Posted Friday, April 27, 2018 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Two Atlanta-based companies have teamed up to create a podcast focused on animation called "Drawn: The Story of Animation" hosted by Holly Frey.
The podcast, which debuted earlier this month, is a collaboration between Cartoon Network and HowStuffWorks.
Frey, who has been at HowStuffWorks for seven years and co-hosts "Stuff You Missed in History," is a huge animation fan going back to her childhood in suburban Seattle during the '70s scarfing down Cookie Crisp while watching "Super Friends" and "Schoolhouse Rock" on Saturday mornings.
"I was a handful as a child," said Frey, 48. "My parents were happy that I could be self occupied for awhile. I loved Bugs Bunny and had a strange love for Snagglepuss. He's pink and has that wonderfully strange voice... I was also a very big Smurfs fan."
For the podcast, Frey interviewed more than three dozen animators and created 11 separate episodes, from how animation gets made to voice-over actors to great villains to music and sound effects. "We're looking at both where animation has been and where it's going," she said.
She also emphasized TV and short-form animation more than long-form films though she did interview a retired Disney animator and she visited the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.
Frey admitted she is such a geek about the subject matter that she went on for two and a half hours with one animation historian when she was originally slotted for 45 minutes.
"This is a rare precious gift," she said. "I'm not ignorant how lucky I am."
She noticed that compared to most parts of Hollywood, the animation industry is "not driven by ego," she said. "It's not driven by me me me. They all want to do great work and support each other. There's really a lovely sense of passing the torch from generation to generation. It's really inspiring."
The podcast is available using the podcasts app or iTunes and a new episode comes out every Tuesday.
