246 | “Do I Need to Self-Produce to Sell My Writing?” (ft. Emily Brundige)

Emily Brundige was tired of waiting around for gatekeepers to say yes. So, she stopped asking.

In this candid conversation with Lorien, Emily shares how her frustration with the traditional hurry-up-and-wait pitch process pushed her to self-produce an animated short. That project — born from passion, resourcefulness, and a refusal to wait — eventually became GOLDIE, a series now on Apple TV+.

They dive into what it actually takes to make your own work, how festivals and buzz helped build momentum, and why animation is such a powerful space for self-starters. If you've ever felt stuck in development limbo, this episode might just give you the spark (and strategy) to make your move.

CHECK OUT EMILY'S BOOK HERE: https://www.emilybrundige.com/

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Lorien: Hey everyone, welcome back to the Screenwriting Life. I'm Lorien McKenna, and today I'm chatting with Emily Brundige, an animation writer and showrunner and songwriter, and among other things. She is an LA native and she began her animation career with the YouTube series Pubertina, which explored the awkwardness of puberty and amassed over 22 million views.

Since then, she's written and developed shows for top networks and studios like Disney, Fox, Warner Brothers, Dreamworks, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon, becoming known for blending quirky humor with heartfelt moments. In 2019, she released her award-winning short Goldie, which inspired her latest project, Goldie, an original animated show, which premiered on Apple TV plus on April 14th.

Congratulations and hi, Emily welcome to the show.

Emily: Hi. It was February 14th, Valentine's Day is when Goldie premiered.

Lorien: What did I do? What did I say?

Emily: April 14th.

Lorien: No way.

Emily: And it makes seem even hotter like it just came out.

Lorien: Valentine's Day, February 14th!

Emily: Or April 14th. It doesn't matter. It's on there.

Lorien: Oh, I love it. Oh my God. No, I totally was looking right at February. Anyway, so I think that's a little sneak peek of how my week is going, but so before we get into chatting about animation and your amazing career and experience we'll do adventures and screenwriting or how was your week and my week has been exactly that.

So I had to retake the intro three times before we started even this podcast. I got a date wrong. I feel like I am running on a hamster wheel that's in like the wrong cage. I don't know what's happening. I'm so fully into this project I'm working on, I'm working on a pitch, and I am about ready to share it with my manager and it's all I'm thinking about and all I'm doing and all I'm talking about it.

And I just feel so excited about it. But now I have this sense of desperate urgency to like, get it done and get it out there. 'Cause I have this thing where I'll be like, I have an idea for a show. And I work on it and then I'm in it for a month, and then two shows like it will come up on the, on tv. It's happened to me four times.

So I'm like, I'm in the zeitgeist. So this one I'm starting to see similar projects come out and I'm like, I gotta get it done. And then I have an animated show that I'm pitching that I'm also really excited about, but I've been in development on it for so many years that it's kind of like, yes, I love it.

I'm gonna do it when it sells, I'm gonna do it. But this one feels so desperate, like this panic. Like how I felt right before I gave birth, which was a little bit like, oh my God, I can't wait for this to get out. It's happening. It's happening. And then I had the baby and then I was like, what the hell happens now?

So I'm in that transitional, like it's my due date.

Emily: You're in a bit of a rat race with yourself.

Lorien: Yes. Like I have to transform now, but I, I don't have very little control over it. So, gross analogy. Awesome. With my metaphor.

Emily: I love it.

Lorien: Yeah. But then, the other part of my life is all the emails and all the things I've committed to doing and my life and it's spring break, I guess, which for me feels more like a threat than a reward.

Like your kid's on spring break, I'm like, oh no, I don't remember celebrating a spring break for a long time. So anyway.

Emily: Yeah, we, I already got past that a few weeks ago.

Lorien: Ah, oh yes.

Emily: Yeah, it's behind me now.

Lorien: How is your week?

Emily: My week has been pretty great which is, feels really good to say because. I'm fully immersed in the animation industry. I've never worked in live action. Born and bred, here in LA animation. But it's been so tough the past couple years, I'd say. So just to get into it, I haven't had a regular steady job income since I locked on animatics on my show, Goldie.

So that was June of 2023. And then I entered posts, but for different reasons I didn't make my regular salary during post, which is its own thing. But yeah, so, I've been waiting, I've been attached to projects, I am attached to a project. But it is, it's a waiting game. And so in the meantime, I mean things got really dire, like home ownership, pressure, all that stuff, that fun stuff. But it really put a fire under my butt.

So I started writing a book about a year ago.

Lorien: Oh, awesome.

Emily: And it's basically, I thought, what is my skillset that I can sell and share with other people? And I'm a writer, I thought about that. But really my special power I think is development. And that's mostly what I've been doing throughout my career.

So I decided to write a book about that. And I also get a lot of messages from aspiring creators wanting to meet up for coffee or have a zoom. And I can do that sometimes but it's not realistic for me to have all these meetings with strangers.

So I thought, here's a way where I can be compensated for my wisdom.

Lorien: That's awesome.

Emily: And I made sure, so the book is a comprehensive guide to developing animated shows. And the way I wrote it is I develop a show.

Lorien: Hold on. Hold on just a second. Quincy, I'm on my podcast. Go ahead. Sorry.

Emily: It's okay.

Lorien: Spring break coming at you live! With my daughter. Wanting use the washing machine on the other side of my office. So if anyone is curious about what it's like to work from home and be a glamorous Hollywood writer and try to do a podcast on spring break, right now my daughter's behind me.

Emily: I don't even try. My daughter's seven, so I'm just like, what do you wanna do today? I'm not gonna even try to work. Yeah.

