Who Are We?

The Animated Cartoon Factory was established in 1996 by Brian Lemay as a publishing company creating books and video tutorials specifically aimed at the animation production process.

Brian Lemay has been in the animation industry since 1980 when he began his carreer as an inbetweener on the Feature film, "Rock and Rule" with Nelvana Ltd. in Toronto Ontario. His work continued as an Animator, Character Designer, Layout Artist, Storyboard Artist, Concept Designer, Newspaper Cartoonist, Illustrator for advertising, children's books, and magazines along with all the other sundry jobs that go into being a freelance artist.

In 1988 he began teaching at Sheridan College and fell in love with the process of educating people to draw and animate. He has since been the coordinator of the Sheridan program until 2001, when he moved over to Seneca College and set up their 2D/3D animation program in 2002. He was the coordinator for 3 years and then moved back into a teaching position. He has taught at both Seneca College from 2002 to 2015 and Humber College in their 3D program from 2005 to 2018.

Discovering that there were very few good educational books available on the specific processes within animation, Brian set out to write his own texts based on his in-studio experience.

Brian has since worked on a number of different projects as storyboard artist for the short film "Ryan" which won an Academy Award for best animated short in 2005 and Chris Landreth's follo-up film "The Spine". He was also the storyboard artist for Historica Canada's live action "Charlie Wenjack" and "The Treaty" commercials aired in 2018.  He was the Storyboard Supervisor and rough storyboard artist for SnapChat's "Bitmoji TV" series in 2020.

He is currently Directing and Animating a film voiced by Phil Hartman titled: "Flat TV". 

What We Offer

The Animated Cartoon Factory produces animation related books that explain specific aspects of the animation production process. These books go far beyond the typical "How To Draw Cartoons" books that are currently available.

Many of the books available present simplified 1-2-3 step instruction on drawing cartoons with a minimal explaination of what to do. These books usually only offer 3 or 4 poses that you can "copy".

Our books are written with the full "thought process" that you must go through to draw your own cartoons. The books are written specifically with the College level student in mind. Since these books were written as he was teaching the courses, it allowed him to modify the books to give the students the right information in the right order.

Simply put, there are no other books out there that even come close to giving you the level of information that these books do. A couple of people have tried to imitate the books (and by all means you should look at them) but our books were still the first and remain the best available. (That's why so many animation programs make these books a part of their curriculum.)

In order to provide even more information that can help you become a better artist, Brian has been producing a series of DVD tutorials on the processes involved in animating. This series will continue to grow branching into all the different areas of the animation process over the next few years.