Solomon Fix

My short has a title and it’s called Solomon Fix. I was going to call it “Stuffed” but I thought that might sound more like a porn site. I have an unspoken rule where if I can’t lock down the domain name of a character I’ll rename the show. Mostly because if there was an Asian under-aged panty site called Solomon Fix I’d hate to create the next Spongebob only to have the kids sending free traffic to a bunch of scumbags.

On the legal side of things we’ve been going around trying to get the deal signed. I think we’re almost there. My 3D team have been creating resources for Solomon Fix without getting paid (until I sign the contract we can’t get them money) so there are lots of resources being made that I can’t show you…if we haven’t paid for them, we don’t own them yet! Legal mumbo jumbo, [Read more…]

This is a background design for the 3D boys to figure out. I’m mostly trying to communicate atmosphere and “feel” (and other essoteric meaningless terms). If I’m vague enough with my description, then I can always blame them for messing up instead of blame my own haphazard communication skills, this is an old Producer trick I learned from ‘the business’. I’m kidding (but kind of serious).

Anywho, with 3D a lot of detail can get overpowering so I didn’t put a chimney, mailbox, parapet, roof etc on the tree because it’s just supposed to be a simply beautiful establishing shot. This is the opening shot of the short, and I want the audience to be grounded in this rich, golden fairy-tale from the get go so I hope it works.

I’m doing these mouth positions for a chipmonk character in my short. The 3D guys are working on the model, and a great deal of the model’s rigging and construction will depend on the mouth positions. I knocked out this quick drawing to show the range of mouth positions that the modeler will have to take into account for his final sculpt.

Ted McHold is putting the finishing touches on the animatic, and no I’d prefer that you didn’t see it. We’re coming in at just about 7 minutes on the animatic, and it will be sent around to the legal department, Frederator and Nick execs for approval before we go to animation production.

I would have been blogging more, but I forgot my username and password and recently found them again.

I’ve basically figured out who I want to do my voices so it’s just a matter of communicating who the character is for them to create the performance.

Above is a sketch of the character “Ned” just so the actor can see who they’re going to be. They have what are called “sides” which are just the lines that pertain to that character (we don’t send them whole scripts for casting) and I accompany the sides with a quicksketch to give them an idea of what the character looks like.

Voice actors are really good at what they do, I can do lots of whacky voices, but it’s different from being a professional performer. They end up sculpting a great of who the character becomes so I like to give them a lot of room. That also goes for how they read lines. It’s considered cheesy when a director gives them specific [Read more…]

I got an intersting question regarding my last post On Pitching from Dave Levy:

“Hi Doug, I’ve got a question for you! I know you’ve pitched a lot, pre Earthworm Jim and Catscratch, and now you’ve pitched since. How would you compare the experiences? And, what advice would you offer someone who’s never sold a show and is trying to break through for the first time? I promise my next questions will pertain to your new short! : ) Thanks!”

Back when I pitched Earthworm Jim in 1993, times were different…that was when studio heads took pitches, gave the thumbs up or thumbs down to everything, and put their job on the line with every decision. I pitched Earthworm Jim and by the end of the meeting they were ready to go to series and basically ordered a 13 episode first season. Not bad for my first pitch ever. I don’t like to [Read more…]

I’m good at pitching. Given the hundreds of pitches I’ve performed (yes, it’s a performance) it would be torturous for my audience if I wasn’t good at it. Don’t lose hope, because you don’t have to be great at pitching to pitch, in the end they’re buying your idea not your salesmanship. In fact, I’ve known folks who’ve brought in ten masterfully sculpted and painted maquettes, animation clips, commitments from Bruce Willis to do voices only to get thirty seconds into a pitch and hear, “We already have three ‘pig’ properties.”

Here’s a couple of posts I’ve done on basics of creating stories and pitching (These are based on my opinion, your results may vary):
notecards
Be Mercifully Short

Want to see me in an actual pitch? Melissa Wolf video-taped some of my last Frederator presentation This is the ONLY known video of me pitching. My wife watched it and put her head in [Read more…]

Hi, I’m Doug TenNapel and this is my second day of pre-production on my Oh-Yeah short. So far it’s easy. I’m looking out my window and daydreaming instead of working. Thinking about my father who swung a hammer every day of his life to make half of my salary and I’d say I had it pretty good.

I’ve got two things to do on my official schedule: 1. Re-pitch the show. 2. Pre-cast the show.

Re-pitching is to remind all of the executives what this show was about…it’s been a month since I first brought this short to them and they have old feeble minds and need a refresher. Working with them is kind of like if Memento was applied to the leadership of a production studio. I’m making a few changes to the boards from the last time they saw it, and they will not likely notice that completely threw out the stuffed [Read more…]