Lorien: Yeah. Seven is different than 13, right? 13 is something like, I'm at work, these are my boundaries.

Emily: Yeah, yeah.

Lorien: But she has a sleepover today and she wants that rug clean for when her friend comes over so she had to balance priorities and I lost.

Emily: Oh, interesting. Different priorities. Yeah. My daughter's where can I make a fort? And how far can it extend through those?

Lorien: Anyway. Okay. We can keep that in the show, if not, but that's.

Emily: No, I think it's good.

Lorien: If you wanna know what really-- because we got a question last week-- and then I wanna hear about your book, but we last week about, we wanna talk about balancing, being a writer and motherhood. And I'm like, well if you wanna know about the real life of being a writer and being a mom and living in Hollywood, like that was it. I could have been a jerk to her, but I was already a jerk to her yesterday about something else. So I feel like I hit my quota of jerkiness to my kid.

Emily: A lot of negotiating.

Lorien: The path of least resistance was just like, come on, interrupt the show. Just go, yeah. Good choices, right?

Emily: No, I think you made the right choice.

Lorien: Thank you for your support.

Emily: Luckily, I totally understand, no judgment here. My daughter used to poke her head into all my meetings and all of that good stuff.

Lorien: Same. I think the one good thing about it though is she sees me doing this and she knows how important it's, even though she interrupts, 'cause you know, she's whatever, a kid. Yeah.

But she is seeing me do my job. It's not a mystery, right? Like she'll come down and I'm like writing. I remember one time I printed out a whole script, it was a feature and she goes, you wrote all those words.

Emily: That's awesome.

Lorien: So I got to sort of, instead of just going off and doing something else somewhere. It's a steady paycheck or whatever. There's are pros and cons. Yeah. Pros and cons. Yeah. Okay so tell me more about your book.

Emily: Oh yeah. So the book is a comprehensive guide to developing animated shows. And the way I decide to write it is I develop a show with the reader. So from the first chapter, which is like figuring out what you care about and finding just a seed of an idea, I start to do that and just my natural process.

And then each stage, which is basically creating a pitch deck. Just to give some structure, I do the same for my idea that's forming. And then at the very end, I include the pitch deck, the actual pitch for the show I created.

Lorien: That's awesome.

Emily: So I thought that that would be really useful. I didn't wanna like just preach. I wanted to show that I can do the things. So yeah. And I just launched it today.

Lorien: Oh, congratulations. What do you mean launched it?

Emily: Thank you.

Lorien: Where did it, where did it launch?

Emily: I launched it on my website.

Lorien: You need to go into space. I don't know what's happening. So on your website, okay.

Emily: Yeah. No, Amazon, no, no. Not yet, at least. I dunno. I'm experimenting with direct sales from my website and I've been teasing this out, so I have a bit of a subscribe subscriber base. And then just the animation industry connected to many people. So yeah, it's on my website, Emily Brundige.com.

And so it's an exciting day.

Lorien: It is. That's such a great, I mean, that's how you started, right? You were like, I'm just gonna make something on my own. And you made it and each ti and with Goldie, with Pubertina, right? That's how you've sort of launched. And I, yeah, I talk about this a lot.

Figure out what you're good at and do that. Rather than trying to jam yourself into a system that may not be working for you at the moment.

Emily: You don't need to wait for these gatekeepers anymore. Especially now.

Lorien: And it's, I don't even know where the gates are. If there are gates. What's even happening anymore, like trying to, you know, I like one whole part of the animation.

Like they're just not doing kids animation anymore. One whole streamer. Like, no, we hate them. I'm like, oh, okay. And then it's so hard to navigate. And executives are moving around and then, it's a really tricky. I have a show in the eight plus space.

Emily: Oh, okay, cool.

Lorien: Which is like the hardest, this is the one I'm pitching. The main characters are in seventh grade. Yeah. And it's the hardest, it's like this void landscape. And I'm like, well, instead of hearing that, that's not gonna work 'cause no one's doing it right now I'm like, that means there's an opportunity for me to be the only show out there talking about junior high and puberty and feeling like a weirdo. And so can we can, so I'm, yeah.

So I'm trying not to take no for an answer, but it's hard when I can't even get to ask the question sometimes, you know?

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I would just say, I don't know, maybe I am being cynical, but I feel like realistically now is not even, not the best time to pitch shows.

Lorien: Oh, I was pitching it, I had pitches set up right before the strike. Those had to get canceled. Yeah. And then I had pitches. So like this show has been in development and it will be happening. Yeah. So I am not gonna-- nobody knows that they're doing it yet, but someone is. So like I know it's not the right time to pitch and yet I'm gonna keep doing it.

Someone is gonna love the show as much as I do and it's gonna happen. And if this last push doesn't work, taking you as an inspiration, we will figure out how to get this content somewhere.

Emily: Highly recommend. Yeah. I really believe that part of the reason I was able to sell Goldie was because I had made a short and they were able to immediately see the tone. The visual style, my style of writing and humor.

Lorien: So let's talk about that real quick. So it's easy to say like in live action, go get your iPhone and go shoot and then get Premier Pro or cap cut for free or whatever and make some edits and like boom, you have a two minute proof of concept.

Right. It's a little easier in the live action space, right? Animation as you and I, and everyone else in animation knows, requires a lot different tools and can feel very expensive.

So how does one go about making their own animated proof of concept without spending $50,000?

Emily: I would say you do need some kind of budget. Now with Goldie, I had just been fired from a show I developed for Dreamworks.

