Day 2 - TAC conference

Up again at 6:30 and I boot it over the Chateau for the breakfast. Today's keynote speaker is David Silverman, legendary in the Simpson's circles and director of 'The Simpsons Movie', co-director of 'Monsters Inc.' and co-director on 'El-Dorado'. He is quite funny and really livens things up with some very funny Simpson's clips and tons of anecodotes regarding the creation of the show, how it's written, etc... Not as inspiring and humble as Josh Selig, but a cool guy with a ton of experience. Heck he helped start the Simpson's!

Now I book it over to Mecury Filmworks, way out in some industry park. They have a brand new studio which is pretty slick looking. Amber, their head recruiter, tours me around and answers my questions about their recruitment methods, pipeline, all of that stuff. I bump into Clint Eland, founder and owner of Mercury. I remember Clint from my days at Studio 'B' as they contributed some CG to our 2D shows. Mecury is going to be crazy busy in the spring and they are hiring heavily right now. They are doing 4 shows for Teletoon, Disney and such. I saw way too much to write about. I will be sharing in the class.

I get back in time for a quick lunch and head over to the Arts Court building for a workshop on writing for Preschool and Comedy Animation. This is being led by my friend Ian Cortlett, who looks like he survived the previous night. I could only stay for half as I had to get back to the TAC conference for another panel. This one is 'Tried, Tested and True!'. It involves Frank Caruso -VP of King Features Syndicate (the newspaper comics), Pam Slavin - VP of Cookie Jar and David Wiebe - YTV, Corus Ent. It was interesting, but not much to share on this one.

Next was a coffee break, a quick meeting with Lauren Talledo of Kidscreen magazine and then another panel at 3:30.

This next one was cool, because it involved 3 shows that were being pitched to this amazing panel of judges from Nickolodeon, YTV, Cartoon Network and Teletoon. Major broadcasters. These lucky groups were chosen to pitch their show idea in front of the entire TAC conference attendees and the panel gives them feedback on the spot. Quite informative. I was nervous and sweating just watching them. I won't comment right now on all three, but one of them was about animated singing boxes that has real potential. I am not kidding. It was funny!

Hey, I finally get some exercise in. I go for a swim and relax for an hour. I'm now off to a workshop at the Arts Court building called 'Intro to Animation Acting drill'. It was fast paced and very participatory. It was a lot of fun and I definitely picked up some things. Jackie Vallance does her workshops all over North America and she had a ton of energy and enthusiasm. Exhausting just watching her for 2 hours. I barely got any photos in focus because of how much she moved.

Now it is a late dinner (9:30) and I'm off to bed. No parties for me tonight.