The long shadow of Little Bill and a Little Blue Puppy.

Working a long stint at Blue’s Clues between 1997 and 2004, I was able to witness an interesting movement in talent that would come to dominate the NYC TV series community. Some time in the late 90s, we Blue’s Cluesers were informed that Mr. Bill Cosby would be stopping by for a tour of our operations. He had inked a deal with Nick Jr. to turn his line of children’s books, featuring a character called Little Bill, into a preschool TV series. For this new series, Nick Jr’s second done in-house in After Effects, it was a natural idea to seed its staff with experienced Blue’s Clues veterans. Among those that made the show-to-show switch were Jen Oxley, Nancy Keegan, Michael Dougherty, Chris Boyce, Adam Osterfeld, Chris Gelles, Jane Howell, and Olexa Hewryk. Not before long, the fledgling crew exploded to occupy two floors in a brand new studio at 1633 Broadway. With most of Blue’s Clues staff staying put, where would Little Bill find it’s large crew?

The answer was partly, SVA. Their graduating class of 1999 was the first to jump right out of school and into steady employment. In this wave came some of today’s top talents, including such names such as: Celia Bullwinkle, Rob Powers, Bob Wallace, David Heiss, Dan Cardinali, and many others. Most would find their seminal work experience at Little Bill. By some accounts, Little Bill was an expensive show to make and perhaps that contributed to why it wrapped production just short of January 2001. An insider at Nick Jr recently told me, “It didn’t work to have such a fearful character at the center of a series. He was always sad.”

In contrast, Blue’s Clues enjoyed three more years of continued production. So, as circumstances had it, the Little Bill crew were first to venture out and seek employment elsewhere. This pushed them into serving as gatekeepers on series work all over town. Among Little Bill alum’s, Blue’s Clues long had the reputation as the simpler of the two shows. I remember Steve Connor, who worked on both Little Bill and Blue’s Clues having difficulty convincing his Little Bill pals just how challenging Blue’s Clues actually was to make. By season six, it had gotten quite sophisticated; far more so than most people realized.

The migration pattern, dominated by the movement of the ex Little Bill artists is easy to track. First, they landed at Spike TV, when it emerged with two short-lived original flash animated series; Gary the Rat and This Just In. The shows turned out to be huge flops with their intended audience, but the crew was stellar. This could have been the birth of a new digital MTV-style animation studio. Instead, the whole enterprise fell flat on its face. Little Bill alum Mark Salisbury helmed these shows and hired up many of his former co-workers. By the time of the second Spike series, Blue’s Clues was finally on hiatus, so it’s crew was free to apply for a position on the new show. This would mark the first great mixing of the two preschool crews. Sadly, in the hey day of Blue’s and Little Bill, when the two shows occupied the same floor for a two year period, there was virtually no interaction among their staffs. Each crew had myopically gone about their business.

Once Spike ran it’s course, the flock migrated to join director Jen Oxley at Little Airplane where they were employed to animate on short and long form series work, including Nick Jr’s The Wonder Pets. It was at this time that animators Bob Wallace and Rob Powers first got the chance to direct. By all reports, season one was a bumpy ride for the crew, but what made it to the screen was spectacular and took the show to number one.

Post Wonder Pets season one, many of the original crew landed at Curious Pictures Little Einstein, a series that combined flash, drawn, and 3D animation in equal measures. Olexa Hewryk directed season one of Little Einstein and the technical director was Sang-Jin Bae, both formally of Little Bill. Little Einstein remained the home base for many of the former Little Bill and Blue’s Clues crew until Nick Jr announced a new series starting full production in Fall 2007.

Incidentally, this new show was created by Soo Kim and Michael Smith, a pair of ex Blue’s Cluesers. On this new series, Blue’s Clues and Little Bill alumni are now co-occupying the 4th floor at 1633 Broadway once again. Its fitting that Steve Connor is at the helm as the director, because he really deserves the credit for bridging the gaps between the two old crews. This time, you can bet that they are enjoying a collaboration and comradeship that seemed to elude them nearly ten years earlier. For a community of artists existing from job to job and moving from place to place, this sure sounds like a family to me.

