Back in August, the Halifax-based animation studio Collideascope closed its doors. The studio, which began in 1995, was one of the first in the world to use Flash for broadcast TV, pioneering on the series Olliver’s Adventures. The shop will close at the end of this month, and co-founder Michael-Andreas Kuttner pointed us to a recent article that serves as “a eulogy.” The Halifax newspaper The Coast featured a story titled Empty Frames last week, which identifies Collideascope as producing nine shows, 90 hours of cartoons and employing around 400 animators from all over Canada. According to Kuttner’s blog, they had 120 full-time employees at their peak last year. It appears that timing was the culprit, as Kuttner points out. They were scheduled to start a new project this Fall but a delay pushed it off, plus the Canadian studios have seen a great deal of service work head to Asia in recent months. Regardless, the legacy they leave behind will live on in the projects they produced and the artists’ careers that were founded and nurtured at Collideascope. Us animators can also enjoy the many wonderful animation tutorials archived on their blog. Congrats on a great run, guys, and a very graceful exit.

In 2006, Mike White and Ron Doucet, who both work at Collideascope Digital Productions in Halifax, found themselves with a small window between projects and an opportunity to create an animated music video for the Toronto-based band MSTRKRFT. The resulting video for the 2006 track Work on You has since been viewed several hundred thousand times on YouTube. As part of the Aniboom/Radiohead Music Video Interview Series, Ron Doucet answered a few questions about the production.

AARON SIMPSON: How did you guys end up partnering with MSTRKRFT on the Work on You music video?

RON DOUCET: Mike and I were between projects, working in the same studio. The timing was perfect, since an upcoming series wasn’t starting up for a couple months, so as one project fizzled out, another ramped up. Beyond that, we had access to our best designers and animators to do this quick gig. Mike hadn’t directed before, so he asked me to come on board to assist him in planning, setting up and eventually adding some FX animation.

AARON: Let’s watch the results of this “quick gig”:

AARON: What was your process for dreaming up the video? Read the rest of this entry »

The Canadian indie rock group who call themselves the Meligrove Band have called upon the services of animator Mike White for their latest music video. The track is titled Our Love Will Make the World Go Round, and White designed, animated and composited the entire space-themed video over the last six months. He would chip away at the project about an hour a day, between sleeping and his day job at Collideascope Digital Productions.

You may have seen another music video that White produced for MSTRKRFT (along with Ron Doucet), which also features an homage to Transformers.

Comic-lovers should keep their eyes peeled for White’s upcoming strip Pigtails and Potbellies.

Ron Doucet and the Collideascope Animation team have provided us with a pair of excellent animation FX tutorials on the studio blog.

First is a step-by-step walk-through on how to build an “energy field cycle.” Not sure what that means? Here’s what it looks like in action (animation by Jake Macher):

More recently, Doucet posted an elaborate smoke tutorial, which covers a variety of different variations.[link]

Fans of the groundbreaking 1982 Disney film Tron will get a kick out of this. Ron Doucet at Collideascope dug up some clips from their 2002 work on Teletoon’s series Ollie’s Under the Bed Adventures (now Olliver’s Adventures), and is using the material in his Flash animation class to teach special effects. The episode he chose from the series sees Olliver get sucked into his PC, where he’s dumped into the Tron universe. Here’s a few clips (no audio):

Head over to Ron’s original post to see heaps of model sheets, more effects clips, and if you watch closely you’ll also see a reference to the video game classic Q*Bert.[link]