Lorien: Oh, that's so fun. Congratulations. Getting fired from a job is a huge rite of passage, right? It's getting fired, getting rewritten.

Emily: It wasn't my first time.

Lorien: That was your first time? It was your first time being fired.

Emily: Think it was my second time.

Lorien: Second time? Getting fired. Getting rewritten. These are, this means that like you're in it, you're doing it. Yeah. It's the life. Yeah.

Emily: But so they I had a good contract though at the time, and they had to pay out my season. So I went to Japan with my husband and then I also put some money towards making this short. Okay. And I think though at the time I only spent like $4,000 of my own money.

Lorien: How many minutes is it?

Emily: It was, I feel like four minutes.

Lorien: Okay.

Emily: So I found a really great animator through a friend who's actually a pretty well-known YouTuber now animator. But he was amazing and really fast. Like you, those two things don't usually go.

Lorien: Yes, yes. Yeah.

Emily: Like she was really adept at using flash animation. And, you know, the short wasn't on model. So from shot to shot, she changes a bit. But I was okay with that.

Lorien: Kind of thematic, right?

Emily: Yeah, yeah. I didn't want that when it became a Apple show, but for the short it was perfect. And also the other thing, Lorien, as you work in animation you establish these friendships with people. And you all wanna help each other make cool stuff.

 And so my friend Cheyenne Curtis, one of my best friends, did the designs and my friend Germán Orozco art directed it and did the backgrounds. And for them it was like out of passion and wanting to help me make the school thing. And then and then the voices, I asked actors to do it for free and people like Gray Griffin, who's just, she's just a lovely person she did it. And her son did a voice in it.

And then my friend Paul, who's one of my best friends was the composer. So it's just you build up good credit with people and that helps to make things like that more doable.

Lorien: Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's tricky to ask people to do things-- so I've had, I've done contracts with friends where I'm like, okay, I don't have any money now, but when it sells, I'll pay you for this art this amount of money. And like papering things too is really important for me when I'm doing projects like that.

Emily: Yeah that's important 'cause when I sold Goldie, they asked for contracts from everyone who had a credit on the short. . So, yeah, for people making stuff, I know it's uncomfortable, but try to get contracts even if it's your friend.

Lorien: Especially if it's your friend. Right. Because you don't want your friendship to crash because of a piece of work. Yes. Life, love, passion, all the thing, but at the same time, it's still work.

Emily: You're just covering your bases. And even if you're not worried, if you get into negotiations with a studio, they want their bases covered.

Lorien: Yes. Because they don't want that person to come back and say, Hey, I wrote that music. No, I think that's really great. I think it's again, it's the same thing we talk about in writing, which is pick the thing you're gonna do and then do it. Right? Is this your plot? Pick that. Do it. Right. I'm gonna make it short.

Emily: See it through. If it's not right for the moment, you can put it on the back burner, have it as a sample.

Lorien: And it always feels so good to be fully in something. Right. Because then you stop thinking about, I mean, yes, the reality of mortgage payments and the AC bill in LA and all the things that don't go away, but it feels, but I am doing something. This is gonna, instead of feeling like I can't even find the gate or I don't know what to do.

And I think for me, that's why this live action project I'm working on is so all consuming because I know it's gonna work and I'm doing something. And often in my life when I'm doing something is when other opportunities come. Like work begets work. So just trying to stay in something and being passionate and just doing it all in. It's scary.

Emily: And another thing, if you're broke, which I am. You can do a fundraiser like a Kickstarter and I just did that recently for another project.

Lorien: Oh, cool.

Emily: So I have a passion project right now. Like it's like my next baby and it's the most personal project I've done because it's inspired by my Jewish-Hungarian immigrant family. And so I ended up kick-starting it to make a pilot animatic because I knew that it would be too expensive to do an 11 minute, fully animated pilot. I just, yeah.

Lorien: That's awesome. And so are, but you used to be a storyboard artist or you wanted, did you go to school for story?

Emily: I went to school for, well, I went to UC Berkeley for undergrad and did creative writing and studio art. And then I went to CalArts for grad school for experimental animation.

Lorien: Okay. What is experimental animation and what is the different than regular animation? Because you was everyone at Pixar? A large majority of the people I worked with in story went to CalArts.

Emily: They mostly went to character. So the difference is experimental animation is like more loose and you learn, as a part of the program you learn many different techniques of animation.

And it's more about expressing yourself as an artist and finding your voice as a director, and the character animation is like bootcamp for Pixar artists basically. It's much more rigorous and it is, yeah, less about, I mean, it's also about finding your style and your voice, but it's also about making sure they have all the skills.

Lorien: Yeah. When we would get the, we had the story intern program, so we would get the graduates come and they would spend a certain amount of time, and it was again, like bootcamp, like Mark Andrews would run them through all the, and they would do all these assignments and stuff. I think it's both are really valuable and in terms of, it's like you wanna be able to be a staff writer to also still wanna be a show creator, right?

So it's like flexing both of those spaces. Is that sort of what it's like?

Emily: Yeah. Well I didn't know that you could write for animation. I thought, 'cause when I was coming into the industry, most of the shows were board driven, which meant they were being written through the storyboards. You know, you worked at Pixar.

Lorien: That's what everyone says. But I think, okay, here, let's talk about this. In features, we still have scripts most time.

Emily: So in, in TV you have outlines that are written by writers.

Lorien: But I was on, I was as a co EP on Curious George, and I mean this is probably be after you've gone through all this stuff. But even, like, when did that happen?

When did it go from being board driven, hey, here's an outline to here's an actual script. 'Cause my experience that was all script driven.

