Talk to the Snail

Someone asked me this past week what was the biggest problem that, in my opinion, I saw in the tons of Oh Yeah! pitches we’ve seen this year. Easy: they’re often too complicated. It seems we’re always suggesting to creators that there’s way too much going on in their pitches, and that the best course is almost always to be as simple as possible (while true for seven-minute cartoons, this really goes for just about any art form, I think). Then I generally use as example one of my favorite shorts of all time: “Bully for Bugs”, directed by Chuck Jones in 1953. Bugs meets bull, bull ticks off Bugs, Bugs belittles bull. Simple. Pretty much just two characters, one of whom doesn’t speak. No B (or C!) story. Of course we wouldn’t want every short to be just like “Bully for Bugs”, and while this cartoon has tons of great stuff going for it, in terms of simplicity, it’s really perfect. (Hey, what about Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the masters of cartoon simplicity with Tom and Jerry? — editor)