Oscar Blues

In NYC, we just screened the pre-selections eligible for this years Oscar nomination for best-animated short subject. In a very roundabout way, it’s an inspiring thing for a filmmaker to attend, especially for one who has not yet snagged an Oscar nom or win themselves (there’s still some of us out there, right?). I offer this backhanded compliment because to screen these thirty plus films is to demystify what may be considered as Oscar Worthy. Sure, of this lot, only four or five will secure a nomination, but, many of the cast offs wouldn’t last two minutes in our very own ASIFA-East jury screenings. During a break, Jimmy Picker observed that the bad films are also very loud films. Jimmy’s right. Bad and loud go together in bad animation. Watching films such as My Date From Hell, Christmas Village, The Chubb Chubbs Save Xmas, and Anna And The Moods was very much like being beaten with a bag of oranges, but without that pleasing citrus-y aroma. I was glad to see that most of the 3D monstrosities were not made in America. But, then again, they were made as copies of our box office champs such as the Shrek franchise. Is this the legacy of what we’ve wrought?

Not surprisingly, Disney had an entry this year with their new 2D Goofy short, How to Set Up Your Home Theatre. I’d seen this film open the Chicago International Children’s Film Festival in October, where it played to a packed crowd of kids that didn’t laugh once. Here it seemed like a breath of fresh air. Well, sort of fresh. I don’t know what to make of this film. On one hand, I think, “well done.” But, on the other hand, I wonder, “What’s the point?” Yes, it’s great to see Disney doing 2D again, but, the film is a love letter to the past with nothing to offer for today, besides exploiting the home theatre craze (wasn’t that so 5 years ago, anyway?). The original Goofy shorts sort of followed a Robert Benchley how-to format. Today, Benchley is long gone and his own live action shorts have not aged well. As much as this sounds awful, maybe it would have been better to throw Goofy to a situation relevant to today? A reality format? A home design make over show? Something. Anything but a carbon copy of what Disney did in the 1940s. Why make new 2D animation that is stuck in the past? Can’t we make new work that does honor to the great animation of yesterday without resorting to this?

A few films floored me. There were moments of Peter and the Wolf where I was on the edge of my seat. There’s a moment in that film, when the strings finally kick in with the familiar score for the first time. For me, it was as magical as when Dorothy steps from black and white into Technicolor. The film was a dazzler with incredible shots, pacing and genuine emotions. Michael Sporn recently correctly remarked that smiles were overused in Bee-Movie. A scene in Peter and the Wolf begs to agree. There’s a moment where we first see Peter smile when he’s escaped out the fence that separates him from the adventure of the great outdoors. Peter and his animal friends frolic for a bit on a frozen pond and then there’s this shot of his Peter’s smiling face. The smile had such resonance. A similar moment occurred when the director is bold enough to hold on a very long shot of Peter’s face smoldering with hatred for the wolf.

On a side note, many in the audience were dazzled by a Russian film called My Love, which for my money was a Ralph Bakshi rotoscoped film masquerading as paint on glass.

Before I forget, big kudos and congrats to NYC area filmmakers included in this screening:
Sarah Wickliffe (Art’s Desire) and Bill Plympton (Shut Eye Hotel).

MOMA Knows Best!.., and honors the films of Michael Sporn.

I noticed many things in my first few weeks working for Michael Sporn. First off, everybody, from seasoned veterans to newbies like me, all experienced frequent bouts of work related panic and flop sweat. “Why,” you may ask? The reason was that Michael often challenged his employees by handing out assignments that stretched them well beyond their comfort zone; background painters and designers might be asked to work for a few weeks as animators, animators might be assigned storyboards, the production manager might be asked to figure out a new color technique or to tackle layouts, and a recent studio assistant might be asked to run an entire job as a production manager. Not only did the projects change every couple of months, so did the hats we were all wearing. This was true from the most senior member of the studio all the way down to little ol’ me. Even though this was my first job in animation, I suspected that this was truly a special place to work.

