Watch “A Fairy Tale Christmas” on YTV

Make sure to gather up all your young ones and settle in to watch “A Fairy Tale Christmas” on YTV this Christmas. It’s the perfect distraction after all the gifts have been opened and Dad’s hands are way too numb to assemble any more toys.

A Fairytale Christmas - Dec 22nd @ 2pm EST, Dec 25th @ 1pm EST - Kidnapping the King’s daughter is no way to get onto Santa’s “nice” list.

“A Fairy Tale Christmas” was animated entirely in Saskatchewan in 2004-05 using a combination of classical and Flash animation techniques and has helped to launch to careers of many great Saskatchewan animators.

“A Fairy Tale Christmas” is a Christmas Adventure Musical featuring songs by Jay Semko (The Northern Pikes) and Ross Nykiforiuk (Cosmic Pad Studios)

It is also my broadcast directorial debut and was responsible for a 160% increase in the size of my bald spot. It is rumored to be for sale in Wall Mart but I have not seen it there myself.

 

BarCamp Saskatoon 2007

http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BarCampSaskatoon2007

BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.

BarCampSaskatoon2007 is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. BarCampSaskatoon2007 is open to all who love technology as a place to talk and to learn.

BarCampSaskatoon2007 will take place on September 29th, 2007 at The Cellar in the basement of the Senator Hotel (243 21st Street East).

From all reports, last year’s BarCamp in Saskatoon was a huge smash. Sadly I was out of town and was unable to attend. I will be attending this year and look foward to participating in this years BarCamp. It is being organized by many of the same people who organized the recent Saskatchewan Interactive Summit 2007, an event that absolutely blew my mind - in a positive way that is If you are going to be attending, make sure to drop me a line, I would love to talk to you about your projects!

To find out more about BarCampSaskatoon2007 visit Ryan’s Blog or check out the highlights from last years BarCamp.

If you are interested in interactive technology, sharing about interactive technology, or networking with people who love interactive technology there is a good chance that this could be a great event for you to attend.

Space is limited to only 100 participants so make sure to sign up soon. If you do it before September 15, the word on the street is that you will get a free and groovy T-Shirt.

http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BarCampSaskatoon2007

 

Seelenheil Animation Preview

I have been working on an “epic” 3 minute animated film for about the last year. It is a period piece that is adapted from a graphic novella called Seelenheil, and is set during WWII. It has been a very involved film to animate with intense subject matter and a wide range of characters and locations. Rick Stefanowski is producing and put together financing for the film from SaskFilm, the National Film Board of Canada (FAP), and the Saskatchewan Arts Board.

The film is animated using hand drawn assets within Flash. It is at that exciting point of creation because right now the animation is finished, we are very close to locking the picture now, and all the colored backgrounds (we are going for a film noir / watercolor look) are starting to appear.

Here are a couple of shots from the show.

 

Side Show Christmas - Animation Designs

The Side Show Christmas is a 1 hour Flash animated Christmas Special in development with Teletoon Canada and SCN. I am producing for Cheshire Smile Animation Inc. Ideally we are looking at production this Fall / Winter with the broadcast premier in 2008.

I have been working with Chris Steininger to develop the character designs for the show. Jeff Martel created Side Show Christmas and is currently writing the 2nd Draft of the screenplay. I pitched the show to Teletoon at 2006 Banff Television Festival and have been developing the show with them since then.

These are some of the characters Chris has conceived to date. The animation design phase of developing this project has been a challenging experience because in the beginning we conceived and pitched the story to our broadcasters without any artwork. We have have had to work with the Broadcaster to develop a style for the show which fits their vision. Needless to say, these have not been our first attempts.

 

More Toby Thoughts

We have been rolling along on the re-development of this concept and have a one sheet that we are now starting to shop around to broadcasters. I am going to pitch this to Treehouse next week.

Any comments / criticism / insights would be greatly appreciated.

Toby’s Time

13 x 3 minute animation / documentary

Preschool (3-5)

Toby’s Time is a 13 X 3 minute animation / documentary series for 3 – 5 year old children starring Toby, a digi-savy seven year old who makes and stars in his own short docu-videocasts about his experiences discovering the magic and diversity of life in the world around him.

Toby is an inspired, animated (literally and figuratively) child in a live-action world who is passionate about discovering the many facets to life in the world around him. Toby goes to great effort to share his findings with his friends in the TV audience all over the world.

Children love Toby. They look up to him because he is versatile and talented with computers, cameras and technology and he uses those skills and his natural curiosity to explore stories that children want to know and learn more about.

From behind the scenes at the Rodeo, to shearing sheep, model railroads, or fighting forest fires in Northern Saskatchewan, Toby is in front of the camera and behind it all the while providing a youthful point of view for the children in his viewing audience.

Toby is not afraid to get to the heart of the story and find out in a sometimes serious, sometimes cheeky way the facts that only children can truly appreciate. That’s right everything from how many pounds of poo gets mucked out of the Rodeo Stalls in a day to the number of pieces of railroad track it would take to make a model railroad that could span the planet or go to the moon. These are just some of the facts that Toby will share with his friends along the way.

As an animated child, Toby has access to a wide range of places and situations that most children never experience. Toby uses that access to provide a unique point of entry into the exciting world that exists just beyond the front door.

Toby’s Time is a series that aims to introduce children, in a fun, educational manner, to the diversity of life and experience that can be found within Canada, this great land of ours.

For more information about this show please contact Tim Tyler, Producer.
tel: 306.652.2102 email:tim@cheshiresmile.com http://www.cheshiresmile.com
2007 Birkland Bros. Entertainment and Cheshire Smile Animation Inc.
All Rights Reserved

 

 

Is the Canadian Animation Industry approaching maximum capacity?

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.

 

SaskEnergy Animated Commercials

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.