One thing I found...

Thanks so much for the kind messages in the comments of my last message. I have been archiving stuff on a new hard drive and found a whole bunch of unfinished Medicated Life stuff that I never posted and thought I may as well put some up for you to see.

This is a few pages of a full-on story based on the time I discovered Flash animation quite a few years ago. You should be able to click on them for larger versions. It sort of went like the above images.

The last panel is unfinished but I decided that, as he had discovered some sort of mystical ability to make cartoons in an hour, he deserved a superhero outfit.

He didn't like it.

Maybe at some stage, when my career comes to a crashing halt, I'll do a little graphic novel about my experiences in animation. Not saying it will be any good but it will pass the time. There's more where this came from so I may put up a few oldies as I find them.

Rise!

What the hell happened to June?!

You know guys (well, me, because I'm likely the only one around), I've been thinking about retiring the blog. I'll explain why.

I started this blog a few years ago simply to get stuff out there that I couldn't really say without the protection of an anonymous web space. I honestly didn't expect anyone to read it. But some did. And, as I went on, I found much more to say. And then I found a little less to say.

I was hit with a realisation about a month or so ago -

I'm in a business that has zero value (well, I know that and you know that because I've told you but I have only recently taken it in completely). It's not even a business because businesses make money. In spite of what I feel is an area of expertise and experience, I'm not making a huge amount of money. Or even an average amount of money.

All I can do, every skill I've built up over the years, is effectively valueless.

And I need to make some money.

So I'm hiring myself out as a rentboy. Well, not yet. That's plan B. But what I am doing is trying to focus. For a while, trying to dump the projects that won't bring me in anything. You know the reason I take on most projects? Just to show I can. There are some projects, as I've mentioned here on this blog, that I see as really important. Contributions. Good for children. But others? No, I take them on to show I can and then lose interest.

That's pointless.

I'm learning the art of quitting. Quitting isn't a bad thing when the things you're quitting only serve to distract from what you should be doing.

And what I feel I should be doing is focusing on finding a way I can deliver something really good for children, for parents too, that has a value to it. That will make me some money. And, given the state of this industry and the planet, that's a pretty tall order. Next to impossible. Everything right now is going against it.

But I'm damn well going to try it.


This blog is not one of those pointless distractions. Yeah, it doesn't make me a penny but it has worth to me. It is a place I can talk about things that would otherwise just be thrown around inside my head until they damaged me. And, having a look through my archives this evening, I realised, even if I do say so myself, that there's some pretty good stuff here. I surprised myself a few time. I like this blog. It's a sort of home for a certain part of me. The Bitter Animator.

But it takes up a lot of time.

An amount of time that would probably surprise you. The drawings don't take all that long but the combination of text and images mounts up.

With me trying to work hard on finding some new strategy, some new aim, and not always having topics jump out at me for the blog, it has been left behind a bit.

And so I've been thinking about retiring the blog. My thinking was that it's probably better for those few of you who still check it to know if it's done or if there will ever be a post again.

But I'm not sure I can retire it. I think I probably need it.

Posts, however, are going to be pretty thin on the ground for some time. I hope that's okay. That's the right expression? Thin on the ground? Expressions aren't my strong point. If I do make some money, I'm pretty sure it won't be in the expressions industry.

...

I was just checking this posted okay and saw the image below it. Me looking out at a blank space. I looked out and saw nothing a month ago. And, well, I think that nothing was an opportunity. I have taken on the challenge to fill that space. Looking at that image, it actually seems so obvious. That's why this blog is important, I guess. Sometimes it knows more about me than I do...

Oh, one last thing, a guy called Ryan contacted me and I went looking at his site. Well, Ryan's introduction on his home page really touched me. And, while Ryan is dealing with some things I haven't had to, the more I read his posts, the more I could identify with them. If you get a chance, check out Ryan's site, My Chemical Imbalance.

So what now?

Dead flies

I was looking at a graveyard of splatted flies in front of me and couldn't help wondering about my own life. Our lives.

I don't know how many flies there are but there's an absolute shitload of us. And we die all the time. We're born and then BAM! Dead. That's it. Two generations later, we may as well never have existed.

Our atoms, those things that made up each of our parts, are still there though, right? We're all just made up of bits. Not all that different to the flies. To a chair. Anything. Just a bunch of stuff that came together and made a form. Could actively move those atoms around.

