LITTLE AIRPLANE ACADEMY 3-DAY SEMINAR

If you are truly interested in making a great pre-school television series this is the place to get the ultimate insider view. I was fortunate to have taken this course in August of 2009.

Not only was it a highly inspirational, it was very informative. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in taking their first significant steps on this journey.

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LITTLE AIRPLANE ACADEMY 3-DAY SEMINAR:
“HOW TO MAKE A GREAT PRESCHOOL SERIES”
February 13 through February 15

Little Airplane Productions is offering limited enrollment in a unique workshop led by accomplished preschool TV veterans on creating a hit preschool series. Classes include Pitching, Writing, Research, Design, Music, Directing, Legal, Licensing, and a notable panel of children’s television network executives.

Please contact Melinda Richards at 212-965-8999 melinda@littleairplane.com .
http://www.littleairplane.com/academy .

 

The Side Show Christmas 2009 broadcast dates on TELETOON Canada

2009 Broadcast dates on TELETOON Canada – EST.

Saturday, December 19 at 4 pm,
Sunday, December 20 at 1 pm,
Monday, December 21 at 10 am,
Tuesday, December 21 at 5 pm
and Wednesday, December 23 at 8 am.

A SPECTACULAR CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

As Christmas approaches, JASON SHANKS watches his father’s side show hit rock bottom. Jason’s father, SANDWELL, driven to desperate measures, kidnaps Santa Claus and hypnotizes him to be the new headline act. To save Christmas Jason must get Santa back in the sleigh, reconcile with Sandwell, and revolutionize the Most Unbelievable Show On Earth.

The Side Show Christmas was produced by Saskatoon Based Cheshire Smile Animation Inc. in association with Studio B Productions.

Purchase your own copy of The Side Show Christmas DVD online from Amazon.ca

 

Go Canada – Grain Elevators – Pilot Episode

Go Canada is an animation/live action documentary series developed by Cheshire Smile Animation, Kids CBC, and SCN, for 2-6 year old children starring Canada: an inspired, animated map of our favorite country.

Inspired by kids, her audience, Canada travels our nation discovering and exploring entertaining, educational and cool stories about iconic elements of Canadian geography, locations and life. Canada is possessed by an insatiable curiosity for the country where she lives. As the host, Canada, leads the adventure, but she learns alongside the children viewing the show as she discovers, explores and experiences special places within the Canadian Community.

 

 

Surviving the Animation Recession

Here in Canada, and around the world, as broadcast advertising revenues have dried up and the masses have shifted towards other methods of media consumption, animation broadcasters are being forced to scale back. Playback reported a $54 million dollar drop in animation production volumes in 2008 – wow that sucks for all of us!!

For those of us working in animation, this means we are facing some tough, competitive times and I thought I would share some of my thoughts on how you can survive the Animation Recession in style and hopefully come out of it with a smile on your face and better poised for a successful career in this industry than ever before.

• Have more sex with that special person in your life*

It is true that not only is sex great fun, it is inexpensive! Getting good value for your dollar in tight times is really important. Not only will you feel better about yourself, invigorated, creatively stimulated, and so forth , your partner will too and with all that free time on your hands….

Hopefully those good vibes will translate into support in these challenging times, because, let’s face the facts, it is impossibly hard to make it in this industry in good times without the support, and sometimes sacrifice, of the people closest to you in your life. These days, this support is more important than ever before.

*A word of caution –  make sure that you protect yourself from unwanted pregnancy. All the cost savings from lots and lots of inexpensive high quality sex will be eradicated by one trip to Baby GAP.

• Be Optimistic

Lots of sex will help with this, but the truth is that the entertainers fair well in tough times. There is an audience for you out there, people are watching more television and consuming more media than ever before. When everyone is broke, it is cool to be broke, go with it, don’t wallow in it. Use these times as an opportunity to be innovative and creative in finding your audience.  A lot of great artists cut their teeth during the depression, Orson Wells pushed the boundaries of storytelling in traditional media formats theater and the new media of the day – Radio. The same opportunities exist today but they are magnified by the potential of the internet.

• Explore the art of story

Buy Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat and write that screenplay you have been thinking about for the last few years. Really. You should do it.

