JS: Any details?

FS: They’re not in a place worth talking about yet.

JS: Same thing for the adult features?

FS: I have a bunch of titles that are in development, but they’re all very genre-like, extreme: I Was a Cheerleader for the CIA, Satan Was My Lab Partner, that type of stuff.

JS: And they’ll all be creator/art/style-driven?

FS: I’m trying to get one together with Bill Plympton, which would be one of the adult movies which I think will be awesome.

JS: He’s great; I remember when he did a single-panel cartoon for a long gone newspaper, the Soho Weekly News years before he started doing animation.

Seibert and Bill Plympton (above) are developing a project based on one of the animator’s books.

FS: It’s interesting you say that because of the way this picture came up. I saw one of those cartoons in his self-published book, The Sleazy Cartoons of Bill Plympton. I asked him, ‘Can you make that into a movie?’ and that’s what we’re talking about.

JS: There’s a William Joyce illustration from one of his children’s books up on your wall. Are you working on anything with him?

FS: No, I love him though. I tend to develop talent rather than take talent that has hit a certain level. And Bill doesn’t need me, I offer very little to him. He can go into anybody, make any deal he wants and do what he wants to do.

Bill Plympton and I, we go back, we’ve known each other for 20 years. In fact, he’s going to be the first guest cartoonist in ChalkZone. You know the show’s concept: anything that’s erased will live in the ChalkZone world. So Bill’s characters are going to appear in an upcoming episode.

JS: Mixing in with the house style?

FS: Well, that’s the great thing about ChalkZone: there is no house style – it’s whoever happened to draw on the chalkboard.

So that’s how you do it: you go out and tell a story, and hopefully people come in and populate your story.

Joe is a New York City television writer/producer with a lifelong interest in animation, and who remembers watching Astro Boy when it first aired in the U.S. His work includes numerous promotional campaigns and special events programming for cable outlets including Bravo and the Sci Fi Channel. He interviewed Disney animation director Mark Dindal in the November 2000 Animation World Magazine.