Random! Cartoons premiered on the Nickelodeon and Nicktoons networks in late 2008 and has launched one series so far: Adventure Time. Courtesy of Frederator Studios.

Since 1998, Frederator Studios has become one of the largest and most prolific independent cartoon studios. Through their affiliation with Nickelodeon, Frederator is currently producing four television series and has more than 100 projects in active development and production for features, books, television, and video. Their most recent project to hit the airwaves was an animation showcase called Random! Cartoons, which premiered on the Nickelodeon and Nicktoons networks in late 2008.

I recently conducted interviews with Fred Seibert, the head of Frederator Studios, and several Random! Cartoons directors to learn more about the studio, several recently-released and upcoming shorts and just what makes an animated cartoon "random."

Fred Seibert has been involved in MTV Networks since their advent, and is the mastermind behind Frederator and Random! Cartoons.

Fred Seibert, head of Frederator Studios

Andrew Farago: How do the Random! Cartoons differ from your previous Frederator showcases?

Fred Seibert: Random! Cartoons was a series unique to its moment in time. Like with all the others, we relied primarily on artists and animators who wrote their own films. Common to all of the shorts series was my production companion, veteran Larry Huber.

What a Cartoon! was nurtured inside of an existing studio, Hanna-Barbera, and depended on the support of the great staff that had built the company. We made 48 shorts with 40 different creators across the world. Veterans like Bruno Bozzetto and Ralph Bakshi, newcomers, including Genndy Tartakovsky, Craig McCraken and Butch Hartman, and complete indies like New Yorker John Dilworth.

Oh Yeah! Cartoons was our first project with Nickelodeon. Executives there were eager for us to introduce them to the talent bubbling in the industry. We created a mini-studio within Nickelodeon, and our 51 original shorts had 33 filmmakers, many with multiple shorts.

Started as a short in the What a Cartoon! Show, Cow & Chicken was a success for the newly-named Cartoon Network. Courtesy of Cartoon Network.

Random! Cartoons was 39 shorts created in an industry that had learned our methods and where all the networks and studios were making shorts of their own. New production techniques like Flash and CG had become viable. And, unlike our first two series, the talent pool had "grown up" with a healthy industry eager for new voices. The competition for cartoons to be great had never been more intense.

One of the clearest differences this time around was the complete diversity of the creators, a must in a worldwide environment we now live in. For the first time, we had pictures from creators [who were] Korean, Mexican, African-American, Japanese. And, not at all incidentally, after 99.75% of our shorts being made by men, we had nine women creators. These shorts are among the most exciting we've ever done.

AF: How did you recruit the artists and directors for the Random! Cartoons?

FS: Cartoons came into Frederator in three ways. Eric Homan is our vice president of development and led the effort to reach out to creators everywhere. Eric and I started together at Hanna-Barbera more than 15 years ago, and he's got a deep reservoir of good will among cartoon talent everywhere. He's a passionate regular at industry events, festivals and colleges, and, as president of programming at Channel Frederator, virtually around the globe. Eric led our development team of Melissa Wolfe and producers Kevin Kolde and Larry Huber to encourage creators to come into Random!