I’ve been looking to this module for a while, but by the time it came around to do it I was so bloody peddle to the metal that I never got a chance to stop and smell the roses while I was working on this. So it was less a fun creative experience and more an example of one minded productivity, which was fun in of itself.

Anyway, the brief for this was to create a pitch bible for a four part animated Netflix show. We needed:

• Character bios and designs
• Show and episode synopsis
• Background concepts, external and internal
• Production Plan

I’d known about this project long in advance so had a decent idea of what i wanted to work on. I had the pitch for a kid’s TV show aimed at 6-12 yr old’s about a young girl, Jill trying to prove to her Dad she can be a great lumberjack dispite the fact it’s traditionally seen as a man’s job. This was born from my own love of the romantised myth of the North American lumberjack (In reality it was a pretty rough and shitty life) and a desire to take that sense of grit and machoness and instil it in a modern story with a female character so it wasn’t just a lesson for boys, but for everyone. The show was wacky and fast paced in nature and featured monsters from lumberjack lore called Fearsome Critters.

So before I started I scoured the internet for Pitch Bible advice. A few sites I looked at like Cartoon Brew had this advice:

Pretty straight forward and easy to follow, I wasn’t gonna have much time so keeping everything punchy and brief suited me well.
Since I was looking at Gravity Falls for a lot of my inspiration I found this Alex Hirsh interview which he provided a few tips to newbies about making their own pitch which was basically, focus on your characters.

I also had a look at Pen ward’s pitches for Adventure Time and Bravest warriors. These were great, and clearly detailed the arc of each character and where the show was headed. They also a a looooad of art, almost to the pint of being a comic book. I loved the idea of it but there was no way I’d have the time to do something similar.

I found this video pitch of a series of different artists pitching their ideas to Gennedy Tartakovsky and Mike Lazzo for Adult Swim. Which was interesting but didn’t give me too much advice, but I did get a bunch of great examples of a lot of different pitches.

I found another video about pitching to Disney. Although it had an extra dimension since it’s a video pitch it really sold to me the importance of a good idea and selling us with the shows personality, having info told to us from a characters POV I thought was a nice touch.

A really good video I found from Olan Rogers talked about the importance of selling the pitch of your show by focusing on the story and the relationships of your character. Everything is similar to something else so focus on what makes your show unique. This is pretty similar to what Hirsch mentioned in his interview, characters you love and are unique. Thankfully for me there isn’t that many cartoon shows about Lumberjacks and featuring Fearsome Critters so I think I’ve got the unique angle there and having a Father, daughter story gives me a strong basis to work off there.

Next I moved on characters, I started off designing Jill’s Dad since I find it easier to design men rather than girls, and knew I could always work backwards from the Dad’s design to create the daughter. I made a PureRef and filled it with many manly lumberjacks.

Once I had quenched my thirst for beards and checkered shirts I began my designs. I started with a few sketches in a book then moved to digital.

I settled on the last design since it had the best “fatherly leader” vibe. Once I had the Dad sorted I was able to work backwards towards Jill. This design I really struggled with, I’m not use to design women let allow teenage girls. I had a look at previous characters from shows that I felt fit the theme of “Lumber-Jill”. Like Gravity Falls, Hilda and some designs by Bobby Pontillas.

The general takeaway was long hair, hat, and big boots. I also had a look at some reference from the Character Design Reference pinterest for Teen girls. I also made sure t give Jill a similar shaped nose to her Dad rather than the typical “button” nose.

I eventually settled on number four since it had the most amount of energy in the design and I got a good sense of a go-getter off her. I made special attention to avoid making my colours too similar to Wendy from Gravity Falls. I liked the design I had but felt it was just a little too close. I gave her and her Dad more natural colours since I felt it fit the vibe of the show.
The next stage was designing my Fearsome Critters. My main source of info about the appearance and personalities of these creatures came from a book by William T. Cox, “Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts“. The designs for these creatures were bonkers and didn’t make much anatomical sense. I chose the Gumberoo, Snoligoster and the Axe-handle hound to feature in my book since they can the best options for storytelling.

 

 

I looked at a combination of sketches from the original book and other artists interpretations I found online.
The Axe-handle hound was the hardest to design, trying to get a version that looked cute but still read as an axe wasn’t the easiest and if I’m being honest I’m still not that sure I nailed it, but I didn’t have time to keep playing around with it. I was happy with the Snoligoster though (It’s the weird Crocodile thing.)

Next I had to worry about the actual design of the bible itself. Since the story was based on campfire stories I decided to introduce the pitch bible with a kooky old man welcoming us to the camp and then popping up throughout the bible to add extra jokes and hints of character. The background of the pitch bible I decided to base on old advertisements for North American national parks.

I took random photos of pine forests and the Canadian mountains I found online, posterised them, added a faded colour and border. For the Fearsome Critters section I gave it the look of a old faded journal to match the feel of the original Fearsome Critters book.

The last section was my backgrounds. I’ve worked in animation backgrounds for a few years so I wasn’t too worried about this part, what I did want to focus on was my own weakness for internal backgrounds. I was pretty happy with my external backgrounds, I felt it had a really good example of depth. I did my perspective in Krita since it has a really good perspective tool built-in, then took the file over to Photoshop for more details I didn’t have an awful lot of time to add colour so I just kept my backgrounds as tone and sketches but was really happy with how it turned out. My internal backgrounds were a little harder and I did two passes before finally settling on a design. The first design was just completely off with it’s perspective and just ugly and boring.

I redid it, raised my horizon line and added more bunks to give more of a bunkhouse feel.

I was pretty happy happy with my final pitch bible. I was a little worried the different background styles might give the bible a jumbled feel but all in all I thought it actually turned out pretty well. If I’d had more time I would have added a lot more finished elements, rather than just sketches and I probably would have added more content like a better cover, (simple text covers are truly just so blurgh) and I would have added additional expression sheets for Jill and more actions shots of Jill and Axel interacting but for a final hand in I’m content enough. Also sorry for writing so much again, Sarah.