BY MICHAEL VOGEL
Long before I was an animation executive, I was just an animation dork with a ton of ideas and a vague idea of the types of shows I would like to create one day. Like most people who make their way out to the West Coast, I started putting the ideas together and planning my eventual takeover of the whole animation industry. Recently, I went back through some boxes and found some of my old pitches… and was truly horrified. NOT because the concepts were silly, NOT because the art was bad and NOT because nobody in a million years would ever go for a project like the ones in the box marked “Ideas.”
No, I was horrified because I clearly had NO IDEA what I was doing or how to put together a solid pitch.
After sitting on the other side of the desk for a few years and hearing A LOT of pitches, I’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out what makes a solid pitch and what makes a pitch… well, NOT so solid. Now let’s be clear here: I’m not talking about what makes a great idea. We could all argue for hours about character, story structure and what we classify as “good,” (I spent a few hours recently arguing with a friend about why Goonies is a modern day classic – how is that even a debate?!!?) But outside of the subjective world of taste, there are certain things that you can do to hone your pitching skills so that, regardless of the perceived “quality of your concept,” you have done everything in your power to make your pitch show off all the best aspects of your idea while making YOU look like a total animation badass who is on top of his or her game.
So without further ado, here we go. A list of concrete things you should definitely be aware of when prepping an animated pitch:
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