Michael places an amazing amount of trust in his staff. Recently at an ASIFA-East event held in honor of his latest DVD release, I asked Michael how he chooses the scenes he animates himself. He answered that he assigns himself the most boring scenes, the ones where a character might simply have to walk from A to B. Therefore, one can presume that part of Michael’s joy in running a studio must be in how he assigns the work to his staff. Each scene or task is a special bond of trust between Michael and his artists. Although Michael encourages a large degree of self direction from his animators, the resulting films emerge with every frame bearing Mr. Sporn’s fingerprints. I don’t know how he does it!

Still, animation is not all art, and even small independent studios like Michael’s cannot escape the factory side of animation work. When I worked for Michael, the studio was still shooting on film and preparing artwork on cell or paper. There were lots of mechanical handwork involved with paints, glue, and exacto blades. At some point of production, most of the studio would be reassigned to work a few days or weeks at these tasks. At Michael’s, we were so often working to the peak of our abilities that switching over to a more mundane part of production felt like sweet relief! Yet, whatever the relief factor was, we still had piles of artwork to prep or check for camera. Whenever one person ended up with too much work, the rest of us pitched in and redistributed out the scenes. I naively imagined that all animation studios functioned this way. There was never a day with one person working into the middle of the night with everyone else going home.

As a studio boss, Michael has a gentle way of teaching by example. He might fix your drawing and then walk over and explain what he did and why. He’d invite you over to look at dailies and was open to input on the entire process. But, to me, the best part of the day was getting to the studio early and sitting down with Michael and talking “animation” over a cup of tea. Between 9:00 and 10:00 AM the studio slowly came to life, each employee trickling in and taking their seat at the back table. Sometimes we all chatted for a long time, maybe not getting up until close to 11! Such are the pleasures of a family environment. It was truly like an animation home away from home.

Not everyone has had the privilege of working with Michael Sporn, but everyone should come out and celebrate the man’s stunning body of work Nov 9-12 with a special retrospective of his films at MOMA (see www.asifaeast.com for details!). Congrats, Michael!

For your daily dose of Sporn check out www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog

A Look Behind The Book

I’m currently in the midst of writing a second book on the animation industry for Allworth Press, this time on the ins and outs of pitching and development. My first book, Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive (May 2006), was a pretty big ordeal to write. Lack of time turned out to be my worst enemy. This time around, it’s largely the same old story, but at least I now know how long it takes to write a book and am able to budget my time a little smarter.

I’m very pleased with how the first book has been received by reviewers and by the industry. It was truly an odd thing to get a book deal in the first place. By 2004, I’d been pitching animated series ideas for eight years, without success. But, I’ve learned that success is a relative term. It’s possible to have all your ideas rejected and still be inching ever closer towards your goal. Very slowly, over time, I was improving as a writer and a salesman, which is what pitchers have to be in equal parts.

I thought I’d use this week’s blog entry to share the original pitch letter that sold my first book. I remember making 12 drafts of this two-page letter over a period of a couple of weeks. Some of the content of this letter made it into press materials for the book and some even snuck into the introduction chapter itself.

Please forgive any self-aggrandizing statements in the letter below. As a pitch document, the letter had to prove not only the need for such a book, but my own qualifications to write it. Also, note the different working-title of the book. Gosh, what a mouth-full! Some of you may find some of the letter’s content familiar because some of it found its way into the introduction chapter and other bits snuck into the press materials. I hope you get a chance to check out the final book that sprung from this pitch, Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive. For the best price, I recommend picking up a copy on www.amazon.com.

And now, here's the original pitch letter. Enjoy!


HOW TO STRETCH AND SQUASH
YOUR WAY INTO A
CAREER IN ANIMATION


A BOOK PROPOSAL
by
David B. Levy
1/28/04



How To Stretch and Squash Your Way Into A Career In Animation is as much for those with hopes of entering the field of commercial animation as it is an industry survival guide for those already working. Whether one wants advice on how to land one's first job or is seeking ways to advance one's current career, the answers and inspiration are here.