Emily: Cartoon Network, like heyday starting with Powerpuff Girls that were really, these shows created by artists. And then eventually now it's much more common most shows are scripted 'cause it's better, it's easier for the pipeline.

Lorien: It's less iterative.

Emily: And my show was scripted and it went very smoothly. But yeah, so I, my friend Thurop Van Orman, who was a mentor to me. He created this show called Flapjack, Misadventures of Flapjack for Cartoon Network, which I loved as an adult.

I was just like, wow, you can make shows like this? Kids shows? And so he's such a generous kind dude. And he took me under his wing and he was like, Emily, your drawings are cute, but these storyboards suck. And I can tell you'd be better off as a writer, that's your strength.

So he invited me to write some outlines for a potential job. I didn't get the job, but stayed in touch with him, and he eventually hired me on a show called Home, the Adventures of Tip & Oh at Dreamworks. But yeah, once I figured out I needed to be a writer, it all started coming into place..

Lorien: Had you seen yourself as a writer before then? Or were you, because Yeah, I, there is this tricky: like, well, I'm story, which is different than writing, which is a extra layer on board artist. It's like this, 'cause story artists and board artists, or story artists, see themselves as writers.

They are writers. But rather than a right typing writer.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would say I, I always saw myself as a writer, but I was also an artist. And I also liked making music and I liked film. So animation and comics, so it was like how it all came together in my mind.

But then, like I said, I just didn't know they were writing jobs in animation. So I like forced myself to start trying to do board tests, storyboard tests. And I would get like nice comments oh, good effort. This is cute. But like I remember Penn Ward who created Adventure Time, sent me back a like personal note like, oh, I love depressed characters too.

Lorien: Oh no.

Emily: I made, I don't know, that's my tone is like a little sad and sweet and strange, whatever. And he was like, oh, but we're, we don't have any openings right now. It was nice. But anyways, it wasn't what I was supposed to be doing.

And so once I got on the staff writer track, my first job was on Star vs. The Forces of Evil at Disney with Darren Nefcy, so that was my first staff writing job and that kind of set off set the other jobs off in motion.

Lorien: So what's different between being a board artist and being a staff writer? What's different? What was the thing that you noticed that was easier or harder?

Emily: Oh, being a staff writer is, I mean, a board artist is so much harder. Especially on a board driven show.

Lorien: Can you talk a little bit about what that means? Like what the difference between a, because I know we've talked, we're talking about it 'cause we know, but I think it's a little confusing.

Emily: No really confusing.

Lorien: For TV, what are, what is, what are these things mean?

Emily: So on a board driven show, that's when you have a couple writers on staff, not as many as on a scripted show who write outlines, come up with the premises and the outlines.

And the outlines provide structure for the board artists to go off and board the episode. And they might include some jokes, suggestions, or a bit of dialogue. But it's really the board artists who then take the outline and write the story through their boards.

Lorien: And are they getting a director handoff? Are they doing the layout in the boards? Like how much independence are they having?.

Emily: A lot is dictated by the boards, I'd say. And then of course it's all edited and sometimes, and usually there are rewrites and lots of revisions. But it's so much work for board artists because they are doing the writing and the drawing.

So they're not just worrying about, and it's not a comfy schedule like feature. It's pretty sad.

Lorien: I'm sorry, but features aren't comfortable either, even though it takes for a long, a long years. But we still have the-- I'm not being defensive.

Emily: I've just heard from people who have gone from TV to feature or vice versa.

Lorien: Oh, some more of a grind. Right. We have the, at Pixar was like the reel schedule. So every like 12 weeks, every nine weeks, you had to get reels up, a full reel, animatic of the whole movie. And so there was a crunch and then there's the pause. Whereas tv it's just like another episode. Another episode.

Emily: Yeah. And it's, I think also the idea of having to board all new episode all new stories is also.

Lorien: Yeah. In a feature you're cranking on the same characters and the same, and oh, we're changing this, or Act three change. But it's still fundamentally a check back in with the director of, what are we doing with new episodes is a constant.

Emily: Yeah. But I kind of like that Lorien the need to just keep writing stories because.

Lorien: TV is very satisfying. Like that.

Emily: It's satisfying because you, as a writer, you get to see your writing actually be produced.

Lorien: Yeah. And then you go, then you move on. Like you can't sit there and fixate and worry okay, there we go.

Emily: Yeah, exactly. Too expensive.

Lorien: Yeah. You don't have time. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. And so I think that the board artists who are on onboarded shows like are, need to be paid more because they're doing so much work.

Lorien: I was gonna say something incredibly political and maybe out there. I think animation writers, board artists, everybody should be paid more, period. Everyone in animation should be paid more.

Emily: God bless you.

Lorien: There is a, the discrepancy between live action and animation.

Emily: It's fucking ridiculous.

Lorien: It is like multiple, multiple times, like the amount of money I've been paid to write a live action pilot versus an animation pilot or the episodic fees as a showrunner in live action or an animation.

It's, oh my God.

Emily: It's embarrassing because it is I have cloud of a show on Apple, and yes, people look at me and they're like, oh, she must be doing good.

Lorien: No, no, no. I had an offer for a weekly. An offer for weekly. I was like, yes. A weekly in animation. Yeah. I've made it, you know, rather than an episodic.

So for those of you who don't know, when you sell a show, you get paid X amount of money for each episode you produce, because you're also the EP or the producers. So say you have 10 episodes, and say they're gonna say, okay, you get a thou-- this is not real life what it is-- you get a thousand dollars an episode.

