Animation and wanderings of director / producer Tim Tyler

Spring is a good time for development because in Western Canada you roll that work in to face to face meetings with broadcasters and distributors at the Banff World Television Festival. If you are a Canadian animation creator looking to get to know the broadcasters you need to make your show, Banff is a great place to go. It is expensive but believe me it is worth the investment.

I have three shows I am developing for television right now. The Side Show Christmas is currently in development with Teletoon, June Beetle has been developed through NSI’s Totally Television Program, and Toby has gone through an initial development phase with SCN, a local Saskatchewan Broadcaster, but has stalled a little because we have just had a hard time getting other broadcasters behind the project.

This post is about Toby. Yesterday I went on a road trip to Humbolt with the Creators and twins Mike and Mark to meet the writer Darwin. Amazingly Mike and Mark have been working on Toby for close to 5 years with Darwin and have never met face to face.

We set out on this trip with a specific task, to reinvigorate the show so we can attract a broadcaster. To do this I prepared a series a questions for the team so we could explore where we could take the show but still have it remain true to the core idea.

By answering these questions and using them as a guide for our development process we have been able to come up with an entirely new approach to the show that I think is fresh, original, and will get us the broadcasters we need to get the show made.

I am going to share these questions and the answers we came up with so that when you are developing your ideas for television shows, you can round out the idea into a full concept with legs. In developing Toby, we have wasted a lot of time responding to the ideas of other people, broadcasters and producers who have no investment in the show, but have ideas that they think could make it better, make it into something that they might want. Not one of these ideas has ever improved the show to the point where the contributor would come on board.

The point is, You have to make the show that you want to make. Obviously development when you have a broadcaster on-board is different because they become the client and you need to craft the product that they want on their airwaves (especially because they are going to pay you to make it), however in early development it is your show, your vision. You need to have clarity of vision to help decide if incoming ideas are good and add to the vision or bad and detract from it.

These simple questions have helped us. I hope they can help you.

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At it’s core, what is the story about?

Toby’s Time… is about Toby, a digi-savvy seven year old from the city who makes and stars in his own short docu-vidcasts about his experiences discovering the magic of life in the country.

Who are the characters? Why do we care about them?

Toby is the central character. He is the guide and narrator for our journey into country life. We care about him because he brings his fresh city perspective to the experience of life in the country.

What motivates them?

Toby is motivated by his passion and zest for life and experience. He loves to discover the many facets to life in the world around him and is excited to share them with his friends in the TV audience from all over the world.

Who is the audience? Why do they care?

The audience for this show is 3 – 4 year old children. Children care about Toby not only because he is cool, but also because he provide a distinct point of entry into the wider world, that exists beyond their front door. Toby acts upon the natural sense of curiosity and wonder that exists within every child of that age.

If you could pick a perfect viewer for your show who is it?

The perfect viewer is a curious child.

What is the hook?

The adventures of a city kid in the country.

If you are interested in listening to a panel that looks into the process of successfully developing and producing television in Canada, this panel discussion should be highly worthwhile (and I am moderating it to boot). The pedigree of all the panelists is quite impressive, it should be enlightening and very informative.

I always find it very worthwhile to have the opportunity to listen to broadcasters talk about what they look for in projects and producing teams. To know what a broadcaster wants, you have to find out what they have on their shopping list. This is the first time that we have had a major Canadian children’s television broadcaster (YTV, Treehouse, and National Geographic Kids) come out and speak in Saskatoon. It is definitely worth a listen.

Hopefully we can get a solid turn out for what promises to be a great event.

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The First FLICKS Film Forum Hosts Esteemed Panel.
April 19, 2007

Flicks International Film Festival for Young People is proud to announce its inaugural industry day! Open to all who wish to attend, the Flicks Film Forum will be a round table discussion on the steps of creating, producing and distributing content for national broadcast.

Presenters for this program include Bonita Seigel (Director of Original Programming, Corus Entertainment), Virginia Thompson (Producer, renegadepress.com and Corner Gas) and Melanie Jackson (Co-Creator, Wapos Bay). The event will be moderated by the President of Cheshire Smile Animation and Saskatoon resident, Tim Tyler.
The panelists will discuss the process they have gone through to shepherd their work onto the national and international media. Following the discussion, the floor will be opened up for a question and answer period.

