Dime-A-Dozen Project #16 - Ruby, Galactic Gumshoe

Dime-A-Dozen Project #16 Ruby Galactic Gumshoe is a brief recounting of my effort to pitch and produce an animated project of the ZBS Foundation produced Adventures of Ruby: Galactic Gumshoe, a series of Sci-FI Fantasy audio adventures. ZBS Foundation is a non-for-profit organization that has been produce quality audio entertainment since the 1970s. I came across Ruby from an ad in the old Comic Buyers Guide, for the cassettes of Ruby's first stories, which aired on Public Radio stations across the country. I fell in love with the characters, the writing, music, and audio production.

I was inspired by Ruby and thought it would make a great animation project. While working in the animation business, I wanted to pitch original ideas and properties of others worthy of better exposure. Rudy was one of those properties. I did some concepts of the characters and wrote a brief series proposal to pitch to Disney TV Animation, where I was Co-Producer/Director on Disney's Gargoyles series. Disney passed on Ruby, so I set out to secure the rights myself, with the help of my agent, at the time.

I contact ZBS and they informed me the media rights for film and TV projects were sold to a Los Angeles producer, Lex Nakashima of LX Ltd. They were very helpful and encouraging, even sending me a copy of the original Ruby script. I contacted and met Lex was kind enough to give me a shoot at pitching Ruby around to studios, since his own efforts were in a dormant state. Once the rights were secured, I did a storyboard and animatic of the first Ruby story, to support the written proposal. I also, used the images from the animatic to made a Dragonfly Flipz book. Unfortunately, after several years of trying no project could be secure. (it didn't help my last pitch meeting was cancel as it fell on 9/11/ 2001, yes that 9/11) My agreement with Lex ended and last i heard another producer had taken the rights. That was well over 12 years ago, and I haven't seen any mention of a Ruby project. So, Ruby enters my Dime-A-Dozen Project archive.

Happily, ZBS Foundation is still going strong. i still hope someone makes a Ruby movie or TV series someday. This video is the latest installment of my Dime-A-Dozen Projects, so named from a conversation with creative friends of mine as we lamented that when we were working full-time for someone else, like Disney, Warner Bros , and Sony, we get these (in our minds) original million dollar ideas, that would, somehow, turn into "dime-a-dozen" ideas when we were out of work and on our own. I have tons of unfinished projects in the form of character sketches, incomplete written outlines, half drawn comic pages, and full illustrations. You get the idea, a "dime-a-dozen" idea. I'm feeling the need to catalog for my own sanity and for a simple record to leave my kids, and as I said above, along the way rekindle my creative juice and start drawing again. Enjoy.