Television Animation Conference
The Trip: Day 2
Well we woke up reeeeeally early in the morning on day two. It was 6 AM, which is like, 3 AM, Alberta time. Needles to say, the 4 of us were exhausted. Regardless of this fact we all hobbled our way over from our hotel to the Chateau Laurier for the Buffet Breakfast and Keynote speech for the Television Animation conference. The breakfast was delicious and the speech was motivational, so that really helped distract us from the pitches we were so nervous about delivering later in the day.
For all of you that are curious, Brent, Kalvin, and I were all pitching the cartoon to different producers and executives in the industry, in something called “fast track”. In this, we have 9 minutes to pitch the cartoon to to the person. It’s pretty nerve racking.
We all took turns pitching and we all got much the same response. People were extremely positive about the pitch but the industry is in a slow period. That coupled with the fact that no on is really looking for adult material at this point made things very frustrating. Still the positive responses and the compliments on the idea were very encouraging.
One of the other things that we did during the day, was attend Panels and things of that nature. I found them to be pretty educational and I think I learned some interesting things at them.
Once the daytime events were done for the day, The Thunderfist crew arrived at the Television Animation Conference Happy hour to relax and network with others attending the conference.
At least those are the reasons we tell people we went for. I mean, what kind of Albertans would we be if we passed up any reason to attend an event serving free booze. 
We met many awesome people there and in true Albertan form we closed that party down.
Soon after that was the Opening Night Party. Which was one hell of a hectic event. Again, we met some cool people and we had a pretty good time with the guys from Brazil. We tried to teach them how to pick up Canadian women. We told them that really, they didn’t need to do much but be themselves. Kalvin added that they should portray themselves as strangers in a strange land , on a quest for love. Somewhere along the way things got confused and they started pretending to be Colombians. I still don’t know if that was of any help to them.
So, after a few more drinks, many Al Pacino and Robert De Niro impressions, and some “yaga balms” we headed out to get some rest. Of course, us being us, we ended up on some kind of damned ghost tour through downtown Ottawa. I ended up making fun of the weird, caped, “spooky” tour guide and Mason ended up climbing a bear… The night is kind of blurry from there but I think Brent took us to a ghetto McDonalds and Kalvin kissed a giant male snowboarder.
The four of us ended up back at the hotel safe and sound with one hell of an adventure behind us. We then went to sleep.
Day :3
Day 3 was the second day of the TELEVISION ANIMATION CONFERENCE. We Did many of the same things and pitched much the same way. Today we made pitches to Teletoon and The Cartoon Network. They were well received but the problem was much the same. No one seems to be looking for adult material.
This, coupled with everyone telling us how we should have been here last year because “everyone was looking for adult cartoons last year”, is becoming increasingly frustrating but we will persevere.
Anyway, we had a really nice dinner at the end of the day and we are now ready to head out for another networking event. We’ll keep you posted.
Goodnight!