3 Pitches. And it’s only 2:00.
November 3rd, 2005
Today has been a day of many pitches at the studio. And there’s more to come this afternoon. This morning we were greeted by Tony DiStefano in to pitch from New York City. First up was his re-pitch of “The Butternuts”.
Next was “The Dog From Honeywell”.
Both were fun to watch for the art, and the great characters he’s created. Tony is a drawing machine. Man can he maneuver a pencil. Right now he does storyboards and character designs for commercial production company Noodle Soup Productions.
Up next was Matt Engstrom and Allan Jacobsen, re-pitching their short “Serengetti Eddie”.
We love your stuff, guys. Both Matt and Allan work as directors on “Diego” at Nickelodeon.
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On November 4th, 2005 at 12:00 am
How many pitches do you get a day? With all these insanely talented cartoonists who have these blogs, why aren’t the channels overflowing with innovative cartoon brilliance? Why am I watching “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and “Dragon Tales,” when my eyeballs should be exploding out of my head? Sorry, just depressed a little about it all. Not that I want everything to be Spumco…
On November 4th, 2005 at 12:00 am
How many pitches do we get in a day? We have a very open door policy here at OY!, but, unlike most programs which ask only for some loose sort of pitch to go to the next stage of development, we require of everyone some sort of pitchboard to get a greenlight. It’s what we give the production go-ahead to, and it’s all we want to see. It’s a lot of work, and pretty well limits the process to artists. So, that policy has us receiving about five pitches a day - both in person and through the mail.
In answer to your question about innovative cartoon brilliance, who knows? People who make decisions (both artists and management) make wrong decisions between concept and completion, I guess. I do know it’s hard to make anything good (if it were easy, everyone would be doing it) and that even in a seven-minute short there a ton of places where the process can go south. I subscribe to the theory that just about ten percent of anything — cartoons, sitcoms, movies, albums, — is ‘good’. Don’t get depressed over the ninety percent you’re not into, just try to enjoy the ten percent you are into. Sorry for sounding flippant, Jack, but we’re going into the weekend. (And thanks for the “insanely talented cartoonists” compliment - I’m jazzed I get to work around them every day.)
On November 4th, 2005 at 12:00 am
Jack, you may also want to see Doug & Fred’s thread here - http://newtoons.frederator.com/post/376#comments.