It's working: the Creatives in Animation Network (CAN)

The 9th Creatives in Animation Network (CAN) event was held on Monday, Jan 3rd.

Yet another interesting group of creative and energetic people who want to make magic.

The first CAN event was in January 2012 and  some 140 people have now attended events , with some 180 in total becoming part of the wider, international network through CAN group pages on Facebook and LinkedIn. Information is being spread between Creatives freely, which is fantastic and positive. 

Collaborations have happened - in terms of a feature, shorts, series, games - already! And the network is still growing...

It's kind of cool to have been behind the start of this back in December 2011!

Information Sheet on the Creatives in Animation Network

How a Random Call Led to a Series

In October 2011, I was heading to New York to see a reading of my TV pilot, Archangel in the Irish Rep. The reading was being produced by - and driven by - the wonderful Anna Nugent (who played the lead role) and Paul Nugent.

Because I know virtually no-one in New York, I put a call out through LinkedIn - anyone want to meet in New York on these dates? - and ended up meeting Natascha Crandall, an educational consultant who worked with children's (mostly animation) series. (It's an impressive list: Nickelodeon’s Peter Rabbit, Zack and Quack, Bubble Guppies, The Backyardigans, The Wonder Pets, CBeebies’ Bing Bunny, The Octonauts, Sesame Tree, Sprout’s Driftwood Bay, and many Sesame Workshop.)

We had a lovely chocolate-filled meeting in a cafe that seemed to make everything - main courses, starters, every type of dessert with chocolate. I talked to her about WULFIE - currently in development with Monster Entertainment, with MEDIA support- and PUNKY (Geronimo Animation; second series is being officially launched February 3rd on RTE Junior alongside another series I worked on, WILDERNUTS (Kavaleer)). We talked about life in general - y'know, hopes, dreams, aspirations, need for chocolate on a regular basis - and decided we'd love to work together.

Roll on to last February. She had people interested in ideas and did I have any? Well, Wulfie was gone so I started firing ideas out of the ether -- far easier than getting them produced! -- and one of them stuck. ROXY & ROWENA. I did a bible, she pulled together an amazing curriculum in its support and we began to talk to animators.

And now, in little over a week it's off to Kidscreen! As if it's all grown up and ready to leave home! Natascha will be pitching it - so far - to Sprout, PBS, Zodiak, Sixteen South, Nick UK and Hulu.

And yesterday I got final animation from the wonderful artist,  Larry Ruppel (see pic to left) so now the bible can be finished.

It kills me that I won't be there to pitch this series alongside Natascha! It's a pretty personal project and a very sweet one and wouldn't it be amazing if it got picked up?!



At least it will be in good company because its older cousins WULFIE - an amazing project now after nearly eight months of development - and PUNKY will be will be somewhere there too.

Worms in The Wall... my new (live action) series!

The pilot script is written, the bible has been beautifully transformed by Tom Roche into something divine and this week my new series goes out to woo networks in pursuit of a slot!

Worms in the Wall is an idea I've been developing with Paul Donovan of Grand Picturesand I'm really excited about it. I've wanted for decades to develop something loosely based on the B&B my Grandmother ran in Dun Laoghaire from the 1920s and the seafront hotel (the Wavecrest) she took on in 1936. I've toyed with elements of it - the permanent winter residents my mother grew up with, the friendships residents formed with their landlady, the history happening all around them... but nothing had ever worked.

Until last September.

I've also always wanted to work on something with Grand Pictures. One of their most recent successes has been as co-producer with Sky of Moone Boy, a series I love. They were interested in one of my first family features back in 2003 but I took the film in a different direction. Still, it has been at the back of my mind and this year when I met Paul at the Galway Film Fleadh and he said he was looking for TV, specifically comedy drama, my antennae went up. I sent him a couple of series ideas that were ready to go and reasonably developed but neither of them stuck.

