Sons of Butcher

Every once in a while during your career you get lucky and that certainly happened for me a few years ago. Canadian producer/director Karl Dipelino got me involved with S & S (Smith and Smith) Productions in Burlington and we started shooting a new animated cartoon series for Teletoon Canada. " Sons of Butcher " was a concept developed by animator Jay Ziebarth his brother Trevor and college buddy Dave Dunham. The cartoon was about three guys who work in a meat shop during the day and were metal rock and rollers by night. Jay's style of flash animation was very unique where we used the actual heads of the three actors in the scenes and everything else (landscape, scenery and other characters) were drawn. This meant that everything we shot in the studio was green screen. The actors wore green body shirts to the neck line. This meant that we could use their heads for all facial expressions yet animate the rest of their bodies. The guy that lead the show from writing through final cut was Max Smith. I had worked with Max and his family on other projects including the Comedy Network's "Fifth Quadrant" sci-fi comedy. A man with a very unique twisted view of life Max is the son of Steve Smith aka "Red Green." Anyway there's a ton of "Sons of Butcher" on YouTube and now my tribute to the production on flickr.