Animation House - Blog Posts

Took almost a year, but I'm finally back with an update..Thanks to all, for your kind patience!

Since February 2016, I’d been working Layout on Nickelodeon’s upcoming “Welcome To The Wayne” cartoon series. But now, I’ve chosen to take some well-deserved time off. I was feeling pretty burnt out, and wanted to take my body/mind off of any kind of clock or schedule, to try and recharge my creative batteries.. Been spending a lot of time thinking about things I’ve already done in my career, and what I still hope to get done? During one of these moments of reflection, I was surfing YouTube and stumbled across something I’d once worked on here..

In 2000, I did Layout and Design work on a rather dodgy Christmas Special entitled: “Timothy Tweedle: The First Christmas Elf”.. It was done thru a small Toronto boutique studio called: 'Animation House'. But I think at that time, they'd just been bought up by ‘Evening Sky Productions’..

That was 17 years ago, and a lot has changed.. Chris Hayes, was a friend I worked Layout with. He passed away suddenly, this past January. Fred Wilmot was the principal animator on the sequence I worked on, and he passed away in November 2013. Our Production Manager was a young Morghan Fortier, who now co-owns her own Toronto studio!

Much of the production work was farmed out to Ottawa’s ‘Dynomight Cartoons’. It was my job to check their Layout work. And to complete Layouts (with Chris) for a big song sequence (featuring “Fabulous Flo”) which would be animated by Fred Wilmot, in-house..

Overall, it was a fun experience. But as is often the case, the project was a low-budget affair with short deadlines. Designs too, were largely non-existent,-- and I had to invent most of that stuff myself, as I was laying out the scenes. I’m relatively happy with the end results, but was frustrated that many of the Staging details we included in the layouts were either ignored, or used sparingly. I think the final animation comes off as pretty rushed, too. Fred probably realized it was not his strongest work, as I noticed he chose to use the name:“Marcello Wilmot” in the end credits!! haha