I’ve wanted to be a “animator” since i was 13 years old, and I started back then reading every available book on the subject of animation in my high school and vocational school libraries. Jump ahead 40 years and “viola”, I’m an animator with 20 plus years experience under my belt in producing animation. “But” even having worked on a lot of projects; shorts, t.v. commercials to network television shows , etc…I’ve only one more brass ring to acquire, and that is a animated series created and produced by myself on a major network. The opportunity to acquire this jewel of accomplishment presented itself to me back in the spring of 2013 , when i was living in NYC and selling a compilation DVD of my animated shorts on the trains of the NYC subway system and quite successfully too (just Google “mark stansberry animator). Thru my DVD sales on those trains I had acquired a ton of publicity and noteworthiness in the NYC animation community as well as an “agent” ; my second after a first lacked experience with networks and we parted ways. Now this new agent had a direct connection with Cartoon Network / Adult Swim and he proceeded to get me a face to face pitch with them for a series idea I had been developing for a couple of years. Well, next thing you know , I’m in Burbank , California sitting in the office of the guy who chooses and develops all Adult Swim’s content. I made my pitch, and it went over lackluster, and he said he’d mull it over and get back to us. So, yeah, they passed on it. It felt like someone had punched me in the chest with an elephant and taken out my heart and ran it over with a cement truck driven by the devil himself. But , I had the bug, the bug of “stupid” determination. So I revamped the idea and pitched it again via phone call a few months later. It flopped again. I developed another idea and pitched it via phone call again. It flopped , but now I was getting feedback from this guy,(maybe he liked my determination, at least that’s what I kept telling myself) and I was writing it down and now I had developed a direct means of getting him to look at my stuff. I studied their shows, patterns, humor , their audience ,hoping for something to help me write the perfect series for them. I pitched another idea to which he liked alot and thought was funny , but said it didn’t fit them. He even complimented me on my execution of the work I was sending him. “But” I still didn’t have a show yet….(They’re looking at one of my ideas even as I write this). Everyone says I should have told them to go take a long walk on a short pier after the first pitch , and shop my ideas elsewhere. But something in me is connected to Adult Swim now like a virus of sorts and I can’t stop trying to get that brass ring of having a animated series on their network. Maybe it’s because I know having a foot in the door with a major network like Adult Swim is what some folk would die for, or maybe I see it has made me a better and more diverse writer of humor, “or”…. I’m just stupid….check out the video of one of the ideas I showed to Adult Swim last winter and they passed on , and tell me what you think.
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“Puddin”
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