My pitch--kaboom in cartoon-speak

I bombed, apparently. If you look below, you see I created a short cartoon starring two characters from my long scripts--THE BEE-TWEENZZ--25 and 849 from Sgt Buzzy's 950-kid brood.

I finally teamed up with an artist--and he drew very nice storyboards of the short cartoon.

I pitched to two people at the cartoon company via Skype (which I also bought and learned).

I was nervous, not having taken a real meeting in some years--most of my freelance work was via email. My real meeting days were back in DC.

I did fine on the Skyping (pat pat), and I think I did pretty well on reading and hyping the TWEENZZ.

But I could see they were not laughing--maybe a smile or two. That told the tale.

Their criticism was that the TWEENZZ skewed too young. To me, puns and irony are sort of
"old," but maybe I did not get this across. That was on me.

But they also said the two did not have a character arc--you know, when a character starts out "bad" and through conquering obstacles, sees a better and presumably "less bad" way to live.

Do cartoon characters have arcs? Yes, they have "acts"--start out, then encounter conflict and obstacles, overcome--yay!

But arcs? Does the Roadrunner suddenly regret all the grief he gave Wile E Coyote and they go for a tequila?

Cartoons characters are predictable--only their situations and mayhem get worse and worse.

A friend told me I was out of touch.

I don't think I am.

But I am also not going to be featured in this company--well, so be it.

By the way, this company is involved with Sponge Bob--is he going to eat a poison Krabby Kake and have to surface and breathe nasty old air?