• Make something low budget, high quality that is financed with sweat equity.

Check out www.deadheaven.net – it is an online comic book financed through online advertising, donations, and sweat equity. Wow. If that doesn’t inspire you how about this – The Fox Aniboom Holiday Animation Challenge – invest some sweat equity into this competition and you could end up with a development deal with FOX.

• BEG for a job at the new PIXAR studio they are opening in Vancouver.

That’s right BEG – I am using my BLOG to do this – PLEASE HIRE ME AMIR NASRABIDI – Bring me into the fold, I would love to work with you to make the Vancouver’s PIXAR studio a great success.

• Pitch a film to the National Film Board

Are you an auteur with passion and vision?? Then perhaps the National Film Board of Canada is the film making partner you have been looking for all along.

These are my tips for the times. If you are having issues trying to get motivated just start at the top of the list. Spend as much time on the first point as you need.

 

My closet is full of dead babies…….

I am always in the process of development and producing numerous ideas, all of which are in different states of existence, anywhere from idle entertaiment while sitting on the toilette or walking the dog, to full blown fully, financed productions.

The first time I pitched to Canadian Children’s Broadcasters was at the Banff Television Festival in 2001. I was able to get a meeting with TELETOON, and I pitched a show I was working on called “The Legends Of Wesakechak”. No Luck.

The second time I pitched was also at the Banff Television Festival in 2002. I pitched “Legends of Wesakechak” again as well as a series called “Althea”, and another series called “Mrs. Periwinkles Fun Files”. No dice. They were all gunned down and I personally got quite beat up by the experience. There was one broadcaster in particular who just about made me cry. I have come to the belief that “You know it is a good market when you can leave and not feel like you just got stood up at the High School Dance!!!!”

Since then I pitched numerous other shows before I got my first development deal with TELETOON.

Each one of those projects is a dead baby that is littering the floor of my imagination.

My personal feeling is that broadcasters want to see you stick it out in the industry for quite a while before they will even consider giving you a deal. Even if you had the goodest idea on earth there is a good chance it will tank if it is your first experience with a broadcaster who has never heard of you before. Television is expensive to make and time consuming. I honestly get the feeling that a lot of broadcasters want to get to know you before they will spend any money or time working with you on an idea.

Consequentially, It is important that as a creator of Television you have the ability to walk away from an idea and move on to something new, no matter how much you love it.

Every failed pitch provides another layer of compost for your imagination.

You must take that experience of pitching and use it as an opportunity to develop market intelligence so that you are better able to understand what they are looking for in an idea so that 6 months or 1 year later when you pitch the same broadcaster a new concept, they can see that not only have you developed professionally, you can create good ideas, AND most importantly, you can listen and respond to what they need from an idea to work for their network. I am not saying that you will succeed with that pitch either, but what you will have done is to start building a key relationship with both the network and broadcaster.

So, when you are holding on to that baby and every conceivable broadcaster has said no (except that one eccentric foreign broadcaster who does not have any development money for Canadians, and unfortunately can not trigger anything within the Canadian system, but loves it), there comes a time when you have to decide put it away in the closet and move on to the next pitch.

At the BBQ wrap up to the 2002 Banff Television Festival, I was feeling kind of dejected, and had the opportunity to speak with Chris Bartleman of Studio B, whom I had to pitched earlier that day.

His advise was to just keep pitching.

He was right.

 

How can you tell if it is a Great Idea?

This year at the Banff Television Festival I had the opportunity to meet many upcoming and aspiring Canadian Television content creators. One of the themes that repeatedly came up in discussion was knowing and understanding what kinds of ideas one should invest in. It takes a lot of leg work to prepare and develop an idea into a pitch for a broadcaster, how do you know if it is a good idea?

I will share my simple secret with you.

Good ideas stay good ideas.

I wake up every morning and generally have 2 – 3 ideas of varying quality while I am in the shower. Most of my ideas (Like “Dude Patrol” an action comedy about a group of kids going to highschool on the Moon who only call each other “Dude”) starts to loose its lustre come lunch time.

