Expert: Russell Calabrese - 10/24/2007

Question
Hi Mr. Calabrese, hope your doing well today. This is my first time writing to you and I would greatly appreciate any help you can give me, now on to my question. I'm a young artist, and writer and I have a really great concept for a new action/fantasy franchise. It's a great story with great characters, and I've even written a full length, live action, movie script for it. But being that I have no agent, no contacts or Hollywood credentials it seems near impossible. My best friend and co writer/collaberator is a very talented young artist who is about to graduate from the Art Institute of Atlanta. Being that were both huge animation fans and artist, he suggested it may be easier to get the series produced if we try and get it made into an animated series first, then focus on a film. So my question to you is how would we go about this? We have a script which the series will be based off of, as well as countless character designs. Where do we go from here to try and make this thing a reality?

A little info about us: The show is kind of a mature theme show along the lines of a Samurai Champloo or Cowboy Bebop. The art style were going for is slightly dark yet stylized, think maybe the Hellboy animated movie, The new Batman series, or the recent TMNT movie (that style of character design and such). Like I said earlier my partner and I are both amateur writers, as well as award winning young artist. In a couple of months he will have a full degree from the Art Institute of Atlanta in the field of animation. I will be finished with school in the summer of 2008 with a degree in the field of TV and Radio broadcasting/production. I hope to hear from you soon with some answers, maybe if you have time we can even exchange emails, and discuss the series in further detail.

Answer
It would be easier to tell you on the phone because the answer can get quite convoluted and long. The best thing you can do is get your buddies together make a 30 to 60 second fully animated teaser and show that around so you don't get stuck in development hell.

Copyright and tradmark all you can with your project so no one can steal it.
Also beware of signing anything that doesn't have a reversion clause in it. Many were burned.

Russell