Chainsaw, Dennis Tupicoff's paean to infidelity and power tools, was the grand prize winner at this year's OIAF. © Dennis Tupicoff.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we Canadians are a fairly resilient lot, you know. Fifty weeks ago I was on a farm just out of town here, and every single banana tree there had been snapped off practically at the base. And yet here we are not a year later and the bananas are flourishing everywhere… And just as the bananas have recovered in this area, so have the people. And whilst there's still a lot to be done in this community, there has been an enormous amount achieved in restoration work over the past 52 weeks."

Thus did OIAF Artistic Director Chris Robinson, Great Communicator, reluctant showman, mass debater, kick off the 2008 Ottawa International Animation Festival, thoroughly confusing his audience and, in accordance with a long-established tradition, severely trying their patience. It was a fitting beginning to the latest edition of North America's largest animation festival, where animators from around the world come to watch films, talk shop and drink large quantities of beer. But first there was the Television Animation Conference.

The Greening of TAC
Held as always at the sumptuous Chateau Laurier hotel, TAC opened on September 17 with a keynote address by Brown Johnson, president, animation (Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group), who said that creating successful animation should be "one part story, one part playground and one part creator vision."

Sometimes that creator vision requires perseverance. In their keynote speech on September 18, Robot Chicken co-creators Seth Green and Matthew Senreich related how it took them four years to get their wacky series off the ground. The show was conceived while Green was busy acting in such films as Austin Powers and Senreich was editing comics-focused Wizard magazine. "We knew nothing about stop-motion," Senreich says, while Green notes, "It wasn't easy to pitch a 'stop-motion sketch comedy.'"

Eventually, Sony financed 12 shorts that were shopped around for four years and the show finally found a home at Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Said Green, "It seems so amazingly impossible that we're now in our fourth season. Robot Chicken is something we made and we love it."

Green and Senreich are currently working on a stop-motion animated family feature, Naughty or Nice.

Robot Chicken production tip: Don't get overwhelmed with the process, and thank God for unpaid interns.

Seth Green and Matthew Senreich regale a capacity crowd at the Television Animation Conference with tales of the creation of Robot Chicken. Photo credit: Janet Hetherington.

Pitch This!
Pitching was a theme often revisited at TAC. In the "Pitch This!" competitive session, two TV series ideas were presented to a panel of experts that included Athena Georgaklis (Teletoon), Marie McCann (CBC), Linda Simensky (PBS) and Daniel Weinman (Jetix Europe), with Ira Levy (Breakthrough Films and Television) as moderator.

First-time pitcher Cole Schapansky of Winnipeg presented The Mulligans, a 2D animated show aimed at children aged 4 to 9 that features barnyard animals at a golf club. This pitch was followed by Way Out There from Louisiana-based creator Al Bohl. The proposed Flash series aimed at 9- to 13-year-olds is about a human boy who is an exchange student on an alien planet. Both pitches received detailed commentary by the judges, along with suggestions on how to improve the concepts. The panel selected Way Out There as the winner of the pitch competition, and Bohl was awarded a pass to OIAF 2009.

Pitch This! pitching tip: Tell the story. Focus on central characters and have stories coming out of those characters.

Short and Sweetland
Even veteran animators can find pitching a daunting experience. Festival speaker Doug Sweetland, director and animation supervisor of Pixar's Presto, found himself having to pitch the Presto story when he took his first stab at writing a short. "It was incredibly difficult," Sweetland told Animation World Network. "I was naïve enough to think it wouldn't be."

Sweetland came to the project with considerable experience, having joined Pixar in 1994 to work on Toy Story as an animator. He worked on each subsequent feature up to and including Cars. "I was having a good time. I was not in a big rush to direct," he says. Still, creating the Presto short allowed both Sweetland and his crew to explore new areas and new responsibilities.

Sweetland says that he learned a lot from the story's transformation over the 16 months required to complete it. "I found out what a delicate house of cards it is," he says. "One change affects the entire structure." He was involved from beginning to end, including sound recording at the legendary Skywalker Sound Ranch. "It's the Valhalla for recording," he recalls with some awe.