The film was the brain child of the program coordinator, Terry Posthumus (a mighty fine fellow). Terry was the writer, producer and director of the film. He also did the music and voices.
With the guidance of some of the faculty; Paul Neale, Rob Clark, Cory Avery, Rob Thompson, and myself, the students produced a very impressive 3 minute film.
My part was to help the students develop the character and location designs for the production.
We started in early 2007 with a brainstorm session where the students and I sat around a boardroom table and discussed some of the basic concepts of the film. We all started drawing what we felt the frog should look like. After a flurry of drawing we threw our skethces into the middle of the table and started to pick apart the good and bad of each one. We liked the eyes from one of the drawings and the body from another, and the legs from another one. I had everyone do another drawing combining the various good elements into one design. We then threw these all into the center of the table for another critique. We had some really nice design ideas.
I tried to steer them with some questions about who the character was and what the story was about; tis is a "wide-mouthed frog" who goes from animal to animal asking them "what they like to eat". We looked at the designs and I said, "Does this look like a wide-mouthed frog?" We didn't have any actual reference photos of a real wide-mouthed frog but I was trying to get to the "idea" of what a wide-mouthed frog was supposed to be. "Shouldn't he have a really wide mouth? Why don't we be literal about it? Why not give him a really wide mouth?" Another flurry of sketches with a bunch of frogs with big mouths. They just didn't look right.
Then the idea popped into my head, why not completely detatch his entire cranial mass from the rest of his body? I held the idea in my head (I really just wanted to blurt it out) but I was hoping I could prompt the idea out of the students. Nobody took the bate and after a few agonizing minutes I threw the idea out to them. There was a few moments of silence as they tried to visualize what I was talking about. I grabbed a piece of paper and did a quick sketch showing them what I meant. They all looked at it and slowly they started to grab onto the idea. "What if we do the same thing with the other characters?" A few drawings of the cow and sheep later showed that the same approach wasn't quite right, so we decided to have their lower jaws float instead.
I sent them away to do up a bunch of new sketches of all the characters for the next meeting the following week.
When we all came back together there were some really nice drawings (and some not so nice). We decided on the closest designs and I asked for refinements. The Bird posed a problem for the floating jaw because it didn't look right so we decided to use the same theory that the frog follows: her jaw is attached to the neck and her cranial mass floats.
Written by Terry Posthumus & Rick Bursey
Directed by Matheson Facer & Terry Posthumus
Produced by Terry Posthumus
Production Manager Matheson Facer
Production Designer Stephan Perrault
Animation Director Terry Posthumus
Character Designers Stephan Perrault & David Campbell
Set Designer Tim Johnstone
Character Models Stephan Perrault & David Campbell
Character Textures Stephan Perrault
Animators Stephan Perrault, Jason Labbe, Mike Mendes, Chris Bloomer
Character Technical Director Jason Labbe
Effects Technical Director Matheson Facer
Lighting/Rendering/Compositing Matheson Facer
Set Dressing Matheson Facer
Background Paintings Deborah Colvin
Set & Prop Models/Textures Tim Johnstone & Matheson Facer
Sound Effects Matheson Facer & Jason Labbe
Theme Song Written & Performed by Terry Posthumus
Background Music by Henry R. Bishop
Voice Overs Performed by Terry Posthumus
Special Thanks to: Paul Neale, Brian Lemay, Rob Clark, Cory Avery, Rob Thompson, William Hanna (Humber College President), Gary Lima (Animation Program Dean)
Filmed on location at Humber College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Contact Terry Posthumus at 416 675 6622 ext.4942