The animation industry is a billion-dollar worldwide business. It's hard to imagine a day where you don't find yourself confronted by an image of SpongeBob SquarePants, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny or The Simpsons. Although animation dates back to the birth of film, it continues to evolve as evidenced by the recent groundbreaking CGI successes of Pixar's Monster's Inc. and Dream Works' Shrek. Scads of books abound on how those films and your favorite animated TV shows are made. DVD commentary tracks regularly give us the voices of directors as they break down their creations. The curtain has been lifted and would-be animators now have more access to technical information than ever before.

Despite this flood of information, crucial questions about the animation business remain unexplored:

-How do you begin a career in animation?
-What kind of portfolio or reel do you need?
-How do you meet the local community of animators?


Likewise, those already working may be asking:

-How do you ensure that your skills stay marketable for years to come?
-What can you do to network more effectively?
- How do you make the leap from working for others to pitching and selling a show of your own or going into business for yourself?

No single book has ever sought to focus on these important topics...until now.

Utilizing interviews with those at the top of the industry, How To Stretch... will offer up answers, advice and personal anecdotes on all those questions and more. Best of all, my ten years (and counting) experience working in the animation industry ensures that this book is written from an insider's perspective. I have worked as a freelancer and as a staff employee on such projects as TV series, industrials, commercials, pilots and independent films. The genres have run the gamut from preschool to kids to adult. In ten years, I've enjoyed steady employment and weathered layoffs during slower periods of the economy. Since graduating from the School of Visual Arts (SVA), I've produced an award winning short independent film nearly every year. As a director, I have been in competition in the largest Animation festival in the world, the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. In my role as President of Asifa-East (The New York chapter of the Association Internationale du Film d'Animation), I am responsible for leading and organizing monthly events, screenings, newsletters and an annual festival for the New York community of animators. I have done a series of lectures on how to build a successful career in animation at New York University (NYU), and I am presently teaching a class at SVA called Animation Career Strategy.

This book will also function as a resource by listing contact information for animation schools, societies, unions, film festivals, studios, websites, books, and magazines.

How To Stretch and Squash Your Way Into A Career In Animation will entertainingly educate and enlighten the reader on key subjects essential to achieving success in the field.

Meet the Meth Man: Dan Meth

Many creators owe their start in the biz to Mr. Fred Seibert who has spawned oodles of opportunities for pitchers through his initiatives at Cartoon Network/Hanna Barbera (What-A-Cartoon!) and Frederator (Oh-Yeah! Cartoons and Random Cartoons). Dan Meth arrived on the scene in 1999 and gradually made a name for himself through his internet cartoons. Fred hired Dan Meth in March of 2006, and they both began to search for ways to work with one another on original content. Eventually they came up a groundbreaking idea; the creation of 39 shorts called The Meth Minute, conceived and directed by Meth, to be posted consecutively over 39 weeks.

They unveiled their series with a certified phenomenon called, Internet People. It was a very shrewd beginning for the series because it basically summed up the history of pop culture as spread on the internet while at the same time placing the Meth Minute within that context. The short got millions of hits and lots of attention on various media. As a film, Internet People owes a lot of its success to Meth’s catchy little song and lyrics. Animating to a song lends an advantage to a filmmaker because it provides a tight little structure on which to base a film around. I wondered if all of Meth’s shorts would be musical and I looked forward to finding out.

The next Meth Minute film, Sex Machine, was a James Brown spoof and, in part, also utilized a song as a key component. With this second film I understood was Meth was trying to do. The Meth Minute strives to be the internet equivalent of SNL’s cartoons by Robert Smigel. The strength and weaknesses of Meth’s films will be determined, not by his skill (he’s consistently a technically capable and confident filmmaker), but by how well he chooses his pop culture targets and how often his writing is able to carry it beyond an inspired title.

For example, the latest Meth Minute is called, Mike Tyson’s Brunch Out. Anyone of my generation (I’m a couple of years older than Meth) will immediately recognize the pun on the popular 1980s video game, Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out! I think Meth tried to create a deliberately disjointed short that gives one the feeling of picking up a little bit of conversation from each table at a busy restaurant. So, on one hand, the film makes a point about brunchers who are lost in their own worlds, while on the other hand, it’s simply illustrating the joke: here’s Mike Tyson placed out of context, eating brunch and spouting out Tysonisms on demand. For my taste, the dueling concepts compete with each other, and sap strength out of the whole. It’s interesting to see how many ideas a short film can or can't hold and that’s part of the adventure of this whole enterprise. Over 39 films, they’ll win some and lose some.. and that seems about right.