That sounds amazing. That's, you know, what's a, that's $10,000, but it takes two years to do that. Yeah, exactly. Whereas in live action, you might get paid 5,000 an episode and it takes six months. These numbers are not reflective of anything. I'm just making them up.

Emily: I blame Walt Disney.

Lorien: He wasn't a big fan of unions. Yeah. Or writers to be fair also.

Emily: Yeah. The back I say that I love, I love Walt Disney. I love Disneyland. Yes. Blah, blah, blah. But back in the day, writing was done by the story artists at Disney in the beginning. And they kind of started this industry to a certain extent and other studios. So when the union was created, writers fell into the same union as the artists. But that's completely changed and seems there's nothing we can do about it. I don't know.

Lorien: So, yeah. I think that's so interesting. Yeah. The writing is not fundamentally different in any real way. Character. It's intention, script for scripts.

Emily: Scripts. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's really, it's really hard and I really appreciate you talking about that 'cause sometimes I do get frustrated. It's tough when you have to think in those terms. That's why I started creating my own projects to work on.

Because once you just become a robot who's saying yes to everything, working on whatever you can to make the bills, you lose your soul a little bit. And so, I actually, it came out in a therapy session that my husband was in and he said I was saying like, how depressing it is having to do all these other jobs that have nothing to do with what I am passionate about doing.

And he was like, well, Emily, I think you always need like your passion project to be working on, to be fulfilled. And I was like, oh yeah, I forgot.

Lorien: Same, I've recently gone through this too. It came out in therapy where my therapist was like, well, who are you if you're not what you are? I was like, what?

I've talked about this other show, what are you asking me? And so it really, it allowed me to get out of the, I'm failing as a writer dynamic. So much of it is out of my control, right? Yeah. So it's well, if I'm, if it's not, then who am I?

I'm someone who's excited about projects. I'm somebody who gets something done. I'm somebody who picks and jumps off a cliff and does it. That's who I am. I'm not a writer who can't get in the door. That's like a consequence of a career I've chosen in a way. So, yeah, so same.

Emily: That really resonates for me. I've been on a very similar path recently of finding what I think my value is and separate from the money I make.

Lorien: Which is really hard when you're in an industry, where you can make a lot of money or no money. But I, I think this is really important to talk about right now, especially post-strike, post pandemic, where we are in the industry right now, which is, I don't know what's happening.

It feels like there's a tiny grind forward. Like I am getting more meetings and pitches and people are seeming to be a little bit more optimistic, but I don't, I don't know how.

Emily: Well for sure in the kids space, most kids are watching YouTube.

Lorien: Oh yeah.

Emily: So YouTube is where most of the eyeballs are now. So some animation studios like Nickelodeon are starting to begin projects on YouTube. Which to me is very exciting because I feel like we're almost at a level playing field now. Because if you, I mean, you can look at independent creators on YouTube, the ones who are doing well and they make millions of dollars every month off merch.

Because of a beloved property they've created. And so I just think that it's exciting that creators can take back ownership. There's an opportunity here.

Lorien: Yeah. The risk is there, like the financial risk is bigger too, right? Trying to figure out how to get the right people, like you're saying, how to get the right people and the time and.

Emily: You want to like, think about, okay I shouldn't spend-- that's why I chose to do a pilot animatic versus a fully animated. Because I thought I could fund that. I felt like I had faith that I could get that funded. And that's a still a proof of concept and I'm actually gonna have one shot animated.

Yeah. And I'm gonna, you know, it has great voice actors and it's gonna have music and everything. But that's my compromise, you know, to get it out there.

Lorien: So you're, you're doing both right? Like I am, like everybody is right, which is passion project trying to get into through the system, right?

You have a project at Apple, you're doing your own thing. Like it's all the places. I feel this sort of panic, low level, about my time and if I'm spending it on the right things. And I know we talk a lot about this on this show too, but I'm devoting so much of my time to this pitch I'm developing for this live action show that I love it so much all I wanna do is talk about it.

Then I have the animation show I'm pitching, then I have other projects I'm writing and it's so hard to feel like, okay, I have a limited number of hours and dollars. If I'm gonna take, say $4,000 and invest it in this thing, I feel like I'm stealing from something else that could go and it's just.

I mean we've talked a lot about this with a lot of different creators and writers on this show, and it never quite goes away. And it's that always that question of how many projects should I have on the stove bubbling, and what do you focus on and how do you know what's gonna go? And for me, it's the thing I feel the most excited about. If nobody's coming at me: hey, when are you having that thing?

If I'm the one who's generating excitement about it and other people are as excited as I am, then I'm like, okay, that's the one.

I

Emily: would agree with that. Yeah. Yeah.

Lorien: Thank you for letting me talk that out because I started really low like, I don't dunno what I'm doing with my life. And then I was like, oh, right, I know what I am doing with my life.

And that's the what I am who I am. It's so hard. And how I solved that was basically remembering who I was my sophomore year in college. Who was I my sophomore year in college, which was this, I did things.

Emily: You see that as your peak?

Lorien: No, but no, I check back through my life. Like when was I doing crazy things? When was I doing things that no one else said I could, that wasn't even a question if I could do it and I figured out how to invent something or do something? Or there was no I wanna do this, it was, I'm going to do.

Emily: You weren't getting noted by someone.

Lorien: Well, it wasn't, no, it was more like, I'm going to do this thing. Whether it's a thing that exists yet or not. So, and for me, my sophomore year in college was a big year of huh, what am I gonna do? I don't think I got, I hope I did a peak in 1980.

Emily: Well, I sometimes joke that I peaked in elementary school because I was like super popular, but not really.

Lorien: Popularity, not my peak. I think my peak is where I see things aren't working for me, and I, instead of looking at how they work for other people, I figure out how it could work for me.

