Just a Tad

How to Pitch an Animated Series Pt. 3

The characters you create are probably the key element of whether or not your show has longevity.  The audience has to like them or love to hate them.  Yet in the pitch, the most important thing is the concept, the "franchise," the "sit" of the sit-com.

Cartoon Network wants to develop an original show based on a pitch of mine.  I think I came up with a group of main characters who are entertaining on their own and even funnier when working off each other. Yet, as I move through the development process, I could change every facet about those characters and still be true to the show because the concept is the meal and the characters are the seasonings.  

 A concept can be character based, like Neil Simon's THE ODD COUPLE, yet all the specifics of those characters can change as long as they remain polar opposites.  The idea of a slob and an anally retentive guy sharing an apartment are great choices.  Those traits are VISUAL: sloppy, trashy, unkempt vs. neat, clean and organized.

The traits can also be applied to all aspects of their personalities.  One guy forgets appointments and anniversaries, scribbles thoughts on scraps of paper, eats month old leftovers while the other guy has his pantry alphabetized and arranged by height.   But the same concept can be played out, and has been, with conservative and liberal, gay and straight, hero and villain, predator and prey.  The choice of characters will affect how the concept is played out and the possible stories.

Possible stories.  Just as you should describe characters in terms of their actions, gag types and situations they find themselves in, the story potential of your concept must suggest the same... without examples.   

Many of you have heard the term, "logline."  Before the internet and DVR menu options, people looked up what shows were on in a "TV Log."  Under the name of the show would be a description of the episode condensed into a single line like, "Gilligan has trouble hiding Mary Ann's body." or "Phoebe marries Ross's monkey."  It's more than a description; it's a promise of entertainment.

It's all right for an episode logline to raise questions.  "OMG, Gilligan killed Mary Ann!  How did that happen?  How will he cover the smell?"  Or maybe promise a storyline the audience has been waiting for,  "Finally!  The end to all that monkey tension."  But a series logline does the opposite.  Upon hearing it, you immediately see the potential for stories and what kind of stories they might be.

"Darkwing Duck fights crime as a dark avenger of the night while trying to raise an incorrigible daughter who refused to be left at home."  As discussed previously, the juxtaposition of duck and dark avenger promises superhero spoof stories but it was the addition of the incorrigible daughter that sold it to Jeffrey Katzenberg at Disney.  It promises a family relationship at the heart of the series and the potential of exploring the sort of parent/child disagreements the audience is living through, played out on a superhero stage. That's the part that made the show "Disney."

Loglines can be mash ups like "Dawson's Creek meets Superhero Comics in 'Smallville," but it's more likely the went with "The stories of Superman as a teenager, when he was just discovering his powers and his place in the world.... with a really hot cast of twenty somethings."  If you switch "hot twenty somethings" with "ducks" it's not all that different from Darkwing Duck.  Instead of exploring parent/child relationships it has a teenager facing sometimes scary physical changes and wondering what he's supposed to do with his life.  That promises stories that a wide audience can identify with.  It keeps it from just being a geek hit.

You need to be able to boil your show down into just a couple of lines.  Don't worry, you'll be able to use plenty of examples and details when you pitch a show.  In fact, you may not even pitch your logline verbatim, but having one focuses you on the core of your show.  Does the premise, lead to many stories or just a couple of great gags?

There are "lightning in a bottle" shows that don't fit neatly into any category and sometimes those are the biggest hits.  I have no clue what the logline of SpongeBob Squarepants is.  You could cobble one together after the fact but it wouldn't indicate how hilarious the result would be.  Selling a show like that depends on your track record with the studio, the execs trust in you, your track record and the lucky star you were born under.

The rest of us have to slam our heads against keyboards until the brilliance leaks out.  More musings and what pitching is like dead ahead.   -- Tad

 

How to Pitch an Animated Series Pt. 2

 Characters and situation, that's what you need to sell a show. More precisely, you need characters that the audience ( the person you're pitching to and her boss) will warm to and a situation that suggests enough stories to fill several TV seasons.

Let's be clear: you have to be the one doing the suggesting.  In theory, the person you face across the pitching table got his or her job because they have a talent for identifying ideas that fit the current taste of their network, know how to get the best from creative people and are willing to work fairly cheap, at least at first.

In reality, although the person you face across the table may have all those traits, they've also weathered hundreds of pitches.  Most of those pitches didn't even come close to what their network's mandate is.  Many of those pitches were one shot ideas that would never sustain a series and an unfortunate few were from relatives or friends of important people who pitched "a swell idea for a cartoon" at a party.  Forgive them if their keen sense for potential entertainment has been worn down a bit.  Therefore, you have to help them see the potential in your idea.