Then I remembered my Grandmother's B&B/ hotel... I sent Paul a one page pitch called Worms in the Wall. We met for coffee, he was passionate about the potential for the idea and I got to work. One deal memo later and Worms... began to seriously evolve.

It's great working with a producer who's on the same wavelength and as keen to get a project made as you are to write it. It's actually fun. You come away from meetings not feeling stressed or bogged down by notes but itching to get into the next draft. It's been a painless and pleasurable process.

Oh and if you're wondering where the title comes from, I once stayed in this really dodgy hotel while backpacking around Oz in 1987. In this hotel - they're really B&B's but if they serve drink, they're 'hotels' - Auld Lang's Aye played constantly. When I asked why, I was told that if they stopped playing it, all the termites would stop holding hands and the place would fall down.

I'm not sure what my Grandmother would have thought of that!

Date set for first Creatives in Animation Network event of 2014

Greetings and happy New Year to everyone!

The first CAN event of 2014 will be held on Monday February 3rd in the Roasted Brown Cafe space (thanks Fergal) in Filmbase (Curved St, Temple Bar, Dublin 2) from 7-9pm. Hope to see many of you there -- let me know if you can make it along by mailing me on ljsedgwick@lindsayjsedgwick.com!

There is no doubt but that creative collaborations have been happening at various levels among network members, which is exciting! This is the third year of the Network, so we're still only in infancy. For those of you who haven't heard of the network before, check out the dedicated page on this blog.

Carla Mooney, who joined the network in Galway, is behind the Silk Road film festival in Dublin this March and asked me to mention it. Some of you may even have films that would be a good match. The website is http://silkroadfilmfestival.com

(Logo design by Neil Delaney)

Make Things Happen : 2013, phew, you were good!

Last year I said I wanted to get stuff produced. It was a simple, desperate sort of yearning born from years of frustration. Scripts, as we all know, are no use winking at us from the shelf - they need to be realised, brought to life and that's a collaborative exercise that isn't always without deep, even root-canal-level trauma!

But it worked!

I had two plays staged - SALT ON OUR SKIN in Smock Alley (performed by Aoife Moore, directed by Antoinette Duffy) and BY MR FARQUHAR (performed by Stephen Bradley and Kate O'Rourke, director Caroline Brady) in the enormous Waterside Theatre, Derry - this after a gap of 15 years!

A fellow writer asked me in January what I wished for in 2013 and I said I'd always wanted a theatre commission -- and I got it! I got my first stage commission from the Co. Wexford Youth Theatre. A contemporary, powerful piece for a cast of 24 - the working title is ELEPHANT - , it is now cast and due for production in February next year with Arts Council (Young Ensemble) support.

I have two films under option - the live action one is due to shoot next April, all being well; it has some cast n crew attached; the other is an animated feature with a studio attached and seeking development funding.

I had my first short film made in years - BARZAKH, directed by Donogh MacCarthy Morrogh - and it became my first award-winning short; next stop London Film Festival in January. I saw it in a 300+ seater cinema at the Cork International Film Festival in November which was awesome, especially given the company it was in. It's next up at the London Short Film Festival on Jaunary 18th!

I've also seen the second series of my IFTA-nominated animation series, PUNKY, (Geronimo Animation) go on air and another, WULFIE get Media funding to allow for full development with Monster Entertainment. We've rewritten the bible, they've taken it to Mipcom and now we're working on scripts for the Kidscreen package.

My CREATIVES IN ANIMATITON NETWORK nearly doubled in size though we only managed three meetings - but there are now several active collaborations happening, some of them with funding, which is exciting! It's lovely to be there at the start of something!

Then, out of the blue, I was asked to write scripts for my first app in November - launch should be early next year but it looks amazingly, undeniably sweet and magical and fun. Great animation by Giant Animation/ Dan Spenser and software by Marino Software/ Heidi Egger but I can't say any more for now.

I also started work as a creative consultant on my first kids' game unexpectedly - NewzMonkeys, produced by Carmel Crawford in Dundalk. Pre-launch registration opened in November and feedback from test groups is wonderful.