As I'm listening to you talk, I'm thinking, yeah, this animation show I have, I wonder if I can get the producers on board to doing like a little one minute test or something, knowing how much tests costs, because I've done tests before.

I wonder if I could figure out how to do something like that to generate some online buzz, because I know that's how a lot of, well you've done that, right? So what advice would you have for me or someone who is thinking I wanna start playing in the YouTube space?

Emily: Yeah. I would say just start advocating for yourself. Create something, reach out to, there are tons of animators on YouTube. If you find someone whose work you like, reach out to them. Reach out. You just never know until someone says no.

Lorien: So when you say reach out, it's, I have a, I have a one page script and I'm trying to find people to collaborate with.

Emily: And here's my budget. Hopefully have some kind of budget, even if it's not huge. Like I told you, I managed to animate a short for $4,000. Just, a lot of people for better, for worse, worse, are out of work right now. But that creates an opportunity for collaboration too.

Lorien: Yes. I think it's really, really important to pay someone, even if it's barely any money.

I am not a fan of giving somebody work for exposure.

Emily: No. That doesn't, I can't do that.

Lorien: Even if you're like, here's a hundred dollars.

Emily: Yeah. Just something.

Lorien: Something with a contract that has, that's like real because it is so important, especially now with AI and all the things people can do on their own. And it's not I only have a hundred dollars. You find somebody who can collaborate with you like that because it's just that whole, you have to pay artists.

You have to pay artists, you have to pay people that you're working for. Even if it's it's a dollar and a pizza, you should get paid. This is a work.

Emily: And that's partly why I ended up doing the Kickstarter for Strawberry Vampire because I don't, just didn't have the savings to fund something like that.

And I also wanted to work with people I had worked with on my show, Goldie. But I didn't want to like, not pay them as much as they made. And the main work is being done by a storyboard artist so I, I found out what she was paid on my show and tried to match it as closely as possible 'cause I wanted her to feel good about the work and like she was being paid respectively.

Lorien: I think the trick is that for those of us that love animation or want to do animation and just wanting to be compensated and valued for the work in participating in such a massive and important part of the industry can be very frustrating because that's all you wanna do.

And I have talked to animation people on the show about this too. It's not like you can be like, well, you know what isn't paying enough? I'm gonna go over to do live action. Right?

Emily: And I love animation. That's my chosen field personally. I've been asked, why don't you write for live action? And I, I'm a huge fan of live action media. But yeah, I just come from the world of animation.

Lorien: What was the animation thing that you first saw where you were like, I love that. I wanna do that.

Emily: Okay. Yeah, I think my first, I'll give the example of as an adult. Two things. I saw a short independent CalArts film by J.J. Villard called Son of Satan. His student film that was just really striking, really moving and very different looking. Actually I saw that in high school in a CalArts showcase. And then I, and then when I saw Thurop's Show, Flapjack, that's when I thought, wow, I wanna a show. Like it can be that unique and funny and, that's what made me want to have my own show.

Lorien: That's awesome. What about though, when you were a kid?

Emily: When I was a kid. Yeah. I mean, all the Disney movies, I was a huge Beauty in the Beast Film. I mean, fan. I still think that film is perfect, the animated movie. And I was obsessed with Disneyland. I wanted to be Walt Disney when I was a kid because I wanted to call the shots at Disneyland.

Like I wanted to say what rides they should make and stuff. And I would, I was an like little entrepreneur type of kid. Like I would sell Pogs at my school during the Pog craze. And I would write to toy companies with a design that I wanted them to make. I was that kind of kid. So I always wanted to have my own empire.

Lorien: I love it. I see a show.

Emily: So that's what I'm trying to do in my own way.

Lorien: I think I see a show.

Emily: Little Walt female, Walt Disney.

Lorien: No, not even a little Emily. That, you know, doing your own thing in your own world.

Emily: Dictator.

Lorien: Yeah. That's amazing. The cost of power, right? Yeah. That's awesome. All right, so, what's your writing?

Do you have a writing schedule? Like how do you approach your work?

Emily: I do not have a writing schedule. Perhaps I should, but I enjoy working from home because I. And I've come to the conclusion that you can't force ideas to come. You have to be a little patient with yourself, and if you're working really hard and trying to write and come up with what you need to come up with, and it's not happening it's better to step away.

And do something you enjoy doing. Exercise, take a walk outside. So I don't like to be that strict with myself. And working on this book there would be times when I would look at it and I would just be like, who the fuck do you think you are? Like, you fraud. Oh, I need to not look at this for a while.

Lorien: I mean, yeah.

Emily: But I just try to measure my productiveness over the course of a week and I'll have general goals. Finish this book, finish this pitch deck, and I'll make sure I'm on track. But I don't, I don't try to write a certain amount every day or anything like that.

Lorien: I think that's a great approach and that's something I learned in motherhood, which is, it's a marathon, right? Like you can't look at one bad day. You look at it, like diet for kids, like the pediatrician's, like they should only be having one serving of pasta a week. And I'm like, ha ha ha. You're hilarious.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah.

Lorien: But you're looking at like the diet cumulatively, and then especially with my daughter being diagnosed with type one diabetes, one bad day or one good day means nothing. It's three months. What does it look like? What's her blood sugar over three months? Right? That's how I can do it. So I love that approach of okay, I had a day where I actually relaxed and took a walk.

What is that good metric though? Is it a week? Is it a month?

Emily: For me it's like a week. And if I don't have a very productive week, I'll feel a little bad about it, but I try not to be too hard on myself. And then I just become determined that next week, Monday, it's gonna be a different kind of week.

