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Odd Todd; Odd Jobs Todd Rosenberg's career in animation and comedy didn't really take off until he became one of the many victims in the fall of the dot-coms. That's when Odd Todd officially punched in. The gruff voiced, bathrobe-wearing, "coff-ay" sipping hero took to the Internet in a hand-drawn cartoon called "Laid Off: A Day in the Life," which showed the raw desperation, frustration and love of fudge-striped cookies the average unemployed worker experienced when unemployment in America started its slow uphill climb.
The success and
response of the cartoon got him a Web site (www.oddtodd.com), a
best-selling book, called Hard Times, Soft Couch, and a development
deal with Comedy Central (which fell through before it made the airwaves).
Todd Rosenberg A_P: Is being unemployed as fun as you make it sound? TR: At times, yes; then there's other days where I'm rattling around this apartment. So it really depends on the day. A_P: How long have you been doing the site full time? TR: The Web site went up in November of 2001. I basically have been making a living off of it for the past few years. Actually, I just had my three year anniversary (November 4th). A_P: How do you make money off of this? TR: I sell stuff through Cafe Press, I have a tip jar thing, but for the most part, I've been making a living based on stuff that the site has kind of led into. I had a book come out last year. I've been picking up free-lance animation work to keep the lights on, which is amazing for me because when I got laid off, I was a cartoonist but I wasn't making a living as a cartoonist. A_P: What were doing before you got laid off? TR: I was doing business development for a company called Atom Films. It definitely wasn't creative work. It was creative in terms of explaining how I have a purpose in the company. My job was too figure out if there was any business in wireless entertainment, and this was 2000-2001 when Pocket PCs and Palm Pilots were getting popular. Atom Films had this whole library of short films that people could watch on their pocket PCs conceivably, so go figure... A_P: Is their a future in wireless entertainment? TR: I think with cell phones, sure. But for me at the time, there was no business there. A_P: How long was the gap between the first cartoon and the time you got laid off? TR: I was laid off in June and I'd been working for eight or nine years straight. I was going to take the summer off and start looking for a job in September. At the time, things weren't so bad so I was being a little cocky about it because the dot-coms hadn't collapsed yet. Over the summer I started working on learning Flash. I was playing around in my apartment figuring it out and it just led into that first cartoon. It was kind of strange because I was working on it before Sept. 11, and I was living in Manhattan at the time. I'm in Brooklyn now. After that happened, I was ready to throw the whole thing in the garbage. So I took another month or so off from it and then got back to it and put it up in November. A_P: What was the response? TR: At first, I hadn't even put it up on the Web yet. I didn't know how to put a Flash cartoon into a Web site. So I sent it as an attachment to some friends who forwarded it to some other people and it started going around that way. Built into the end of the cartoon was a button that would let you email me at a Hotmail account, and I started getting emails from people I didn't know. I put it up on the Web and that was when it really, really took off. The traffic, I wasn't measuring it at the time, but the company that hosted it basically got crushed with traffic. A_P: What kind of letters did you get? TR: In some ways, there [is] this feeling that when you're unemployed you're just looking for a job, networking and working on your resume. But the truth of the matter is after an hour or so everyday, you do everything you can do to look for a job and then you have the rest of the day. I think in some ways, people really appreciated it because it shed some reality on what the lifestyle really is like. A_P: How accurate was that first cartoon? TR: Speaking on the cartoons as a whole, they've grown past my personal reality. The person in the cartoon, of course has a lot of me in it but he doesn't run a Web site. A_P: What did the first cartoon do for you? TR: It changed everything for me. I had started interviewing before I finished the cartoon, and at that point my last job interview [was for a] job essentially sitting at phones and cold-calling companies to try and get tech business out of them -- cold calling, for the most part, dot-com companies. The idea of going in and putting on a headset and cold-calling all day long really depressed me. I was thinking about moving out of the city and making a life change. A_P: What moved you into doing the site full time? TR: Once the first cartoon took off and started to get some press, CNN came to my apartment to film me being laid off. That cartoon probably opened some doors for a person in his 30s who never had a creative job before. A_P: Did you ever have any inspirations for a creative job? TR: With all the jobs that I had, I always latched on to any creative aspect of the job and focused on that. When I was working with Atom Films, I wanted to get more involved in the entertainment. Instead of figuring out the technology, I was like, 'Let's focus on some cool cartoons and stuff.' I was one of these people