I have a major farmer’s tan going on–I’m at least two shades darker below the sleeves. I also have the hippie Birkenstock tan in two bands across my feet. (I’m not sure what you call the two together–an organic farmer’s tan, maybe?)
Work continues at a good clip. Yesterday my CCH asked if I’d ever considered animation. “Not really,” I told him. “I mean, I’d do the concept art happily, but drawing the same thing five million times…”
“You write, and you can draw cute animals,” he said. “Let me get you an animator’s bible so you see what a pitch for a cartoon show looks like. It’s pretty easy.”
I gibbered a bit, as one might expect at such a suggestion. “Okay…” I said finally, “but suppose I did one? Then what do I do with it?”
“Give it to your agent,” he said. “Heck, if she doesn’t know what to do with it, give it to me. I work at Disney, I can get a meeting with any studio here, I’ll shove it in front of somebody.”
I gibbered a bit more.
“It’s not hard to do,” he said, “and if you can’t sell something as a graphic novel, sometimes you can sell it as a kid’s show. You should try it. Do that thing with the platypus you were telling me about.”*
“Okay,” I said weakly.
I don’t actually expect anything to come of this–I mean, I’ll definitely look at one of these bible things, and I’ll even put together a pitch if it looks like something I can actually do–the thing with the platypus did have some charm–but I would imagine that there’s more pitches for animated shows fluttering around Hollywood than there are house finches, and there are a LOT of house finches.
But dude. Dude. Just having this conversation was insane. If you’d asked me a year ago whether I’d be sitting in the living room of one of Disney’s celebrity minions, having them tell me to put together a cartoon pitch and offering to show it to studios, I’d have laughed in your face.
We are so far off the map here, people…
Also, I saw an acorn woodpecker yesterday! Lifer! Woot!
*A book pitch I sent my agent for a kid’s graphic novel that didn’t quite go anywhere