For now, I'm talking about what you need to be ready for a pitch, whether it's verbal or written.  I'll talk more about your actual pitch meeting later.   So back to the basics:  When describing characters and situations do it with examples that suggest action sequences, storylines or the overall tone of your series. You want your exec visualizing your characters in a cartoon and not just hearing a row of descriptive adjectives.

 "Harry is a angry guy with a ruthless outlook on life that comes from his years in the military."  This tells me a lot about the guy.  It even gives us a fuzzy mental picture of the guy.  But it sounds like a character out of G.I. JOE and you are pitching a comedy.

"Harry sees each day as a battlefield to be taken.  He doesn't walk down the city street so much as dodge, roll and leap from protective cover to key surveillance positions.  The Iranian newstand clerk has long since accepted being grabbed from behind every morning, knife to his neck, as Harry takes his paper and disappears, gone before the change stops spinning. The clerk even manages a cheery, "Have a nice day" because this sort of thing passes as normal in Harry's neighborhood."

Now we know we're reading a comedy.  We can visualize a character in action.  The response of the clerk suggests a tone.  Evidently Harry isn't gutting people on the street, he's harmless enough to allow for laughs.  It's obvious how humor will come from the extreme character played against straight men.  Beyond that, I get a hint that this is a prime time show that may have a bit of an edge because the clerk is identified as Iranian and Harry's actions aren't exactly PC.  The series may have social commentary included.  That's a lot of info packed into just a single trait of Harry.  Another trait is a chance to pack in more information.

If Harry is also a Mama's Boy, his description should show why every visit to his Mother will be a source of humor.  Included could be the suggestion that she's always asking him to run errands for him that go outrageously wrong due to Harry's personality.   That would not only flesh out Harry, it shows that these errands will be a source of gags and storylines.

Relate your characters to each other.  A second character description is a chance to expand the world and cement the tone of your show.   Mama's description should not only show how she'll add humor to the show but should also include something about her relationship with Harry.  Maybe Mama is the sweetest looking old lady in the world, a tiny little thing that is disappointed with her son because he's such a mamby pamby.  Like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown, Mama repeatedly lures Harry closer "for cuddles" so she can whack him upside the head with her Louisville Slugger.  She only feigns helplessness with Harry to guilt him into frequent visits and to work on her "line drive."  He doesn't have a clue about her secret life as a "repo man."

Once again, action, a running gag  and a secondary source of stories have been used to define a character and the tone of the comedy.   By the time you've described four or five main characters, your execs will have several scenes of your series already playing in their heads.  Now how to describe the series situation?  More on that the next time.  -- Tad

PS: The lovely lady is an example from of an earlier pitch for Thundarr the Barbarian drawn by Ben Caldwell.  It's possibly a little more detailed than usual because I wasn't selling the characters but my interpretation of the characters in a reboot.   Download ThundarrShortPitch  It's an "okay" pitch but would have benefited from the techniques outlined about.

How to Pitch an Animated Series Pt. 1

 Funny how the expertise gained in one creative field doesn't necessarily transfer to another, even if it seems related.  If you've learned anything from my posts about my Emmaryn comic, please take away this lesson: DON'T PITCH ANYTHING YOU HAVE TO APOLOGIZE FOR!  Where was my brain when I included a second issue of nearly indecipherable thumbnails complete with misspellings in my pitch?  I think it was excited about comic's potential and assumed the pitch could be informal, like physicists trading theories on bar napkins.

Well, I'm here to say it's not rocket science.  It's common sense.  Your pitch is the impression the editor/publisher/development executive judges you on -- even if they know you already.  How much do you include?  Enough to sell your project and no more.  And that, my friend, is the trick.

You wouldn't think it from my comic presentation but I've been complimented  on my animation pitches. In fact, I heard the same thing from several different studios.  The complaint they share is that too many writers don't pitch shows; they pitch gags, a situation or a huge set up with no show attached.  So how do you communicate to someone what a wonderful series you have in your head.

  First, let me address the element of fear.  Many writers, especially newer ones, are afraid of giving away their "good stuff."  Here's a thought: how will a studio or network know your ideas are good enough to buy if you don't share them?  

I've never heard a case of an animation development exec stealing an idea from a pitch.  If an idea gets them excited they will want to make a deal with the guy who came up with the idea in the hopes he'll have more.  

