Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Where are the animation writers?


This is something I wondered when going through the blogs I read. I can find loads of blogs on animation from the drawing end, animators, cartoonists and so on but just one on animation writing.

And yet every show has a team of animation writers. Where are they? Why aren't they talking about their craft? Where are the animation writers' message boards?

I love writing. I have nothing but admiration for writers generally, especially comedy writers. I think that writing well takes skill, talent and a knowledge of the craft that most people will just never get. And there are some fantastic writer's websites and blogs out there. Just not from animation writers.

So, if writers in other forms have a web presence, it can't be due to my first thought which was - maybe they're just solitary creatures, as many writers are?

Is it that they haven't a real interest in cartoons? They're just hoping to get the paychecks in while they hawk that movie script around? Are they ashamed of what they do? Or maybe it's that a huge amount of cartoons are dictated by producers, broadcasters and the interests of global co-productions so the writers are hired as little more than typists. In that scenario, there's damn all to talk about. But, really, I just don't know.

I know a couple of animation writers. I'll ask them. If you know any or can track some down, ask them - why are they invisible?

5 comments:

Toole said...

who's dream, who's passion is it to write down cartoons.

toonaholic said...

this is a good question. I never really thought about it. you don't really see any cartoon writer blogs.
maybe they write all day and the last thing they wanna do is write a blog.

Mr. Trombley said...

Dear Sir, a very quick search turned up the following:

http://www.animation-writer.com/
http://blog.writersdigest.com/scriptnotes/PermaLink,guid,1ee38609-e337-4374-b913-75e6c9cb809d.aspx

Neither are blogs, but little effort = little gain, as they say.

Toole said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bitter Animator said...

Yeah, I had seen that animation-writer site, Mr.T. Your other link was new to me.