The Frederator postcards assembled by Fred Seibert is proof that the man knows talent.

Seibert talks about how The Fairly OddParents got started and how they got Ralph Bakshi to do a cartoon for Nickelodeon’s Oh Yeah! Cartoons. That led to working as an independent for Nick and Frederator was born. He talks about how the studio started and its philosophy. Be nice if we all worked in studios like that!

Seibert says he was interested in ideas that don’t necessarily fit the system. He gives credit for “changing the name of the game in traditional animation” to John Kricfalusi, and people like Mike Judge. He stated that he is “a cartoon guy, not an animation guy” — “animation is a production technique” — “My natural space in life is cartooning.”

And the postcards amply illustrate cartooning, from character design to pinups to collages. As a sort of addendum, there is a scholarly bio of Seibert at the end of the book by Steven Heller, art director of the New York Times Book Review. You want to know how the MTV logo got started (and almost killed by the suits)? Here is the tale. Here also is what Seibert is doing now. He’s on the Internet, of course. Hopefully there will be more postcards, too.

Original Cartoons: The Frederator Studios Postcards 1998-2205 edited by Eric Homan and Fred Seibert with essays by Jerry Beck, Steven Heller and Joe Strike. New York: Frederator Books; distributed by Easton Studio Press, 2005. 256 pages with 194 color illustrations. ISBN 0-9743806-3-6 ($35.00).

Libby Reed started out at Walt Disney Studios in the ‘50s on Sleeping Beauty as a painter. She has worked at numerous commercial studios, spent 16 years as a fashion illustrator and wound up at Film Roman as a color designer under Phyllis Craig. Libby has two children, (one is Alex Reed, animation producer at Electronic Arts) and four grandchildren.