STEELIN' IN AND OUT OF PITTSBURGH

Now, THAT was a great trip to the 'burgh! Let me tell ya a little about it.

I got into town on Tuesday afternoon and was picked up by Art Institute of Pittsburgh Professor Angela Love and her husband Dana. They were kind enough to see the need for lunch in my eyes and asked if I wanted to try a place called D's Six Pax and Dogz. They said it was a great hot dog joint where you went into the refrigerated Root Beer Cave and picked your own bottle of root beer from over a 100 choices. Obviously...

I was in.

After a Mason Dixon Dog (chili and coleslaw), some fried zucchini and a root beer or two, I was a very happy Pittsburgh tourist. So I checked into my hotel, did a little work and digested before it was time for another fabulous meal, this time at an Indian restaurant. This, too, was delicious... especially the tandoori wings.

But enough about the food... let's get to the lecture at AIP on Wednesday! The whole purpose of this trip was for me to talk to the students about the fine 'art' of pitching animated TV shows. We got a great turnout and everyone SEEMED to stay awake through my nasally diatribe.


I told them about my early career and how I eventually moved into pitching my own shows, starting with Kenny and the Chimp, and then KND and then onto the newer stuff.

I also gave lots of advice about what to do if you DO get your foot in the door of an animation studio. Here are a couple of 'em:

• DON'T BE LATE... FOR ANYTHING.
- star storyboard artists who get their work done on time can be late... interns who have something to prove CAN'T

• IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO- FIND SOMETHING TO DO
- look for someone who's busy and help them out, even if it's getting them a coffee
- ask if you can try designing a prop, coloring a character or do some simple storyboard revisions.

• MAKE YOURSELF INVALUABLE
- be the only one who knows how to fix the copier or knows where everything in the studio is.
- be indispensamable to your supervisor
(we had a supervisor on KND tell the producer that if he let her intern go she'd kill herself on his desk... not THAT'S an intern.)

• THERE'S A FINE LINE BETWEEN BEING HELPFUL AND ANNOYING
- no one likes a stalker.

After I was done blathering on, the students had a LOT of great questions and I answered them as best I could... or just made up something that sounded semi-convincing.

And of COURSE I hung around to draw some pictures and sign stuff. But I gotta start signing things 'Mr. W'... writing 'Mr. Warburton' eleventy hundred times is murder on the drawing hand.



Sooper huge thanks to Angela and the animation faculty for bringing me out. I had a blast and I hope the kids did, too.

And special thanks to the sooper fan who heard I liked M&M's and thoughtfully (yet unnecessarily) sorted them out by color in case I had rock star demands of taking out all the green ones!




Oh, Pittsburgh...