We did it!

Cartoon Coach at the CNE

Thank you to everyone who came by the booth at the 2024 CNE, to learn about, and support Cartoon Coach. It was quite literally, the most challenging test of endurance, our family has ever experienced. I, certainly, could not have gotten through it without these two wonderful and powerful women.

Thank you Sandi and Presley for your constant and unwavering love and support. I am so grateful for your active participation and continual encouragement. Cartoon Coach could not have set-out on this adventure without you. Sandi, you are my Samwize Gamgee, always helping me to see the quest ahead and reminding me to move forward with bravery and determination and, Presley, you are simultaneously my Merry and Pippin, my beacon of positivity and humour, because, as you showed me, they exist even when you feel as though you cannot take another step. Onward we trodded, forward we pushed and by September 3rd, at 7:00 PM, when they closed the doors of the CNE Arts and Crafts Building for another year, Cartoon Coach had hosted 84 workshops in 18 days. On that final day, it was not lost on any of us, that we had helped more than 600 kids and adults think a little differently about drawing cartoons and that is no small feat.

The schedule in the days leading up to the CNE were just as crazy as the schedule during the CNE itself! I had over designed the graphics for the booth and they were going to cost twice as much to print them as we were quoted. So I had to go back to the drawing board, literally and reduce the height of all the Tree Canopies and the width of all the trees trunks. In all fairness, this sort of DIY corrugate lined booth had never been done before, at least I couldn’t find anything to help guide us through the process – on line. No one had a Youtube Video titled: “Here’s how to design and create an impressive booth using a standard 10 x 10 canopy tent and 2 8×4 panels of corrugate printed graphics!”

We finally received the second version of the booth graphics on the Wednesday be fore the EX.

Truthfully, we’d already moved into our space on the Monday and had already hit a massive roadblock. We had envisioned this booth with a projector, that’s why the 10 x 10 canopy tent was so important, so we could control the lighting and provide the artists, trying out Cartoon Coach, for the first time, the largest screen possible. After mounting the projector, we realized it was a liability, there was too many opportunities for it to get knocked or hit by accident and we had to pivot.

Luckily, a family member was getting rid of an old, super heavy, 50″ flat screen TV that had some dead pixels. We snatched it up and found a used shelving unit to place it on. The timing could not have been better.

The grass turf was awesome, the table and wall graphics, which were photo backdrops ordered on Amazon, worked out great!

Back to Wednesday before the EX, the graphics arrive and Sandi is still working full time. She’s coming down to the Arts and Crafts building on her lunch, sacrificing her Yoga after work, and Presley is dropping by as often as she can at this point as well. We had 1 day to cut and apply all the graphics! My hands went numb a couple times and Presley had to make a bunch of emergency dollarama runs to get that red, double sided, adhesive tape because my plan to use strong magnets did not work! Thank goodness my measurements were correct because the graphics fit like gangbusters! We were the last ones out of the Arts and Crafts building the night before the EX, but… the booth was ready!

The doors open and the first day was a little slow, many folks thought we were offering caricatures, but Presley and Sandi would take to the isles and help folks to understand that we weren’t interested in drawing for them, we were here to help them become the artists themselves! We started running workshops every hour! This was a little bonkers and within 3 days I lost my voice.

By the second day, folks weren’t just visiting our booth, they were gathering around to see what all the commotion was! By Monday we had settled on a schedule of 4 sessions a day in hopes that I might recover my voice. I didn’t. I powered through and my voice, really, only resurfaced, fully, a week and half after the Ex was over! Even though I sounded like an elderly Lucille Ball, on most days during the EX, from about 11:00 am to 5:00 PM we were literally stopping traffic in the isles of the arts and crafts buildings. We are very grateful for the support of our neighbouring booths, we were blessed with amazing people around us! By 7:00 PM, the traffic would slow down on most days, and we were grateful for the breather.

I taught basic head construction with a focus on thinking in 3D, but man did we have some laughs. I mean, that’s our whole thing… I can get anyone to get their confidence up and drawing cartoons pretty quickly because I’m singing, improvising, doing cartoon voices… it’s a whole show! We had a fantastic reaction to our booth, the workshops and the whole experience. We doubled our student body so far and more free trials are on the way! If you have not signed up for one, why not? Their free. Just try it, who knows… you might love it and find a new hobby or a legit career path in the world of cartoons, comics, storyboarding or animation.

All the wonderful drawing workshops Cartoon Coach has been running in the Arts and Crafts building at the CNE! Every drawing is improvised using storytelling prompts from the kids and adults that join us for our daily workshops. This batch is from Friday Aug 16th to Sunday Aug 18th

On the Tuesday, after the 2024 CNE had concluded, Sandi and I were exhausted. We headed back to the arts and crafts building one final time to tear down the booth and pack it into our little Kia Soul. We fit the whole thing into the car! We still can’t believe it.