Out fo the Galway Film Fleadh, I began developing my first comedy drama series. Best thing is that the producer is someone with whom I've always wanted to work. That's a pleasure in itself and lovely to be working with someone fromt he very start whose vision is as ambitious as your own! And in December, a new contact has led me to write my first radio series pitches in years for an independent company who have the energy to make stuff happen.

In the downtime, I finished two children's novels. These are out seeking publishers; others were put on hold because the feature scripts from which they grew have come to life again.

For the first time, I moderated... at SDGI's Digital Biscuit, interviewing the wonderful Chris Nee, creator of Doc McStuffins - I loved it! I also sat on an animation panel in the IFI and I taught two courses in Filmbase with two really good groups of students from whom I expect great things!

And then, to top it all, I got engaged!

(Yeah, I know that has nothing to do with work but then it sort of does because his support and enthusiasm for my work is wonderful and necessary, especially when everything seems to be exploding under your feet into smelly gloop and you need someone to hold you up so you don't sink too far.)

And yet, this is only the stuff that happened.

It's not the other series that were optioned or that I developed for various companies... or the many scripts - shorts and features - that were entered into competitions and sometimes shortlisted (Pigpen: semi-finalist, Screenwriting Goldmine; Salt: shortlisted RTE/ Filmbase)

Neither does the list include all the interesting people I met this year with whom I would love to work in the year(s) ahead -- if we can just find the right project or the right constellation of stars zooms into orbit and whispers 'you have funding' in our ears!!

Before I made this list, I was thinking that I hadn't done much this year at all, wasted tons of time intending to do things... Mastering the Art of Procrastination to award level. Now I think I might take a few days off even though the pre-Christmas hummmmm has quietened! (Unless I decide to reward myself by starting to brainstorm another feature project that might be the first new script of 2013!)

Mind you, I'm waiting feedback on several projects at present so my sense of achievement could yet be nicely rocked into a supreme lack of confidence and panic as soon as various production companies return to work on Jan 6th so I'm just going to enjoy this satisfied 'lull'.

Cos, regardless of what happens to our dreams and projects, we keep doing it, don't we? We keep writing because we make MAGIC! I hope 2014 brings that magic to life for all of you in at least some of the projects you've dreamt up.

Happy New Year !

NewzMonkeys - the first game I've been involved in!

TODAY is the day a new game appears on-line, produced by Carmel Crawford and her team out of Dundalk, called NewzMonkeys. It's set in the adventure-filled fantasy world of Scoopstown and allows you play a range of fun mini-games, write and submit reports on what’s happening in your world and share them with all your friends on NewzMonkeys.

Having had 13 years experience as a freelance journo (writing under three different names!) before becoming a full-time writer of slightly stranger stuff, it has been great fun being a consultant on the creative content.

The full launch will be early next year but registration opens tomorrow and for kids who register now, as part of the First Generation Team, they will have access to the new information website, www.newzmonkeys.com where they can keep informed about Newzmonkeys – The Game, its development and ultimately its launch. They will be the first to know when they can access Newzmonkeys for real - they might even get to pre-test the game before the launch.

In addition...

• New members will be emailed a special Christmas edition of the Treetop Times . Packed with puzzles, games, updates on Newzmonkeys and much more.

• They can become featured reporters by sending in articles. Their reviews and news could be used in January's Treetop Times.

• They may get to visit the Design Studio to meet the games development team and see how the game is created and developed.


Oh and by the way, it costs nothing to register! It's a great game for children who love words or want to write - and for those you'd like to perhaps encourage to write or play with words a bit more! Feedback from test groups has been very positive already.

PUNKY Series 2 starts Monday on RTE2

PUNKY Series 2 starts on Monday (25th November) at 9am on RTE2, with the repeat starting at 2pm on the same channel from Dec 2nd.

Produced by Geronimo Animation (Formerly Monster Animation) and directed by Simon Crane.