My name is Sam Meisner! I am an animator, a musician and also a radio announcer for 88.7 CoveFM (www.covefm.com), a community radio station located in Nova Scotia's South Shore. I have been artistically active since the age of five, beginning with sketching primitive shapes, then evolving to character creations and then moving forward into the concept of comicstrip design & comic book creation. In 1999, at the age of eight, I'd drawn my very first comic book on looseleaf, and since then, the passion for this particular route of artistry had grown dramatically for years since then. In October of 2001, I created a cartoon character named George and through this character's silly personality, there came a growing versatility, and from that I was able to create numerous comedic situations with a wide range of topics in the form of an adventurous comic book or a just simple but effective gag-a-day strip. In 2003, I've had 4 of my original comic strips published in a newspaper called 'The Chester Clipper' but because of the way the preferred ideas were leaning towards an editorial-like stature, I felt the strip would lose it's personality, which is why I decided to not send any further work to them. I did, however keep going with creating new comics and in 2004, the goal was to focus almost exclusively on the art of the comic strip itself. At the beginning of the eighth grade in the Fall of 2004, I had begun posting daily 6-framed comic strips at school, hoping to give George more attention. George was becoming well noticed and in the Spring of 2005, I won the 'School Humourist' award at a school assembly in the gym. I continued producing daily comic strips up until graduation from middle school in June 2006. As I entered my highschool years, I was becoming more experimental with my cartoons, incorporating elements of surrealism and seeing how it would blend with a simple daily comic strip gag. At the very least, the results were quite interesting. The surrealism phase peaked toward the end of my first year in highschool and the following year, I felt it was time for a return to the basics, focusing on strengthening the humour itself and improving the comedic structure of the 6-frame cartoon which proved a minor challenge at times. Half way through the second year in highschool in the spring of 2008, I hit a creative slump but by my third and last year in highschool before graduation, the creative juices returned and the comedic structure within the cartoons were improving. That year, I decided to expand various ideas by using one simple daily strip as a link to the strips following days ahead and see where the links take me, and if they broaden ideas even further. It almost seemed like it was an indefinite concept. This new method worked for the first half of the year. In the second half, I returned to doing separate stories for each daily. By June of 2009, after producing daily comic strips almost every school day for 5 years, stagnation was setting in and for graduation day, I made one more George comic strip and posted it in the lobby at school. In the fall of 2009, I begun my post secondary studies at the Nova Scotia Community College in Truro, Nova Scotia where I was enrolled in the program Digital Animation. The two years I had spent enrolled in this program helped broaden my artistic horizons while learning something new everyday. It changed the way I approached character design and the instructors demonstrated all the principles that go into a moving, living character and it's surroundings. In other words, through courses they showed us all the required ingredients in creating the illusion of life. Not long after graduation from the program in June 2011, a few classmates and I worked on a freelance music video for an established Mi'kmaq artist named Alan Syliboy and his band Lone Cloud. It premiered July 5, 2012 at the Khyber Centre For The Arts in Halifax, NS. In September 2012, I worked on character designs for a proposed animated managerial training video for an animation company in New Brunswick called Showdog Productions. In 2013, I worked on some more animation for Alan Syliboy and Lone Cloud, contributing my efforts to a video tribute to The Honour Song. As the animation for that video was completed within the first week of April, 2013, my interests had shifted more and more towards my weekly shows on a community radio station called CoveFM. I have been a volunteer radio announcer with them since June 2010 and ever since the day I joined, my passions increasingly shifted towards my contributions to CoveFM. The passion had grown to a point that I had set goals to achieve interviews with high profile musicians. Though my attempts to get Bananarama on my show through Skype were unsuccessful, I did succeed in achieving interviews with Marcella Detroit (Shakespear's Sister, Eric Clapton fame), Greg Lake (King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer), Bobby Elliott (The Hollies) and Jon Anderson (Yes, Vangelis). Throughout most of 2013 and 2014, my mind was primarily set to my show 'Sam's Musical Mystery Tour' on CoveFM. Somewhere roughly around December 2013 to January 2014, I had begun watching Conan O'Brien's show on TBS. As months went by, I had become very impressed by the show and admired the comedic abilities of Conan O'Brien and his sidekick Andy Richter. The interviews were almost just as fun to watch. Every night there was never a boring episode.  I became such a big admirer of the show and felt such a strong connection to the humour that the program provided that in January 2015, I developed a pitch for his show. I pitched a weekly 15-20 second short that would incorporate my silly ideas into his show. I contacted Conaco on several occasions, managed to get a few emails and a fax number, but as one would most obviously suspect, nothing materialized, and it wasn't until several calls later that an intern from Conaco had said that they don't take those kinds of submissions. I felt down about the matter but it all made sense. If they want new ideas, they reach into their circle, and I am simply outside of that circle. My final goal regarding Conan O'Brien was to achieve a 15 minute phone/Skype interview. I mailed in my interview request and once again...nothing materialized. One can easily say that I had tried to reach too high or that those goals are unrealistic. I don't disagree with those who thought this. My mind thrived on the old saying "You never know until you try!" Perhaps in a case like this, you want to begin with smaller steps. From that point, I thought "Well if you can't be on somebody elses show, then make your own!" Seeing how Conan was highly active on YouTube as well as social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc., I thought to myself "I've got to do the exact same thing with George! I've got to bring him back and get him everywhere!" In August 2015, after being deep in the music phase for five years, George made a comeback. Since then, I've made sure to put out a new video for The George Channel every single week, utilising my skills in animation, music and comedy.  Every day is another chance to create something new, utilising my skills with animation, design and music. This is my passion in life...to create.