Channel Frederator

If you dig animation, there is some great stuff going on over at Channel Frederator. The site was developed by the creators of some of the most fresh and exciting cartoons of the past few years (Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Laboratory, The PowerPuff Girls and more) to give a voice to all the animators and artists that don’t get the big TV and film deals.

The way it works is, anyone can submit an animated short for consideration.  If the Frederator editors like the piece they will include it in one of the weekly Channel Frederator episodes.  The cool thing is, audiences also get to help pick what type of works get aired.  Each episode is profiled on the Channel Frederator episode and viewers are allowed to rank the shorts on a scale of one to five.  This feedback is then used by the Frederator editors to guide them in picking content to air in future episodes.  Regsistering with the site is thankfully easy.  All that is required is picking a username and password, and submitting your email address.

Users can watch streaming episodes online, subscribe via iTunes, or browse the site and download individual epidsodes for viewing.  Most of the clips I’ve seen thus far have been really creative and very original.  It’s something of an unsettling contrast with the obvious Adult Swim rip-off of the between show bumpers.  Nevertheless, Frederator is a great way to get your cartoon fix while supporting aspiring animators at the same time.  I highly recommend everyone go check out Episode 2 if only for the first short War Photographer.  It has vikings, flying-v guitars, pyrotechnics and hot-licks galore.  How can you go wrong with so many choice elements?