Greeting card company attracts subscribers
CITYWIDE An obese woman frets to her equally fat cat friend about weight problems over a cup of coffee and cake. The woman, Ellen, thinks she’s gaining too much weight and is reassured by her feline companion, Windsor, that she looks fine.
A dietitian suggests that she eats several little meals rather than three large meals, and so she eats six meals a day. The talking bib-wearing cat remarks that six meals is actually a lot.
The comical dialogue between Ellen and Windsor continues for a few more seconds as the greeting card animation comes to an end.
The cake stuffing woman and her obese furry friend are just two of the 60 characters that bring smiles to the faces of more than 15,000 subscribers of Rubberchickencards.com, an animated greeting card Web site based out of Steve Rotblatt’s California Avenue home.
With a cast of e-list actors — including Anne Cusack, the eldest of the Cusack acting clan, Adult Swim voice-over actor Fred Tatasciore, and Rotblatt who once starred as detective in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure — the greeting card Web site has attracted a cult following since its inception in 2000.
For $20 a year, subscribers can have unlimited access to the database of greeting cards, which are customized for nearly every conceivable holiday including several Jewish days of celebration. The cartoons are about a minute long and are more akin to a short cartoon than a greeting card. Some cartoons discuss issues such as global warming and medical marijuana.
The idea to start an animation company came to Rotblatt, who grew up in Santa Monica, years ago when he was sitting in a small warehouse that he had leased for six months to concentrate on his writing. The actor decided to start writing after he had noticed that many struggling actors were not making enough money to even cover “fun” expenses.
So he started to write, creating screenplays and eventually greeting card mock-ups. He sent 10 greeting card samples to 10 companies and received contract offers from two of the major companies — Recycled Paper Greetings and Paper Moon.
After working with Recycled Paper Greetings for about five years, Rotblatt decided to leave the business and branch out on his own.
“I knew they were making a lot of money (on my cards) but I didn’t make very much,” Rotblatt said.
He enrolled in the animation program at UCLA and graduated in 2000. Fresh out of graduate school, Rotblatt partnered with his buddy Richard Zobeo and started Rubberchickencards.com. Zobeo passed away a few years ago.
“If you’re having a bad day and I answer [the phone saying] ‘Rubberchickencards.com,’ that’s pretty cool,”Rotblatt said on naming the company.
It takes about 15 hours to create one card. All the ideas are generated by Rotblatt and his friends. The dialogue is a combination of script and improvisation.
“I just think of things that make me laugh and I call up my actor friends,” he said on the thought process that goes into the creation of a card.
Many of the actors either met Rotblatt in graduate school or were later introduced to him through mutual friends, which was the case for Melissa van der Schyff of Santa Monica.
The voice-over actress has worked as an actor and singer in the past and has a Broadway show to her credit. She was just getting off to a start in her voice-over career when she met Rotblatt.
“I really appreciate the creativity of everybody that works for him,” she said.“I feel like I can use my wildest imagination and bring in anything and they’re open to trying all sorts of things.”
Some of the actors come from comedic backgrounds, including Tatasciore who met Rotblatt while they were both students at UCLA. A former student of the Groundlings comedy troupe, Tatasciore has appeared in “Family Guy,” “American Dad” and “Robot Chicken” on the Adult Swim segment of Cartoon Network. His background in improvisation has helped him develop characters for Rubberchickencards.com.
Their greeting cards are appreciated around the world according to company insiders.
Rotblatt was sitting at his computer one day when he received an e-mail from Rabbi Moshe Ya'akov Scholnick in Jerusalem, complimenting Rubberchickencards.com.
They began correspondence and eventually met in Miami a few years ago for lunch.
A few months later, the rabbi wrote Rotblatt another e-mail saying that he was sitting in a cafe in Jerusalem with about 15 friends and were laughing at a Rubberchickencards.com cartoon.
“We started this business in a bedroom in Silverlake with no money and we’re reaching people all over the world and making them laugh,” Rotblatt said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 28, 2007. Read the original PDF.