But if you're worried about the bad apples out there, register your pitch with the WGA online for around twenty bucks.  Or you can send it to the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress for about thirty five dollars online.  (If you get any interest on your project, immediately do both to establish that it's your copyright that they have to pay for.)  

A variation on this fear is from the veteran writer who doesn't want to give his writing away for free.  This makes sense in that development deals now want "mini-bibles" for the show.  These are documents that have everything important that would be in a full bible but costs less.  Your pitch is going to contain plenty of what would be in that bible.  All I can say is that, in the current state of the industry, it's better not to be coy.  The execs don't need and don't want every single detail, supporting character and potential storyline, but they want the basics.  If they're interested enough to ask questions (that's a good sign) they don't want to be told, "You'll have to pay for that."

"Terry is a nice kid with a good sense of humor.  He does well in school and has lots of friends.  In fact Terry is absolutely normal in every way except that his nose is three and a half feet long.  Literally.  His nose comes around a corner a full second before his face.  When he sneezes one of two things will happen: he'll be launched 30 feet into the air or someone in front of him is going to get a snot shower.  Entire flocks of birds perch on it, small children are afraid of it and satellites have identified it from space. Despite all this, Terry remains a well adjusted kid."

That's not a show.  It's not a story.  At best, it's the start of a character.  Considering Cyrano de Bergerac and it's modern variation, Roxanne, you might be deceived that it's a story but it's not.  When you finish your pitch of a series the listener should have an idea of what kind of situations the character will deal with and the kind of stories that will be told.  The above doesn't give you that.  Although you could turn Cyrano or Roxanne into a series based on the characters, nose gags would get old fast.  You don't base a show on a gag, visual or otherwise. 

"What if Batman was a duck?"

It took a lot more than that to sell Darkwing Duck.  In fact, he started out as a secret agent.  But despite that, this simple sentence is more of a pitch than the nose boy paragraph.  We know Batman and his mythos.  We know the kind of adventures he has and the kind of adversaries he faces.  Making him a duck suggests that the series is a comedy.  However, other than suggesting it's a superhero spoof of some kind it doesn't tell be about his character, the tone of the comedy or how much adventure it may have.  

"Imagine a city under the sea.  People drive submarines instead of cars.  Instead of walking their dogs, they swim their dolphins.  In fact every mundane thing we do on the surface has an aquatic twist to it in Oceanville.  It's the most incredible place that you could ever imagine and we get to experience through the eyes of the Land family whose patriarch has just been transferred there."

This pitch suggests a setting although I'd want to hear some more examples of mundane things with an aquatic twist before I buy it as the most incredible place to live.  The line about dogs and dolphins suggests that it could be like The Jetsons or The Flintstones but with water being the gimmick instead of time period.  On the other hand, it could be as dramatic as Steven Speilberg's Seaquest.  You can't tell what the stories would be.  

That's enough of what not to do. Your pitch needs to communicate what a typical episode would be like and why it would be entertaining.  Describe the situation that will generate stories and the personalities of the main characters.  Pretty simple but it's how you build those descriptions makes all the difference.  More on that tomorrow. -- Tad

Let's Wrap This Up

This time I'll let you analyze the pages.   This is the rest of issue 2.  Lots of reveals in here.  The crows return.  And there's a surprising tonal shift at the end.   Maybe too much of a shift.

     

   

 

I'm not sure you can tell what the Puppet King looks like.  He's sort of spider-like.  Stringy hair, no eyes or nose, toothy mouth.   Really scary, kids.   --Tad 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

Fractured Storytelling

I enjoy fractured storytelling, a story that is told from several points of view, each view giving information until they link up.  A perfect example on television is LOST which is currently balancing several personal stories set in two alternate realities.  In comics, there's the brilliant Jack Staff by Paul Grist.  Grist pushes the technique to the extreme however which makes it hard to follow the story as a periodical.  

EMMARYN suffered fromt he same problem.  There's Emmaryn's POV, the Weedlings, Mage Raven and the gremlins, and sometimes the mysterious figure of Carbunkle, the boogey man.  And with these next two pages I've given Amber the spotlight along with Nate, a brand new character.  If I'm every going to tell a story like this, it'll have to be in a graphic novel form or at least a manga styled digest.

I don't mind writing about teenaged girls and their crushes but I didn't count on having to draw them.  I had fun heading off the cliche, "popular girl makes protagonist miserable" storyline by having the other girls point out that Amber is the one risking the social fallout if she starts spreading stories.  Yes, we've all seen the black girl as the tough one but strong female characters are rare enough that I can risk being called unoriginal on that point.

