Some notes from Gary Thomas, Crush Creative Director, on the work:
We have been working with Ron, and his producer Lynn Harvey, for four years on their New Years specials for the CBC. When the CBC gave Ron the go ahead to do his own series, we were thrilled to be a part of it. Ron wanted to develop an animated segment based on the package we did for his "Back Home" special which was a cut out style that followed him as a child in Cape Breton. For the series we used adult heads and children's bodies, which is occasionally creepy (in a cool way). We co-directed the spots with Imported Artists' Dale Heslip and had a crew of ten animators working on the twelve episode series. To create the spots we used a combination of 2D software packages in a pipeline we developed on “Knight Fever”, Chris Minos' short film, completed in the spring of this year. The series is our first foray into long form animation, and has been a real eye opener for a studio seriously suffering from ADD.
Production Company: Crush, Toronto, Canada
Directors: Crush and Dale Heslip
Creative Directors: Gary Thomas, Dale Heslip
Executive Producer: Patty Bradley
Producer: Debbie Cooke
Production Manager: Raphael Quirino
Lead Animator/Animation Supervisor: Chris Minos
Character Animators: Phil Holloway, Harry Rasmussen, Eva Smith, Joel Tellier, John Watson
Lead Background Artist: Jacques Dell
Background Artists: Mark Irish, Laura Vegys
Assets Coordinator: Wadi Ejiwumni
Character Rigger: Scott Edelman
Online Compositor: Gavenesh Patel
Still Photographers: Adam Palmer, Andrew McNaughton
Editorial: Crush Cuts
Editor: Kim Knight
Assistant Editor: Katie Oliver