2020 was a crazy year but it was the year I got the opportunity to pitch Tomatohead.Yup,
I got to pitch the developers at Adult Swim.
Their now defunct online streaming show development meeting to be specific.
The Black Swan Event
It started last year when that ill fated pandemic besieged the planet. Forcing us to spend almost a year in near total lockdown.
After a few months all it took was a video of a cop leaning on this guys neck to set the whole world off.
Before we knew it the country spend the next 90 days in flames, every one and their Grandmother hated the cops.
Not me tho I took a negative and turned it into a positive, while everyone was panicking (I did a bit of that) I was busy working on the first 2 episodes of Tomatohead. I had fun those months to be honest,
I was the most productive at that time and I was really proud of the results. I also learned so much and picked up some skills with Blender.
The Pitch
I first heard of Adult Swim Development Meeting from my friend “Juicy Pequeno“a fellow animator and creator of the famous Beans and Toast. He expressed a desire to one day pitch a story to them and last year June was my time to do so.
How it worked was simple, If you wanted to pitch you simply clicked the link in the description to sign into the whereby chatroom. If you are lucky then hosts will select your chat box, make sure you put together all your assets in a google drive link (make it public and view only). That way the devs can go through and discuss your stuff while the audience watches and intereacts in the adultswim dot com chatroom. At the end they select the top three winners the best pitch can win up to $300-$500.
At the time I had no idea how nervous I was, I was also extremely unprepared. Ultimately I won $300 and eventually paid the Adam Crain and Chris Krider the dudes that helped me out with the voice work and story and the rest is History.
The Aftermath
Well I never became famous or the next Justin Roiland but I did have a wellspring of confidence and something to brag about tho I don’t think it works all that well lol. Well it was awesome that I did it and intended to do it again until I was informed that the show has been cancelled and all episodes are no longer available on the adult swim website.
Helpful Animation Pitch Resources
While this post wasn’t about how to pitch an animation to Adult Swim I recommend Cartoon Brew‘s article on how to pitch and sell an Animated Series. It’s broken up into several parts so you can absorb the material in stages.