CREATING A MEGA-HIT: KID VS KAT
Kid versus Kat is one of my favorite series. The idea came from one of the artists at Studio B at the time named Rob Boutilier. I worked closely with Rob to produce a short film that we entered into MIPJR where it was a huge success. YTV in Canada and Disney International immediately jumped on board, and we were financed and ready to go into production – one of the quickest deals I ever did, thanks to the strong creative. I executive produced 26 episodes working primarily on the creative side from scripts through to postproduction.
BLEND OF STYLES: BEING IAN
Vancouver voice actor and writer Ian Corlett brought this idea to us initially as "Little Ian". We developed the show as an animated sitcom that would appeal to both kids and adults – no easy task. I brought in an old friend, legendary designer Marv Newland, to design the look and feel of the show. His 'rubber hose' style had never been done in Flash Animation before but we were keen to give it a go. The tech team at Studio B helped us prove it could be done and we had a fresh new look for the series. Then we added live-action and 3-D animation for Ian's fantasy scenes and voilà: 65 episodes of a top-rated series, which also visually stands the test of time.
SUCCESS THROUGH PASSION: D'MYNA LEAGUES & WHAT ABOUT MIMI?
I have also created a few series of my own. The first, D'Myna Leagues, came from my passion for baseball. I hooked up with local writer Ian Weir to “develop the world”. We even had our story meetings at Nat Bailey Stadium here in Vancouver. The 26-episode show was the first animated series picked up by CTV Vancouver and was broadcast nationwide. It went on to win a Parents' Choice Award and to air on WB stations in the US and home video in North America.
I also created What About Mimi? along with my partner Chris Bartleman as an answer to the lack of strong female characters at the time in animation. It was a big success on Teletoon in Canada as well as in Europe, where it went on to win the Pulchinella Award as that year's Best Animated Series.