The Meth Minute is a bold experiment and it’s well worth all of our support and encouragement. Besides, this is a NY production. Show some love! Check out the Meth Minute at www.frederator.com and www.channelfrederator.com.

Give us MO!

I have to confess that I’ve been smitten with the work of Mo Willems since I first met him in 1995. He was in his Suzie Kabloozie faze of his career back then, making short films for Sesame Street at New York’s Curious Pictures. One look at Mo’s NYU student films made me immediately rethink my choice in SVA. Unlike my classmates and myself, Mo had emerged as a wonderful filmmaker while still in school! His films such as The Man Who Yelled, Iddy Biddy Beat, and Another Bad Day For Phillip Jenkins became instant favorites with me. In Mo’s own estimation, he wasn’t much of a draftsman. In my eyes, Mo didn’t have to be. If he didn’t draw the best drawings, he drew the right drawings. And, unlike other animation filmmakers looking to patch over their flaws with fluid animation, Mo seemed to draw as few drawings as possible.

It’s interesting to note that in the formative years of his career in the early 1990s, Mo was drinking from the same water that must have been inspiring Gendy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken (Dexter’s Laboratory and Power Puff Girls, respectively) on the other coast. A good window into the difference between the New York and Hollywood mind set might be how Mo injected his UPA/50s graphic influence towards projects that were far more personal and sensitive in nature.

While Mo’s films were child like, they weren’t always for children. And, when they were for children, he certainly wasn’t talking down to his audience. Mo’s gifts weren’t lost on Sesame Street where he made dozens and dozens of films over a period of years, culminating with the recurring award winning Suzie Kabloozie films. If Suzie had been allowed to grow up, she may have entered the world of Mo’s next network creation, The Off-Beats, which ran as a segment of Nickelodeon’s Kablam. The Off-Beats seemed like a more cerebral and abstract Peanuts. I loved these films, which, for my money, were the reason to tune in to Kablam.

Mo’s career fascinates me because it seems to follow a relatively straight line towards an obvious conclusion, an animated series of his very own; Sheep In the Big City. The unusual show ran two seasons and still enjoys a cult audience to this day. It was an odd mixture; one part blank-eyed titular character pushed around by a noisy narrator and an even noisier general, while the other part being more of an animated Saturday Night Live. Sort of two shows smushed together to make one. Lots of the SNL-style sketches are cute and inspired, but something about the process of animation itself (and all its planned-out months-ahead-ness) sort of sucks the life out of a comedy sketch. In the medium of animation it’s difficult to get a feeling of spontaneity into an SNL sketch-style film. Since the days of Mo’s series, shows like Robot Chicken have successfully pulled it off but only after becoming a barrage of pop culture parodies. Mo had something more dignified in mind with his sketch writing. In the little lamb, Mo crafted a stone-faced character in the tradition of Buster Keaton. This non-verbal character broke ground on cartoon network but, often posed more challenges than it offered benefits.

In Sheep’s last season, a new director named Tom Warburton came aboard and a year later, Mo became Tom’s head writer on a new Cartoon Network show, Code Name: Kids Next Door (KND). Legend has it that Tom helped speed up Mo’s show and Mo helped slow Tom’s show down. On KND, Mo grinded out script after winning script. The show was big hit with it’s audience, becoming the only giant new hit cartoon since SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly Odd Parents.

Having reached a career pinnacle with his own show and having more than met the challenge as the head writer of KND, perhaps Mo was looking for something else. With all of Mo’s previous achievements, who would have believed that he’d find his greatest success in the next phase of his career as the author of many best selling award winning children’s books? Adults enjoy Mo’s children’s books, such as Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, as much as their intended young readers. Just like his Sesame Street films fifteen years before, Mo still isn’t talking down to his audience. Perhaps his career path is not a straight line after all. Maybe it’s more of a circle. But, enough of my arm-chair analysis…you’ll get a chance to meet Mr. Mo Willems, yourself, when he’s ASIFA-East’s special guest on Thursday November 29. Save the date. Details to be announced soon at www.asifaeast.com.