Graphically I made my usual lazy mistake of not going wide enough on the establishing shot.  It's important to set up the school vibe.  You can see the note to myself that the bottom tier should be a full shot.  It should also be rearranged so that Nate enters from behind Amber for more surprise and to avoid Amber's head being positioned over Amber's head.

The second page suffers from cramming too many panels into it.  The X-files reference is clear but dated in feel.  I was looking for a shorthand description of his interest in the paranormal.  I think the humor of the situation works to make Amber more likable.  She's about to become a victim in a big way.  When that moment arrives, I wouldn't want the reader to think she deserved what she got.  

   

Now it's make to more setup of Mage's world.  In quick succession we learn that Mage has a sort of secret identity so that he can live among humans.  Pistol disguises herself as a dog.  "Faerie tech" is used to improve magic just as we use technology to improve our machines.  And learn that Mage Raven has political enemies.  Did you get all that from the pages?  Now it's time to check back in with our lead.

 The story weakness of this page is that the reveal that Em's wings have disappeared isn't given enough importance.  I just didn't think it was  t worth spreading it to another page.  I want the cliffhanger moment of seeing Carbunkle at the end of her bed.  It wouldn't be as effective if it happened in the middle of the page.  

Thinking about it now, I can see losing the top panel and having Em worrying about her wings, Mom enters, then back to Em in the exact same pose sans wings.  There could be a mirror in the room so that Emmaryn could check out her back as she talks and play her more distracted.  

If I took more time on Em worrying about the direction of the rest of her life, maybe illustrating her worries, I might have got that extra page.  But then the issue would be too long.   There are other ways to play the reveal of Carbunkle but I still find the forehead reveal funny.  More later.   -- Tad

Contrast

Consider a glass of tap water, right out of the faucet.  Let's say it's about 65˚F.  Is that cool or warm?  To a sunburnt wreck of a man, crawling across the searing anvil of the Sahara, it's as refreshing as a snow fed mountain stream.  To an ice encrusted plane survivor, lost in the Artic, it would feel like a hot bath.  A similar thought problem is used to debate the nature of truth but I'm just saying that the perception of your art, including characters, color, mood and story, is affected by what you put next to them.

As I've said before, in graphic storytelling the writer and artist should keep in mind which images are across from each other and which are revealed by a page turn.  The latter carries more potential for surprise because the eye can't dart over to the other page.  Each page turn is a mini-cliffhanger.  If you're going to change locales or time, it's usually best to do it on a page turn. 

In EMMARYN I used contrast to heighten the emotion or suspense of the story as the various threads approach each other.  We left the story with Mage Raven, protector of the Balance, finally aware of Emmaryn's existence and her use of powers that could expose the existence of Faerie.  Even his more reasonable gremlin sidekick thinks this violation deserves harsh punishment.  So it's time to check in with our title character who is scared out of her gourd.

 
The bright sunlight of a beautiful day is a nice contrast to the night in the forest where we left Mage but the storytelling of this page could benefit from pushing contrast.  Panel 1 features my old house in Burbank.  It's a little claustrophobic.  If I had spread it across the top tier of the page it would have room to breathe and plenty of space for the dialogue written for the first two panels. 

 I could've added some happy kids playing which would contrast with Em's emotions.  So even though Tad doesn't like drawing suburban houses, he should've sucked it up and properly established a local that would've been used repeatedly.  

Panel 3 would then be the current panel 2.  I like the furtive feel and the close up and mood would be a strong contrast to the happy wide shot before it.  Panel 4 needs rethinking. It suffers from trying to animate Em onto the cushion and is visually too close to her size and position in the final panel. The bottom panel is the right idea, it just needs to be pushed.  A wider angle would make Em even smaller in frame to really emphasize her loneliness.

 This page would be a blast to draw.  It shows how poltergeists plan a haunting.   I think there's inherent humor in the work-a-day attitude they have about something we would consider incredibly paranormal.  Plus, they are funny looking.  The tone and subject matter are a marked contrast to Em's emotion on the last page and the terror introduced at the bottom of this one.

I'm happy with the layout of this page but the final panel needs tweaking.  The hallway that was just established certainly wasn't that wide but I'm a firm believer in using visual cheats to tell the story.  But I would experiment with raising the Point of View and moving it to the right, in effect putting it closer to the shoulder of the unrevealed monster.  That angle would make the weedlings look even more helpless.

Maybe these guys should have a spin off comic of their own.   Up next, Fractured Storytelling.

--Tad