Anyhow, what are YOU doing this find Sunday? Out Parasailing? Picnicking? Paintballing? Pony riding? Whatever it is, I bet you’re not sitting here reviewing FIFTY SEVEN different pitches and offering detailed feedback on each one! Right? RIGHT? Yeah, I figured! You know WHY you’re not doing that? Because you’re not a judge for the 2010 Pitch Party Contest from Animation Magazine!

Creators from around the world basically buy a 1/6th page ad and a panel of industry decision makers pick a favorite, and offer feedback for each pitch. I am one of the several industry “decision makers” for the contest and as such, I’m on pot of coffee number 2 and busily reviewing all these pitches while the LA sunshine beams outside my window!

Amusingly enough, I actually ENTERED this pitch party back in… 2002, I think? I entered my “Crashed” series (which I ended up selling to Cartoon Network a couple years AFTER entering). Back then, I figured 300 bucks was cheaper than airfare to LA, and my concept would get reviewed by all the decision makers, which would later serve as a nice ice-breaker when I pitched them in person (and it did!). So when I got asked to judge this years pitch party, I thought hey, this is kind of cool, I’ve come full circle!

If you want to play along, you can go ahead and vote for your favorite pitch – just follow the link here, and then click on your favorite. There’s a prize for the most popular entry, the audience choice winners (I think) get to pitch whomever they like in person. So vote away and help out an emerging artist!

Ok, distraction over, back to reviewing pitches.

“Waking Sleeping Beauty is no fairytale. It is a story of clashing egos, out of control budgets, escalating tensions… and one of the most extraordinary creative periods in animation history. Director Don Hahn and producer Peter Schneider, key players at Walt Disney Studios Feature Animation department during the mid1980s, offer a behind—the—magic glimpse of the turbulent times the Animation Studio was going through and the staggering output of hits that followed over the next ten years. Artists polarized between the hungry young innovators and the old guard who refused to relinquish control, mounting tensions due to a string of box office flops, and warring studio heads create the backdrop for this fascinating story told with a unique and candid perspective from those that were there. Through interviews, internal memos, home movies, and a cast of characters featuring Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Roy Disney, alongside an amazing array of talented artists that includes Don Bluth, John Lasseter, and Tim Burton, Waking Sleeping Beauty shines a light on Disney Animation’s darkest hours, greatest joys and its improbable renaissance.”

Check out the trailer here and go check this film out.

All of those things SUCK compared to the NUCLEAR COWBOYZ. You know why? Because they have EXPLOSIONS AND FIRE AND MOTORCYCLES AND PRETTY GIRLS DANCING all wrapped around a fantastically crazy post apocolypic story that made NO SENSE but NOBODY CARES because the main focus is MOTORBIKE STUNTS THAT ARE SO RAD YOU WON’T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!!

WHOOOOOOO!!!!!

I’ve seen Motorcross events before, where a bunch of dudes run around a dirt track and do a bunch of jumps. I remember it being some sort of race, which I (at the ripe age of nine) thought was stupid because I didn’t really care who won because I didn’t know anyone and all I wanted to see were super rad jumps. It was like this forced “sport” that they had to come up with to have an excuse for guys to do big jumps on motorcross bikes. Well, somebody listened! They threw out the nobody cares race component, added EXPLOSIONS, kickass music, and crazy lights! If I was nine NOW, and saw this show, my fucking HEAD would explode!

These guys are AMAZING. They leap, god, I don’t know, 100 feet in the air? Then they do the most insane things while they’re sitting there, floating. They stand on the handlebars, grab the back seat, flip 360 degrees backwards.

Sometimes there are like 5 bikes in the air at once and you don’t even know where too look there is so much awesomeness. If one guys wiped out (and nobody did) there’d be a guy landing on his head – one takes off, the other is in mid air, and a third guy is landing, all at the same time. It’s bananas!

This guy rode an ATV.

He would hop off his quad and just flip himself all over the place while in the air. At one point he went UPSIDE DOWN. Like, a complete flip. BACKWARDS. ON AN ATV!! How the hell do you even do that?!

Totally awesome. I am now an official superfan of the Nuclear Cowboyz! If at all possible, go see these guys, they’re astounding. Plus there’s pretty girls dancing on… erm… vertical modern dance assist platform mechanisms. Because there were two motorbike tribes that were feuding, or something. I don’t know. It didn’t make much sense.

What?? C’mon, those aren’t STRIPPER POLES, clearly. They have little.. footpegs. These poles are totally different. This is a classy show. Get your mind out of the gutter. Here, look at more awesome motorbike stunts.

SO totally awesome. A few shots posted here. I had to ramp the ISO up to 6400 to shoot these at a shutter speed of 1/300th because my crappy lens is so slow. I need one of those fancy CorsiWorld lenses!

AWESOME night out. Go see these guys if you can. They are bananas. I know I said “awesome” and “bananas” like ten times in this post but I don’t care. It’s awesome and bananas!

B-A-N-A-N-A-S ! ! ! !