Sooo...
Are your childhood memories mostly miserable ones?
Did you feel like a prisoner in an insane asylum at home, school and/or church?
Did you watch a lot of cartoons (even cartoons that you didn't even enjoy, purely out of sheer boredom)?
Do you love to animate, but need someone with ideas to help motivate you?
Wanna help our non-profit make amazing cartoons?
Cartoons that will inspire kids and make them excited to be alive?
Cartoons that are funny because they tell the truth about all the lies in life?
Cartoons that make kids feel brave in the face of daily abuse and dream-crushing?
Wanna spend the summer making a short with us for submission into the New York International Children's Film Festival?
CONCEPT:
Okay... So what exactly are we doing, you might be wondering? Let me try to explain:
Well, in our current society, millions of children fail to receive the nurturing knowledge necessary to flourish to their full potential. Stress-oppressed families and test-obsessed schools don't help this, they actually discourage it with their messages of "respect and obey my authority" (if you grew up poor, with uneducated, hyper-religious parents or teachers who discouraged your desire to think and hope, you'll surely understand...).
Kids are told to follow the rules of their masters. They are threatened with punishments and bad grades, some even spanked/beaten and forced to take medication for their ADD/ADHD/etc.. if they don't. They feel like something is wrong with the world -- that there's something else deeper going on that no one is telling them about -- but when no one tells them the truth, they start to worry that there's something wrong with THEM instead. In fact, everyone keeps telling them to "relax" or "calm down," and that they "worry too much." They see that the rules that exist are responsible for making things worse, but how will they ever be brave enough to brake the rules and fix things if no one teaches them how to?
When communication with adults failed in childhood (and unless you were one of the lucky few with great parents and great teachers, they almost always did), all they have is vapid video games or brain-draining tv to turn to. At best, it gives them time to detox. At worst, it makes them more frustrated and promotes violence and escape. Honestly, did you learn anything helpful about life from Steve Urkel? The pink Power Ranger? Jigglypuff? Spongebob? How many millions of kids are playing simulation games of blowing off people's heads (call of duty) or hacking boars to earn gold (world of warcraft) and are still angry, depressed and isolated. It's not helping!
This is where we come in. We want to help.
GOAL:
In order to give us a concrete deadline, we are aiming at making a pilot which can also double for submission into the New York International Children's Film Festival (due Sept. 15th 2011).
Depending on what happens from there, we will begin simultaneously pitching the idea to networks and distributors as well as posting interactive cartoons online. We will try to teach kids how to become courageous, world-saving superheros. Not in a preachy sunday school way, not in a lame, parent-friendly, 'edu-tainment' kind of way, and not in an 'all-action-and-violence' kind of way either, but in a way that they will actually listen to and believe because it's honest and spoken in their language.
People will call it "offensive" and "inappropriate," but we don't care (if we do not get a lot of angry complaints from parents, we aren't doing our job) because our non-profit organization is made up of not only entertainment industry professionals, but also researchers in the fields of alternative education, neurophilosophy, consciousness studies and child development.
Essentially, we have set up a non-profit with the goal of making cartoons for kids with shitty parents and shittier teachers. We are raising/educating their kids for them because they are doing a terrible job. We're trying to make the horrors of child abuse slightly less terrifying for kids, showing them how to laugh at and understand the immature adults in their lives instead of fear them or get angry with them.
All of us working on this project have one thing in common: WE ALL RECOGNIZED FROM A VERY YOUNG AGE THAT THERE IS SOMETHING VERY WRONG WITH THE WAY (MOST) ADULTS TREATED US.
We looked at our parents/teachers/etc.. and thought "what is WRONG with these people!?" We all felt alien. We all felt weird. We all felt odd and quirky and out of place. We doodled and scribbled and asked questions which no one would answer. But when we are together working on this cartoon, we feel perfectly normal. We all understand each other and feel safe and encouraged to be ourselves. There is nothing wrong with us.
As kids, we wanted answers about the world, but we were ignored, dismissed and treated like we were stupid (and I have Aspergers!). Well, we are old now and we've found our answers, and we know that there are millions of kids dying to know those same answers, and we're going to tell them by making the best cartoon possible.
Currently we are looking for artists, animators, illustrators, graphic designers... basically anyone with the time and dedication necessary to interpret the isolation and frustration of a childhood where no one will listen to your urgent pleas is welcome to apply. If you think you can create a visual world from the eyes of a child who thinks they are losing their mind, get in touch asap!
But you have to NEED to do this. We don't want anyone involved with this who doesn't love every second of it. This can't be considered a "job," it has to be your reason for leaping out of bed. If you feel as though you have something to offer our project, please respond with a personal story about yourself and tell us how exactly you'd like to be a part of our family. Links to previous work is also welcome. RESUMES ARE NOT NECESSARY. We do not care so much what you've done, what we are interested in is what you are willing to do.
If trying to rescue kids from turning into miserable teens with depression/addiction problems isn't it's own reward, do not bother responding.
What little money we have for this project is going right back into the project. All of us involved will be losing money because we believe in this so much. We have lost friends because our passion makes them feel guilty about their laziness. People are mad at us because they are emotionally needy and do not understand the concept of selflessness. We can no longer rationalize doing anything else but this. We have found our life's purpose, and now it is our job to find others like us so that we can see it become a reality (this is a fancy way of saying there is no pay).
The story will be something sort-of like:
Shel Silverstein meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Dr. Seuss meets the Matrix
the 400 Blows meets Fantastic Planet
J.D. Salinger meets Calvin and Hobbes
South Park meets Pan's Labyrinth
Kurt Vonnegut meets My Neighbor Totoro
Roald Dahl meets THEY LIVE!
Ramona Quimby meets the Virgin Suicides
Home Movies meets Ghosthound
The Wall meets Freaks and Geeks
Charlie Brown meets Serial Experiments Lain
Muppet Babies meets the Golden Compass
Phillip K. Dick meets Sesame Street
Pee-Wee's Playhouse meets Harry Potter
Where the Wild Things Are meets Over the Edge
Pippi Longstocking meets Rosemary's Baby
(I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but I hope you get the idea...)
If this sounds at all interesting to you, please don't hesitate to write with questions or stories about yourself:
[B]
dontgetsmartwithme@mail.com[/B]
