Yep.
Animatic TO is back! And tonight’s presentation is gonna be me, talking about the development process here in Canada and how Startoon, the online development initiative I ran this pas year, fits into it.
For those who weren’t constantly bombarded by my personal updates about Startoon, here’s a little breakdown on what it was all about:
Startoon is an online development initiative backed by the Shaw Rocket Fund. We set it up like a talent show for cartoon characters, with each creation competing for a 25 thousand dollar production budget for what we called a “mini-pilot”. Our hope was that we could reach out to creators who might not otherwise be in a position to pitch their ideas conventionally, mainly the drawers, rather than the writers. We’d workshop their creations through a series of challenges and come out the other end with a really solid project that could be pitched as a show for the 6 to 11 demographic.
And it worked.
We had 93 auditions, millions of votes in our audience participation section, and Vancouver’s Andy Greiling is now developing his characters, Sonny and Bently, with us to pitch next year.
It was a huge undertaking, and totally worth it. But why did it work? Why did creators respond to it the way they did?
Well, that has a lot to do with how we develop shows in Canada. But if you want to hear the rest of my thoughts on all that, you’ll have to come to tonight’s event at Gamma Space Collaborative Studio at 862 Richmond St West in downtown Toronto. We’re doing this thing from 7 to 9:30, and it’s ten bucks at the door. Here’s the link to the event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1628763540755364/
Hope to see you there.
Mike
I hope someone is recording this. I’d love to hear it.
We did film it. A few things are going to remain off the record though.