we get here?

My zig zagged path to filmmaking came from jazz musicians. Surprisingly, they’re a lot like cartoon creators.

I became a devoted jazz fan at 18 by listening to the Tony Williams Lifetime, Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman. A professional production career started soon after when music, more than TV or the movies, drove popular culture. That’s what I wanted, a career behind the studio window. One thing led to another and instead of rock bands I worked with blues and jazz musicians, mostly with world class brilliance, older than me, and most often, African Americans. Staggering talents.  

Contrary to my suppositions from reading about Phil Spector’s dictatorial ways, it seemed that in jazz, none of my “ideas” about what “should” be recorded were necessary. I mean, I was a young, white kid from the suburbs who had just started listening to the music they’d pretty much invented. It wasn’t my business to interfere. I needed to identify the sessions’ leader (here’s where my young “fandom” could come into play) and he –it was usually a “he”– would pick the music to be played and the members of the band.  

Someone pointed out to me that “producing” these folks pretty much just required that I make sure they got to the appropriate location on time and that we’d agreed to the amount of material to be laid down with the studio time we had booked. Then I could say “take 1” on the talkback and click the stopwatch.

Then, jazz led me to radio, which led to TV, and then to kids TV; I eventually began at Hanna-Barbera in the early 90s at the same time Cartoon Network got started. CN’s first head programmer Mike Lazzo put together an “advisory” group that included Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna (natch), Friz Freleng, and John Kricfalusi. They all said that “back in the day” the producers stayed out of their creative paths and gave them the resources to let their imaginations and skills run wild.

These innovators made me realize that I could be involved with cartoons the same way as with the jazz guys. Find the right leader/creator, give them the right resources, get right out of their way. Help in any way you can. I could help. I was a fan.

The animation rank and file told me they felt like their ideas were stolen by the studios, either by commission or omission, that artists were being severely discounted to writers, and no matter their ideas, the studios and the networks changed them (and/or ruined them) based on executive ignorance or ego.

So instead of trolling for hits (which was expensive and rarely netted triumph) I decided that investing in creative people and their ideas was the best long term gamble. A creative relationship with new hitmakers was could be awesome in millions of ways. Business sure, but first and foremost, a good experience could spread throughout creative communities and feed news creators into the studio for future projects. Over the years, our team has expanded well beyond me, and in fact, today I’m less important to the day to day process than ever before. But don’t worry, the rest of Frederator are even bigger fans of talented people than I am. 

It’s hard to really hit the bullseye when trying to explain “creative people and their ideas,” because ultimately it’s always a case of “we’ll know it when we see it” kind of thing. Mostly we’re looking for characters with whom we fall in love, or as Eric Homan, Frederator’s creative leader says, we want to hang out with them. And a filmmaker who can actually fully execute their film. We’ve generally worked with artists who write their own cartoons, but honestly, that’s never been a prerequisite. Writers, artists, actors, whatever. We’ll know it when we see it. Sorry I can’t be any more specific.

Not only are we proud of the filmmakers and cartoons we've produced over the past 25 years, but we also find it gratifying to enjoy so much subsequent work made by those creators who made their first professional films with us: Family Guy (“Larry & Steve” was Seth MacFarlane’s first professional short at Hanna-Barbera), Samurai Jack (Genndy Tartakovsky created “Dexter’s Laboratory” for my What a Cartoon!), Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends (Craig McCracken’s “The Powerpuff Girls,” also at WAC!), Danny Phantom (Butch Hartman made three shorts for WAC! Before “The Fairly OddParents” and “Dan Danger!” for Oh Yeah! Cartoons), Mighty Magiswords (Kyle Carrozza created “MooBeard the Cow Pirate” for Random! Cartoons), and so many more.

Frederator asks people to pitch a show they're dying to make. Please, don’t try and second guess us.

Against the conventional wisdom, to be sure, it’s worked like crazy for us. 

…..

* Notable exceptions would be our upcoming Castlevania on Netflix and SuperF*ckers on Cartoon Hangover from 2012.

** You can click below to read my 22 ridiculously detailed Blog History of Frederator’s original cartoon shorts about how our shorts programs came to be in the first place.

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12. Part 13. Part 14. Part 15. Part 16. Part 17. Part 18. Part 19. Part 20. Part 21. Part 22

[marcelorenard2]

Liked on YouTube: MooBeard the Cow Pirate https://youtu.be/VNLXJ1t5uTc

[lesserknownwaifus]

Sailor Bird from Kyle A. Carrozza’s old Nickelodeon pilot, MooBeard the Cow Pirate.

[minotaursauce]

i can’t believe my fursona made it into a cartoon

[frederator-studios]

MooBeard the Cow Pirate

As Cartoon Network today announces a new series from TV's Kyle, Kyle Carrozza, let's Thursday throwback to December, 2008, for the Nicktoons Network premiere of his Random! Cartoons short, "MooBeard the Cow Pirate." Kyle was one of the very first creators to pitch us for that round of shorts. We're glad he did. Watch the cartoon here.

Congratulations and best of luck, Kyle.

[markandflops]

I'm completely dumbfounded by having never seen this pilot until tonight. And of course, I'm even more dumbfounded by how this never got picked up for some more development.

[1337thegamer420]

sketch of Moobeard and his crew (and my oc lol)

[1337thegamer420]

Some pieces I haven't posted here before lel

[1337thegamer420]

Moobeard Pirates in a sky island