My name is John Fountain and I am a veteran cartoon-maker who has worked at Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Warner Brothers as a Producer, Writer, Director, Storyboard Artist, Character Designer and even Voiceover Actor for shows such as The Fairly Oddparents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, South Park, Chalk Zone, Rick and Morty, American Dragon: Jake Long, Yin Yang Yo! and Invader Zim.
I’ve also developed and sold my own shows to those networks.
I recently launched an online “virtual academy” for aspiring animators who have the drive, passion and dedication for animation but no means of gaining professional experience, and what began as an experiment has grown into a fully-functioning online “studio," dedicated to making you free cartoons!
So - PLEASE - Like, Share & Subscribe to support our efforts!
To learn more, follow me on Twitter @FountainCartoon.
Zig-a-Zig-AH, Party People!
Your pal,
'F'
Visit us on the web at: fountainspenproductions.com
I really enjoyed this! As someone who just turned 20 with minimal animation experience, one of my biggest fears is being on a massive production where you seem completely "out of your league" compared to other colleagues, especially when it seems like they don't want to get to know you all that much. As silly as it may sound, I related to a lot of what you told. As someone who was sort of an idiot and went into an animation school with BARELY any animation knowledge, I didn't have a great first year. I was new to Adobe Photoshop, Animate, After Effects, Maya, Blender, all of that jazz. I basically had no idea what I was doing, tutorials online would range from near hours long, and deadlines were coming. Our professor was a little bit on edge, we could always tell he'd get annoyed when students would have trouble with the software... And of course as the most inexperienced, my spirit wasn't so high whenever I would accidently pause a lecture because I somehow lost my timeline in Photoshop. By the time our finals from the first semester were finished, some of the students would present genuine high quality stuff that you'd see film festivals FIGHT FOR. While I on the other hand felt like I made the most embarrassing thing that would lead to the whole school going down under... Then as comedy, our school out of the blue announced near the end of my second semester that the Animation Program was being removed! I genuinely wasn't fond of my prior work, and I could've easily called it quits, but I dunno if I was being an idiot, but something in me wanted to finish what I had originally strived to succeed in. So... I decided to do animation classes online throughout my Sophmore year, and I just wanna say.... was DEFINITELY the best decision I made so far! It was around the time I read your threads about all of the challenges you faced in the industry (as well as other threads from other animation veterans) and I knew I didn't want to end on a sorry note... Before you know it, it finally felt like I was "getting the hang of things", and now I'm being the one who's encouraged to send work to festivals. It's genuinely shocking and motivating to show some of my newer assignments to prior classmates as they go "YOU MADE THIS?" or "You've grown a lot in a year!" Sorry for my ramblings, I really hope I don't come off as humbling myself (I definitely know I have a long ways to go...), but it just really resonnated with me when you said you were glad that you never gave up during the production of South Park, which led to you finally working on projects that made you both happy and proud of. As corny as it may sound, I think not giving up often leads to a better outcome!
I’d be willing to bet there are COUNTLESS stories like yours (ours) but the ones you always hear about are the “Craig McCracken went to CalArts, everyone knew he was a genius and right out of school he got a tv show!” stories. Cheers to you for hanging in there!
Het F big fan here, im sure you can piece who this might be, im about 15 minutes in as of typing, so far a wild perspective to your story! please do more of this, im sure i speak for more than my self when i say we would love to see more of this! its amazing to see passion for the craft from someone who not only was in the game but was a big part of what the game had become!
Watched this in the background while doing other things. Wowzers, man. While I knew the broad strokes of the story from your Twitter summary, and a lot of the "new" stuff in here I had inferred from that, hearing this impassioned recollection really imparted the blood and sweat of the situation. Your describing your inability to click with Maya in particular gave me flashback anxiety to similar "oh crumbs, I just can't click with this software/code" nightmares in college. I FELT your pain. Maybe not the balance of such long work days while doing freelance at the same time, but I felt that part. And knowing in advance how you got out of that and onto your dream gig of storyboards at Nickelodeon really made that payoff all the more satisfying. Heh, I'm also wondering, if you had been on that crew poster, what you South Park avatar might have looked like. A chortle to imagine, I'm sure! And while this wasn't the point where South Park made each episode in a week (I do wonder what those animators do during the off seasons on that show sometimes), hearing of everything they did to accommodate those long crunches was neat. Among many other anecdotal details. Huge fan of the show even if I don't keep up with it much anymore, and given how nearly all the interesting BTS bits focuses on it from Trey Parker's perspective, hearing the ground level animator work he and Matt Stone basically don't interact with due to how busy they are is all the more valuable. Even when it's a struggle as yours was. Also want to reiterate I'm really enjoying what you and your crew are cooking up, even I tend to meekly lurk a lot of the time rather than say so. This show just looks FUN, and that's undervalued in this day and age by the major studio product. Can't wait to see the first episode release!
WOW! This is the kind of response I hope for but never assume I’ll get. Thank you so much for your support! I’ll try to honor your sentiments by exceeding expectations!
This was fascinating! As someone who knows very little about animating, hearing the process of how one gets picked up & the specific details of what you did was neat. I also like hearing about stories/moments in your career than mean a lot to YOU & I’m glad you had a good experience on that show👍
I like hearing these stories about the production of animation, especially for series I would've never expected to be connected to you. Keep up the good work!
what you did was give them a “provable moment” that was all the proof they needed that Rick & Morty was a show worth making. if you won’t give yourself credit for that, WE WILL. because you’re awesome! btw, that scene with Jerry and Beth at the animal hospital is hilarious, so major props!
It feels like a privilege to hear you talk about the behind the scenes about these things and because of you I am able to realize just how much effort and teamwork goes into animation
People just don't know how close some of their favorite shows came to never being made. Makes you think about all those amazing stories that were never told because there wasn't someone to punch it up for the executives.
Watched the full thing for the first time, and I really like what I see so far. It has a ton of potential. This should’ve been picked up. I mean the execs and plenty of other people had faith that it would become the next SpongeBob if it weren’t for those test screenings.