The Forum will take place one day prior to the official opening on the Festival on April 19, 2007 in Saskatoon. Tickets to the event are $25 each and are available by calling Anita Smith at (306) 956-3456 or by emailing flicksfilmfestival@sasktel.net. Hope to see you there!

Green Pancakes

Pancake Mix

Green Dye

Preheat Griddle.

Make Pancake Mix directed on package.

Pour in lots of green dye and mix utill batter has a consistent green coloring.

Tell kids you made the pancakes green by adding ground leprochaun powder.

Cook as directed on pancake mix.

Enjoy

Every couple of days I have been getting calls at my studio from other studios looking for help on their animation projects. This is good news for us because at the end of the day service animation work is what keeps a crew going and growing but it makes me wonder, is the Canadian Animation Industry approaching it’s maximum capacity?

In this article on AWN Joseph Gilland theorizes that the software tools available today, mostly Flash, allow smaller companies to produce animation at a rate that was not conceivable even 15 years ago. Because of this major shift, entire productions, TV series, and features are being produced almost entirely in house using a crew that is almost entirely Canadian. A smart thing to do because it allows the producers to take advantage of the lucrative Canadian and Provincial tax credits that can be accessed for just this kind of production.

The result of this is that there is a real demand for animators who are educated in the principles of classical animation yet have the computer savvy required for the use of software like Adobe Flash.

In Saskatchewan retention of skilled animation crew is always going to be a problem however the upside is that we have a great classical animation school, Red House College, that is training incredibly talented students who all have a solid foundation in classical principles and can be trained in Flash or other methods of digital animation.

I am curious, is the education and training pipeline for animation talent in Canada wide enough to serve this ever growing demand for skilled digital animation talent or is the industry likely to go back to a model more like that of the industry in the 80’s and 90’s where a great deal of the work was outsourced over seas?

My personal feeling, speaking from the point of view of a company that always has labor shortage issues, is that the future will be somewhere in the middle. The very nature of the evolved medium of animation though flash lends its self to digital collaboration in ways that were never possible before, this is exciting because it is possible to put together animation teams that literally span the globe with very little additional cost to production.

This is my labradoodle Bella. She is about 16 months old and is really a wonderful dog. Great with children and relatively hypoallergenic - my wife has dog allergies and generally only has problems when Bella licks her face

I would recommend a labradoodle to anyone because they really are awesome dogs. She is very smart and responds well to training. Her only downside is that she is very skittish and nervous at times (and likes to eat her own poo - eewww yuck).

We got Bella from Saskadoodle Labradoodles. They take their labradoodle breeding very seriously.

I took this photo with my new Cannon EOS Digital Rebel. I love it. You can take great photos without even trying.

This winter we had the great opportunity to animated a 5 x 15 second advertising campaign for SaskEnergy and Phoenix Group. These commercials are about energy efficiency and were a blast to animate.

We used a combination of Flash, After Effects, 3d Studio Max, and Photoshop to create the spots.

Part of what I think makes them look so great is the combination of incredibly well painted backgrounds (Hats off to Jordan Ratzlaff - he really is an amazing painter and illustrator) combined with subtle camera movement and multiple planes of 3d animated environmental effects.

It was fun to make these spots because we had the time and budget to pour a lot of effort into a very short period of screen time.

This is a demo for a show which we have been developing with the support of SCN (Saskatchewan Communications Network). We have been working really hard to find a broadcaster who will support the show and help develop it further. So far no takers.

I guess if it was easy to produce a television show every one would do it.

I love Great Western Pilsner. It is a beer brewed right here in Saskatoon and it tastes great, especially on a hot summer day. We created this fake spot because it seemed like a funny thing to do. Molson has always had Bunnies on their pilsner label. This seemed at the time to be a great, Monty Python inspired send up of that.

Thanks to Megan Cole and the Saskatchewan Interactive Association conference I attended yesterday, I have been inspired to start my own blog. I have been online for a number of years now but have never really seen the value of bloggin’. Megan delivered a very inspirational talk that ultimately led me to realize that perhaps there is something in reaching out to the world in this way.

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan is a great place to live. Other than the 17 feet of snow I have melting in my yard right now, the quality of life here is really amazing.

My hope is to share some of the work that I have produced, written, and directed over the years as well as share the development and production of the projects that I am working on currently.

Feedback is always welcome.