And try to stick to that. Yeah. And then my weekends are just gone. I just trying to give my kid a good time.

Lorien: Yeah. I have been working a lot on the weekends but I'm trying, but I try to make it like, okay, I am taking her out to this event and then I get to come home.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. I do that a little bit too. That's nice when you can do that.

Lorien: Yes. All right. What's your, what's your go-to writing snack?

Emily: Gosh, I don't really have one, I don't like snacking while writing.

Lorien: I dunno if we can release this episode if you don't have a writing snack. Oh my God.

Emily: I'll tell you what I have every morning.

Lorien: Okay. Okay.

Emily: And it's a huge peanut butter and banana and coffee, coconut milk smoothie.

Lorien: Okay. I love that for you, but I think that sounds gross.

Emily: Really?

Lorien: Oh my God. It's the banana. I don't like bananas.

Emily: Oh, ,okay, okay.

Lorien: And I know they have to be in a smoothie, but..

Emily: I mean, you could put ice cream, but that's.

Lorien: What's it called? Is that like the Elvis Presley smoothie? What do you call it?

Emily: It's the Emily Brundige.

Lorien: Brand. Copyright.

Emily: But I think I eat a lot of peanut butter every day.

Lorien: Oh, you do?

Emily: Probably too much. It gives me life.

Lorien: Oh, good. Well, peanut butter. Peanut butter is your peanut snack then. See, we just had to.

Emily: Just imagine me scooping it out of the.

Lorien: So you might be too young for this, but they used to have these Reese's peanut butter cup commercials where you'd be walking along with a jar of peanut butter and the guy would be walking along with a chocolate, and then you smash together and you got your chocolate in my peanut butter.

You got peanut butter in my chocolate.

Emily: No, but what you're describing is beautiful.

Lorien: But what was so upsetting about those commercials is that it's just like a person walking around with a jar of open peanut butter eating it with their fingers. And it's, it's not even with a spoon down the sidewalk.

It's just, and I guess that's okay. I guess that was okay.

Emily: I gotta look this com. this commercial up.

Lorien: You are too young. Yes. I've aged myself quite nicely in this episode. Shout out to my sophomore year, 1989. Here we go. Yeah. Tell me about Goldie.

Emily: Oh, yeah. Like what it is?

Lorien: Yeah. Tell me about the show, inspired you to make it and why?

Emily: Yeah. So it started with the short, in 2016, I started like developing the short and I was really it was inspired by the, what can I say, Trump becoming president and the things he said about women and did to women. And I just felt like I wanted to create a female character that took up space. That was like my urgency, my need, and I realized a giant girl would be perfect for that.

Because just by existing, she's taking up space.

Lorien: She's a threat.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. And undeniable in that way. And so that's what first inspired it. And just the feeling that we don't see girls of different sizes and shapes as main characters and animated shows. So that was part of it.

And also I wanted her to be messy and make mistakes and for that to be okay and be clumsy. And like on my show, she cries a lot. She's like a mess all the time. But when she cries, at least in one episode, when she cries a lot, it floods the town. So it was nice that her being giant was symbolic for her giant emotions.

And also it shows kids a way to express yourself and not feel like you'll be laughed at, you know? So anyways, I made the short and since I had been in development so many times, I was tired of having this work that I couldn't share with people. So I really wanted to just get it out there.

So I decided I was gonna send it to a bunch of film festivals and try to just let it be for a while so I could enjoy it as something I could share with people. So I did that and it got into a lot of film festivals and screened around the world. I didn't get to go to anywhere past California.

Lorien: You didn't have a budget for that?

Emily: No. I wish. I was also a new mom, I was breastfeeding.

Lorien: Yeah. No, I'm kidding.

Emily: Yeah. I went to GLAS Animation in Berkeley. That was that was fun. But anyways, so then when I came to the end of that film festival circuit, I got serious about pitching as a show. And that was always my intention was that it would serve as a sample and its own thing.

And then I had been in, talk with one of the different executives about it, trying to like, tease it out. And I had been in touch with one executive, Christina Reynolds at Apple, and she had approached me about another show and at the time I was like, you know what no, I really want my show to be made.

And so I told her I would send her the short when it was ready. And then I did, and we set up the pitch. So it was already a warm room. Christina and Sam Ring, that's who I pitched to over there, and they loved it they were so positive. And then thank goodness their boss, Tara, also loved it.

And honestly, they were the best. Christina Reynolds, shout out.

Lorien: Tara is awesome. Wonderful.

Emily: Yeah. And the whole, and so I waited because I wanted to work with Mercury Filmworks in Canada who did Hilda and the Mickey Mouse shorts. And they just do really good work. But I had to wait because they couldn't do it until their schedule was too full.

So then when I finally got to work with them, I was just put together with the best team ever over there. Like they really cast the right people on their end to be a part of the show. And it was the smoothest production I've ever been on, and it was my show. So I, you know, felt really good.

Like when people ask me what was hard about it, really small things. I think the thing I learned was like not to freak out if if a decision you're passionate about, if the executives have a different point of view. And in your mind you're like, no, it has to be this. But I learned that it, you work it out.

Lorien: You can pick one thing. You can pick one thing.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I did a good job. Like I was very collaborative. But there were a few things that I felt really strongly about. Yeah. So that's a, that's an important thing actually for people to pick their battles.

Lorien: Pick the thing. Something I've been asking myself is, will this matter in five years? And for me the cartoon characters on tab time, if they were female, not having eyelashes or being feminized was my thing. Because that matters. Because it's spatula, being male or female does not matter, it's still a spatula.