Isn't that amazing? That we can group these parts together and move them around in space actively, with our own thoughts? Which, in turn, are some incredibly complex organisation of these parts and impulses from one to another. It is amazing. In many ways, it's totally and utterly unbelievable.

Am I to believe this is an accident?

That our self-awareness is little more than an accidental curse? A by-product of a random system created by millions of years of chaos?

That looking down on Earth, we're nothing more than the movement of atoms brought together by gravity?

Doesn't sound quite right. It actually doesn't sound all that likely.

If it is, it's not likely that we'd be unique. The only ones here. There must be others like us (at least in some ways) in the Universe. You know, now that I think about it, it's weird to think that there is so much life, has been so much life, all over our planet... and we're the only ones writing books? Painting pictures? Wasting our time on blogs? How is it we have come so far and not one of those millions of other life forms on our planet haven't?

There's not just one life form that can swim. Not just one that has camouflage. Not just one that can light up. Not just one that can use sonar.

But there is just one that can make a television. Build a car. Flip a burger.

That just doesn't sound likely to me.

There's something not quite right about our whole existence. It just doesn't sound likely to me.

Having to end it...

Thing is, I knew this wasn't going to work right back when he came on board. Well, Colonel Ginger Nuts has to go. He just isn't cut out for children's shows.

And it's not a pleasant conversation.

Never should have happened in the first place. I said the project was shit. Said it from day one. And, in cases like this, I hate being right. So now it's taken well over a year to get to a point where the realisation kicks in that this man will never turn it into something good.

Now, it's up to other writers to try to make this into something other than a train wreck. And someone has to explain to this guy why he's not going to get to work on this show he created and will never see in its current form ever again.


I hope it's not me.

How many drafts?

I'm rapidly losing the will to live.

The reason I didn't want to write on this project was that I thought it was utter cack. Why would I spend my effort trying to turn something awful into something slightly less awful? Seems like a losing battle.

So I'm not writing it.

But, by the looks of what I am being given to read, nor is anyone else. I need to not even be aware of this project's existence. I need it to go away.

Go away piece of shit project with your shit writers. Go away.

Distributors

Does anyone out there have any positive stories about distributors?

Anyone?

Hello?

Even one?

No. No, I didn't think so. It's funny - I thought it was just the distribution company our show was with. I thought we went with a pack of monkeys and all those other distributors were great. After all, many distributors have great visibility in the business. They must all be great while we were lumbered with idiots.


Turns out everyone feels the same.

People on big shows with high-profile distributors have nothing but horror stories about how their show has been treated. Everyone feeling they went with the wrong distributor. And that's a real problem.

You see, when a show is made (as ours is now), it falls to the distributor to sell the show, usually internationally. They have to find the best platforms for the show, try to hype it up as much as they can, get it the best time slots from broadcasters. They have to find licensing deals, build what they would call a brand. Get books into shops. Toys if people want them. That sort of thing. Take the raw materials that are the show itself and get it out there.

Handing a show over to a distributor is like handing your child over...

...to an abusive coke addict who barely knows or cares that your child exists.


Things I have seen from distributors that bug the living shit out of me:

- Not actually getting to know the show. Like, not even watching the goddam episodes. How can you possibly expect to sell something if you don't know what it is?!

- Trying to tell the show makers who live with the show every single day what the show is or should be, even though they don't know the show, as in the previous point.

- Not talking to other people within their company. Seriously - do you guys spend so much time glued to your Blackberries that you can't even talk to somebody in the next room? Stop asking for the same shit all the time when the people in your office already have it.

- Not forming any sort of strategy. Probably as a result of the previous point, distributors routinely wander around aimlessly until those few minutes a month they decide they should do something. Without the preparation and resources, they achieve nothing.

- Spending more time coming up with reasons why things won't work or can't happen than actually trying to find out what you can do. We've made a show. That's an uphill struggle. We know all about how difficult things can be. We don't care. What you can't do isn't worth shit to us. Go do something.

The list goes on and on...


How most of these people keep their jobs is absolutely beyond me. Actually, some distributors have a fairly high rate of staff turnover so maybe they don't. And of course, because they don't actually ever communicate with people in their own company, every time someone leaves it is like starting from scratch. The new person will be sure to tell us just what great things they've worked on. But that silence when we ask them a question about our show tells us so much more.

In a way, I suppose it's comforting to know that I'm not the only one who ended up with a fuckwit for a distributor.

Oh and if any distributor comes across this, you know I don't mean you, right? It's those other distributors...