It took 3 and 1/2 years to get the idea for “Side Show Christmas” from concept to the first sequences of produced animation.

It is so much work to get a show off the ground that the idea has to be good. You have to be able to live and work with the idea for a long time. At the end of the creators journey, when that story has finally been told and that idea is released into the world, the world gets to decide if it is a good idea. The better the idea the longer the life it will live in the collective conciseness.

So, if you are working to develop ideas to pitch to broadcasters, my feeling is that you have to live with it for a while and look at if from different angles and honestly decide if it really is a good idea. There really is more to it than a cool character design and title. Put it on paper and put it in a drawer and come back to it later. Does it still have value and worth? Is it still something you want to put your heart and soul into?

Not to be overly pessimistic but there is a good chance they won’t like it anyway. Maybe they already have something similar, perhaps you haven’t researched properly the kinds of ideas they are looking for. There are a multitude of reasons your idea will die on a broadcasters desk.

Prepare yourself for the good idea.

When they finally say yes makes sure that it is your best idea because the journey has only just begun.

 

Watch “A Fairy Tale Christmas” on YTV

Make sure to gather up all your young ones and settle in to watch “A Fairy Tale Christmas” on YTV this Christmas. It’s the perfect distraction after all the gifts have been opened and Dad’s hands are way too numb to assemble any more toys.

A Fairytale Christmas – Dec 22nd @ 2pm EST, Dec 25th @ 1pm EST – Kidnapping the King’s daughter is no way to get onto Santa’s “nice” list.

“A Fairy Tale Christmas” was animated entirely in Saskatchewan in 2004-05 using a combination of classical and Flash animation techniques and has helped to launch to careers of many great Saskatchewan animators.

“A Fairy Tale Christmas” is a Christmas Adventure Musical featuring songs by Jay Semko (The Northern Pikes) and Ross Nykiforiuk (Cosmic Pad Studios)

It is also my broadcast directorial debut and was responsible for a 160% increase in the size of my bald spot. It is rumored to be for sale in Wall Mart but I have not seen it there myself.

 

Cheshire Smile Animation inks development deal with CBC Kids.

Cheshire Smile Animation Announces Development Deal with CBC Kids on the 13 x 3 minute live action animated series Toby’s Canada for CBC Television and SCN.

14 November 2007 – (Saskatoon, SK) Producer Cheshire Smile Animation announce the beginning of development on Toby’s Canada, a television series for 2 – 6 year old children starring Toby, a digi-savy seven year old who makes and stars in his own short docu-videocasts about his experiences discovering the magic and diversity of Canada.

Toby’s Canada is produced by Tim Tyler of Cheshire Smile Animation Inc. and Mike and Mark Birkland. It features the writing talents of Darwin C. Vickers (Ned’s Newt, Jimmy Neutron, Pelswick), and will be developed for production in the summer of 2008.

“We are excited to be working with CBC Kids and SCN in the development of Toby’s Canada” says producer Tim Tyler of Cheshire Smile Animation Inc., “We have been working for a long time on the development of this property, and it is great to see an appetite at the from CBC Kids for original Saskatchewan television content with a National Focus.”

Toby is an inspired, animated (literally and figuratively) child in a live-action world who is passionate about discovering the many facets to life in Canada. As a roving vid-caster, Toby travels the nation finding entertaining educational and cool stories about Canadian geography, locations and life for his friends watching on television and the internet at home. Children love Toby. They look up to him because he is versatile and talented with computers, cameras and technology and he uses those skills, along with his natural curiosity and good humor, to explore the Canadian places and stories that children want to learn more about.

Established in 2000, Cheshire Smile Animation Inc. combines broadcaster focused development and production of animated entertainment properties with service animation and interactive production.

Toby’s Canada is developed in association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Saskatchewan Communications Network, with the participation of the Canadian Television Fund.

 

Side Show Christmas – Animation Designs V

A concept design for an icicle forest on the journey to the North Pole.

 

Side Show Christmas – Animation Designs II

Update: The Final Production Animation Designs for The Side Show Christmas

Amongst all the other insanity, I have been busy trying to get the designs wrapped up for Side Show Christmas so that we can move the project forward for production this winter.