Right. Have a feminine shape. So I was like, is this gonna matter in five years? Yes. It will matter to me and I think it matters to the audience of little kids that female being female isn't othered.

Emily: Yeah. And it's important. You're also there to make those kinds of calls.

Lorien: Yes. Yeah.

Emily: Like it's important to have, be true to yourself and have a point of view as well. Yeah.

Lorien: If you can, you can't always win. I mean, that's the thing. It's really understanding like, okay. Yeah. It's tricky. Super easy.

Emily: Everything is a different beast, right?

Lorien: Yeah. Well, congratulations on the show. I think it's really awesome.

Emily: Thank you.

Lorien: I love where it came from and your passion for it. And I also really like that a female character can cry. 'cause I have this allergic reaction, it might be generational that like, don't make her cry all the time. Because this sort of internalized misogyny around female characters who cry equals weakness on screen.

It means they've lost their shit. 'Cause when female characters have a big emotion, like anger or rage, I feel much more comfortable in that. Yeah. But the crying, the vulnerability, the weakness, for me is how it translates. So I'm trying to figure out, figure how now with this female character I'm working on.

People cry, women cry. She is going to have to cry in certain circumstances. So how do I do it in a way that doesn't make me wanna slap her? You know, like, how do I allow my, how I was raised, how I've been conditioned to let a woman on screen cry without feeling get your shit together, lady.

Emily: Yeah. I mean, Goldie I had ridden her to be like too much, kind of. Like that was a part of her personality. But I think it comes off as charming because it just comes from a genuine place. But I wouldn't shy away from whoever your character needs to be.

Lorien: Yeah. No, I mean, she, she doesn't cry. That's the problem. She's, you know, I refuse to cry. I am not about that. So when I do have her cry and be a moment.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lorien: All right. So, and the third question is what? Okay, so I love chatting with you . I love talking about animation and people who love it.

And what pisses you off about writing?

Emily: Oh everything. I hate writing I struggle a lot with the process when it's not working yet, which I know is a big part of the process.

Lorien: I mean, you wrote a whole book about development.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. And although I think for me at least, development is easier than, say, writing a pilot.

Like I feel like riding pilots are the hardest because they have to do so much.

Lorien: You mean out of nothing, like not the pilot? Yeah. Yes.

Emily: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have to do so much and yet you don't wanna throw everything into the kitchen sink. You also want to be clear and follow one story and all the things.

So, it's, yeah. I feel like sometimes I'm an anguish. And I don't like it.

Lorien: Yeah. I love development. The delicious process of development. And then once I get a show developed and then I'm like, oh, now I know what the pilot is.

Emily: When, you know, when the pilot clicks and becomes clear that's the best. Yeah, for sure. Feels great.

Lorien: 'Cause its what's the engine of the show? What's the series arc? It's so many big questions.

Emily: Yeah. But I'd say I enjoy the thinking about it and the like, marketing and all that stuff. The doing. Doing more than having to actually do the work sometimes.

Lorien: No, I hear you. Yeah. I mean, I spent a lot of my time doing this podcast instead of writing. I talk about writing with other writers and creators, and it's like all these hours, we're not writing everyone on the show.

Emily: I think that's like a pressure we put on ourselves that we shouldn't have because of the nature of writing.

Lorien: We are also great storytellers and can justify anything.

Emily: Yeah. There you go.

Lorien: All right, so if you could go back in time and have coffee with your younger self, what advice would you give for?

Emily: Oh, gosh. I would say especially there's a key moment in my career, which was when I got fired from the show, I had developed, it was like my baby at the time.

And I think I walked away from that-- well, I know I was super depressed and it took a lot long time for me to build my confidence back up. And I remember wishing at the time that I could have like the confidence of a confident white dude, straight dude. Because like I imagined, oh, what would it be like if I really felt oh, this was their loss.

And walked away from it like, they don't deserve me. But that was not the way I internalized that rejection. Yeah. I just, I guess I do wish that I could have convinced myself that I, my worth wasn't tied to that.

Lorien: Yep. And I know I made light of it earlier when I said congratulations, you've been fired, we've all been fired. But it is, that is a really hard part. And I've had that as well and I don't know that I could have handled it or will handle it in any other way because of how I am and who I am, and that I have issues that I need to work through in therapy. And I'm never gonna all of a sudden be somebody who is well, you're loss.

I'm always sort of, how can I figure this out? How can I avoid that next time? This is what I do when I get stressed. This is, you know, I don't know that I'm ever going to be done.

Emily: The other thing I'll say, Lorien, is that I don't really believe in changing the past or wanting to change the past.

Lorien: Yeah. But it, it hurts still.

Emily: It still hurts for sure. Yeah. But I feel like it all, it shapes who you are today, right? And I have a daughter who I'm obsessed with and all of these wins.

Lorien: But it is really, I have things like that as well where I'm like, God, I wish I hadn't fucked that up quite so badly. I wish I hadn't, but then it's like, well here's why I was so tired and overwhelmed and made those choices. It's external and it's internal, and it's like, well that's what happened.

Emily: Yeah. Have a little bit more empathy for your former self.

Lorien: Right. Which is really hard, right?

Emily: Yeah.

Lorien: It's sure, if I was a different person, this is how I could have reacted in that moment. But then okay. Self empathy isn't that the thing our therapists talk about? Ugh, God.

Emily: I know, it's hard, especially for women.

Lorien: Yes, yes. Yeah. Alright, well thank you so much for getting into it and talking about animation.

Emily: Of course this was awesome. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I'm such a big fan of the podcast.