Tom Hart, master improviser, story editor, writer and expert on gum swallowing asked my opinion about using art in a pitch. He thinks it's a waste of time for a writer to pitch without art. And with that, this blog gets another post.
It bothers me to even write something here without a visual so imagine how I feel about pitching with nothing but a font as my visual aid. As an artist I can usually put something together. I keep the drawings a little rough, both to convey that they're only first ideas and because I can't seem to clean up a drawing without sucking life out of it.
Accompanying this are a couple of drawings I did for a pitch about the crew of a reality show. There are things I like about the sketches but I realize that I'd feel better if I had gone ahead and done some color roughs or sketchier lines, in short, worked on them as much as I worked on any given paragraph of my pitch. Would the show have sold with slicker art? No. The concept was clear and didn't grab the studios. But I was glad to have the art because, truth be told, development executives seem to respond to art both good and bad.
If you're an artist who has an idea to pitch, feel free to go nuts. If I was more of a painter and designer or just had more time to devote to it, my pitch would be almost all art. Appearing to be set in your show direction is less of a risk because, as an artist, you probably are set in your visual choices.
Back in the day, Disney TV pitches would be art mounted on matte board with the pitch written on the back. And there'd only be three or four sentences on the back of each card so there could be as many as three cards per pitch. This was the beginning of art overkill.
Prior to that, the three broadcast networks would okay a project into development with only seeing a title card, a character line up and maybe a gag situation. The concept and characters were the important thing. The art was icing on the cake. The networks trusted the studios to create pleasing designs. Back then, the major studios had house styles that didn't vary all that much from each other. Clicking through the channels wouldn't bring much in the way of visual surprise. Today the looks of most shows vary incredibly from one another.
For a writer, the risk of pitching with art is that if they don't like your art, they don't like your show. But that's a small risk. Development execs are looking for characters and concepts. If they like what they hear but are lukewarm about what they're seeing, they'll say so. Or they won't, especially if the artist is in the room. Remember, they are looking for shows to mold into what's best for their network. Your first meetings aren't with the top guy so person you're pitching to could easily be thinking, "I don't like the look but maybe my boss will and the ideas are great."
Pitch art is there to sell the characters and tone of the show. Often the finished show will look completely different. Here's the early art on Cartoon Network's show, GENERATOR REX, which was created by a studio of comic book writers, MAN OF ACTION.
You'll see more examples of their pitch art on their site. Here's a teaser for the actual show that Cartoon Network has released. Depending on your POV they were either incredibly faithful or changed a lot. (Sorry, this video has long since disappeared. I ended up writing three episodes for Generator Rex although the show did not perform as well as they hoped.)
In any case, it's nice to have some sort of representation of your characters to sprinkle into your pitch. Ideally, just as in the written elements of the pitch, you're trying to get your audience to see the final show in their head, so having a character in some sort of situation is a plus. If you're working with an artist partner, have a "card" (physical or Powerpoint) per character with personality poses or expressions grouped around a static pose, then three or four situation pieces that help you pitch the story variety of the series.
Don't include character turnarounds: lifeless poses of a character from a variety of angles. They're boring, lifeless and don't communicate personality. They're almost a negative because it crosses into the "we've made all our artistic decisions already" territory.
It's worth talking about how to find an artist, how to find a writer, and how to treat them. I'll do that next time. -- Tad
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