As someone who's been rolling some ideas for an 11-minute animated series around for a bit, I love looking at the inside elements of the pitching process, especially pitch bibles. I love seeing show creators describe their characters, something I feel provides a lot of insight into them we might not get upon viewing the series. I love seeing early art, I love seeing unmade sample episodes, I love learning about characters we never see in the final show. It remains an utter mystery to me why most of these are locked away from the public. (On a related note, can we please get the Smiling Friends pitch bible, Adult Swim? Pretty please with a cherry on top?)
But, thankfully, this is not always the situation. Case in point, the pitch bible for Jhonen Vasquez's deliciously bleak, ostensibly kid-friendly series Invader Zim found its way onto the Internet Archive a few years back, and it is quite the read. The Irken are called the Noying. Gaz serves more as something of a test subject for Dib than anything else. And, apparently, the original concept was for the series to have an Animaniacs-style structure, focusing more on short vignettes than the coherent 11-minute storylines typical of animated television (and that were later used for the series). It's an interesting look at how the series might have turned out in an alternate universe.
The Invader Zim pitch bible demonstrates the kind of unbridled creativity that makes you wonder why it had to be cancelled (outside of being wildly unsuitable for the average Rugrats-inclined Nickelodeon viewer). Seems like the kind of decision a barely sentient bag of meat and juice would make. At least we got Enter the Florpus.
No comments:
Post a Comment