WHEN IT COMES TO PITCHING, THERE ARE NO UNIVERSAL TRUTHS

There's been so much written about the process of developing and pitching an animated series. Articles on the subject pop up frequently in trade magazines and on many popular on line destinations. In two hundred words or less, these articles attempt to stuff this whole labyrinthine subject into a shoe-size box. Perhaps more surprisingly, I've seen the same problem spring up at industry panel discussions. The danger of boiling this subject into bite sized nuggets is that just about every statement needs to be followed by opposing view points, caveats, or a plain ol' deeper explanation. For instance, I attended a pitching and development panel at the first Platform International Animation Festival where I heard Nickelodeon development executive Peter Gal remark, "If it's your first deal there's not much point to negotiating. It is what it is." I heard this point and immediately thought of my network deal, on which, the ink was still fresh. My wonderful lawyer and I had negotiated and (through that effort) significantly improved the deal financially and otherwise. After the panel I pointed this out to Peter and he wisely responded, "Well, no, that wouldn't apply to you because you're established." Even though this is my first network development deal, I do have a twelve-year (and counting) career as a storyboard artist, animator, designer, illustrator, author, and director. We are each the sum of our experiences and that's got to count for something.

On the same panel, Cartoon Network development executive Heather Kenyon playfully warned the audience to never sing during a pitch. In my experience, I've heard at least two others echo that advice. In fact, I’ve heard of one creator who regularly creeps out development executives by reciting poems and singing. However, Peter Gal, disagreed and explained that he recently bought an idea from a singing pitcher. Further adding to the argument, newcomer Pen Ward successfully pitched two cartoon shorts to Frederator while strumming his guitar and singing.

Another oft told "no-no" concerns bringing food to a pitch meeting. What if you bring dairy items to someone who's lactose intolerant or snacks that may contain peanuts to someone with a peanut allergy? Several development executives have advised against taking the chance. I'm immediately reminded of Mo Willems wowing his pitch audience for Sheep in the City with delicious French Fries. In another food related encounter, Blue's Clues co-creator, Traci Paige Johnson, wrote a thank you note on the top of a pizza box that helped secure her a place on a creative team with Todd Kessler and Angela Santomero, where the three of them would collaborate to create the mega smash hit, Blue's Clues. This is all enough to give us food for thought. Yet, I think both sides of this debate would agree that if your pitch meeting involves food, it should never be the main course.

Another example of this phenomenon occurred at an ASIFA-East event celebrating Frederator's launch of 39 new cartoons. Serving as the moderator of a panel, which included Frederator executive producer and president, Fred Seibert, and several of his short's creators, I introduced the topic of pitching in storyboards versus the traditional mini bible. The method of choice for Frederator is that would-be creators pitch their ideas in a storyboard form that is essentially the film before a film is made. The characters are shown in action, activated by a plot, which hopefully, springs out of the character itself. This method is very direct and I can see why it appeals to Frederator, who (with their order of 39 cartoons) was in the business of making shorts, not series. The problem is that Fred and, in particular, shorts creator, Alan Goodman, trashed mini bibles out right, not just in light of their particular business needs at that time. An impressionable new comer to the world of pitching sitting in the audience might have walked away believing Frederator's point of view as a universal truth. A mini bible is, in fact, the pitch document of choice at just about everywhere besides Frederator. A good series bible contains lots of splashy show art (eye-candy), and succinct fun-to-read descriptions of the characters, the world, the rules of the world, and some episode synopsizes. The storyboard pitches I toiled to create during a year for Frederator were useless pitch documents elsewhere. It was not until I scrapped them and started over with traditional mini bibles did I score my first network deal.

I don't suggest that it's a waste of your time or energy to read pitch articles or to attend industry panels. Just process everything you hear with a grain of salt. Maybe two grains of salt and be sure to throw them over your shoulder for good luck. It's my hope to help spread a better understanding of this business that goes far beyond a sound bite or snappy flippant answer.