Stuff Said 066: Animation (from HeroesCon 2017)

SHOW NOTES: As mentioned in my intro to the episode, this was a panel I volunteered to moderate and not one I proposed or conceived of, but that said, I was glad to have the opportunity and wanted to “do right” by the assignment. In preparation, I sought out interviews with the panelists, mostly to hear what kinds of things they’d been asked in the past, particularly so I could avoid them. So, much like when I barely talked about THE WALKING DEAD with Robert Kirkman, here I was going to have Bob Camp on and basically avoid talking about Ren & Stimpy. But honestly, he’s done so much and maybe it’s just me projecting, but I know if/when I’m ever interviewed, as much as I want to talk about the thing I’m promoting…or as much as I know SpongeBob is the most notable thing I’ve worked on…or as much as I know there’s some small cult of people that loves talking about “Fast Lane”, those aren’t, really, the things that would get me going. So on some level I’m looking for those things when I talk to people…unlocking that can of worms, but like, good worms…gummy worms, if you will. Though, in some cases I DO like the idea of a can of worms. I like getting the inside dish on stuff, exploring the challenges of things…and I for sure, 100% thought of a bunch of questions that could take that path. But as mentioned, Andy Suriano offered some advice, which was to keep things positive. He’d had experience on animation panels and knew that they could easily become big ol’ complaint-o-ramas…and as someone who’s been on plenty of kids comics panels that turn into people bemoaning channels of distribution, I thought better of it and tried to keep things positive. I neglected to mention this in my intro, but speaking of positivity, man, that Tom Bancroft makes a terrific impression. He walked into the panel room and immediately playing to the audience, and not in an obnoxious way, but a genuine “who’s excited to talk about animation?!” way…and as we were seeing up the recording stuff, he was asking audience members at random to name their favorite Disney films…dare I say he might’ve done a fine and dandy job moderating the whole affair himself. It was a fun one. Hope you enjoy(ed) listening to it.