who in college didn't know what he wanted to do when he got out. [I] kind of fell into book publishing and stayed there for five years. And just because it happened to be my first job, it was becoming my career. That kind of lead me into the dot com stuff because I worked at BN.com for two years. But I've always wanted to do something different. A_P: Where did the characters come from? TR: I was going to do a one-minute rant of an unemployed guy every week. I started doing audio recordings of random rants that unemployed people might [make]. I started to feel that those recordings could become animated and could be a lot of fun but I didn't know how to do that. Once I decided to learn how to animate it, I started playing around with Flash. The characters that I drew out were actually in the first cartoon. The reason why it's so super sloppy is because they were really just meant to be placeholders until I learned how to animate properly. The more I looked at it, the more it looked done and it was easier for it to be done than for me to learn how to finish it. So I kind of declared it done. A_P: Where did the voice come from? TR: When I started doing those audio recordings, I would sit at the microphone and be like, (in OddTodd's voice) "So I went down to the store today and went to the place and I didn't have any mon-ay." Me recording in the voice you're hearing now sounded like, "so I went down to the store" and it wasn't good. It was the only other voice I had. I wanted the guy to sound a lit bit angry and tired. A_P: Do you feel like you're providing any hope to the unemployed? TR: A lot of the emails I get are from people who are happy that other people identify with their situation. I'm happy that people come to my site and feel better. That's the best part. A_P: Any in particular that stick out? TR: I remember when Enron was coming down and I was getting tons of emails from people at Enron. One person from Enron, who I think had written in at the time, ended up writing a book called Anatomy of Greed, and my site is mentioned in it because people were watching the cartoons. It was amazing for me to think about people in the midst of all that craziness who were watching my cartoons and feeling good about it. A_P: Any negative comments? TR: I'll get an email that says, "You're voice is so fricking annoying, I can't stand it" or "Get a job, loser" is a good one. I've gotten some criticism of my cartoon, some that say that one sucked. Those hurt the most. I'm pretty sensitive to criticism, I guess. A_P: How long does it take from to do one cartoon from writing to the end? TR: Usually, in the neighborhood of six weeks. Like I just put up a Halloween cartoon a week ago and I'm just now thinking about doing a Holiday cartoon. I look at some of these people who work non-stop and keep cranking stuff out every week and writers who write books once a year and I'm just not that kind of guy. I work when I feel like I have to. A_P: How did you get a deal with Comedy Central? TR: There was some interest in what I was doing from Comedy Central in July 2003. They offered a development deal and took the rights. It didn't mean they were ordering a show, they wanted to see if they might want to. They decided they did, and we went into production, and production was stopped. I did a cartoon about it called "Laid Off: Hollywood Bound." In some ways, I wasn't really in charge of the show. I didn't have a final say over things. It became frustrating for me to see bad decisions made. Me being the new kid on the block, I didn't realize that things were as bad as they were until it was kind of too late. A_P: If it had gone through, would you be happy with it? TR: It was turning out to be not the show I hoped it was going to be. It was no fault of Comedy Central in certain ways. We were left to our own devices. There was a writing staff that was good and the pieces were in place, it just wasn't managed properly in certain ways. As soon as it ended and I was home and able to work on a new cartoon -- although I honestly don't know what I'm going to do with my career, and maybe that was my only chance of ever having a TV show. But mood-wise, I felt so much better. A_P: If the opportunity came around again, would you do it? TR: I still think it could be a hit TV show. It would have to be, based on my experience with Comedy Central; I think all mistakes that could have been made have been made. Now, it's sort of clearer what the show could be. A_P: Did it open any other doors for you? TR: For the most part, a lot of the freelance work I do is for ABC News. Comedy Central was not the cause of that, but the cartooning itself has opened doors to me working in the television world on different things. The way I feel about things, I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing until the lights go out here. I don't really have a crazy lifestyle and I have everything I need -- my TV and computer and whatever. If I could make a living doing this and be happy, maybe I don't have savings and things like that but I always feel I can figure that out later. A_P: Ever thought about a movie for OddTodd? TR: I thought about finishing one of those screenplays one day. Regardless of what I end up doing, I always want to maintain the site and do cartoons for the site. If something hits me, I would consider it, now knowing what I know about animation and television. But the site is a priority for me.
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