Pierre Speaks: Between Projects

I was about to jump straight to talking about my working on the Heavy Metal 2000 feature film.

But then I realized that I should talk about what happened between Bob and Heavy Metal.

In some studios, there were enough projects that as soon as you would finish working on a project, you would get started on another one.

When I was working on Bob, we had various meetings concerning upcoming projects. From those meetings, there should have been at least 15 projects coming up after Bob.

Not really what happened.

Out of those 15 projects, there are just a few projects that ended up being made. And most of those that were made ended up being made in other studios.

That is one of the reasons that I tell people not to rejoice too early when they are offered to turn their project/comic into an animated series. Many things can and will go wrong with such projects. So until you actually see the project on TV.... wait and see what will happen.

The Nexus TV series that never was is a good example of that.

The same with movies.

Invincible is a great example of that. Having a big studio interested in your project is not a guarantee that the project will end up on the movie screen. It just mean that they MIGHT want to make a movie using your project.

The same thing happened with Bone.

That is something that I repeat wayyy too often in various discussions. So if I already mentioned it in a past Blog.... forgive me.... but it is something that comes back often. And I guess I am getting old and have a tought time keeping up with ALL the times I mention this.

While I was working on Bob, there was another project in the studio called Papyrus.

Sadly, Papyrus did not have a layout & posing team as strong as the Bob Morane one.

So at some point, the studio came very close to losing the contract on making the layout & posing on Papyrus.

What they ended up doing was take most of the Bob Morane team, and have them work on Papyrus to raise the quality of the show in order NOT to lose the contract.

Since I was teamed with a guy named Norm DeRepentigny, him doing the layouts, and me the posing, and together we were cranking up a truckload of scenes, we pretty much finished the last Bob Morane episode between the two of us.

In the end, everything worked out.

The layout posing team from Bob were able to increase the quality on Papyrus and made sure that the studio would not lose the contract. And Norm and I finished the last episode on Bob.

After Bob, I worked on the last 2 episodes on Papyrus.

After Papyrus, there was another project lined up to begin called Pirate.

Naively, the artists from Bob who had literally saved the Papyrus contract by increasing the quality for the show thought that they would be the ones working on Pirate.

Also the people working on Bob had been working for the studio longer then the Papyrus people.

But the person supervising the Pirate project was someone from the Papyrus team. And what he ended up doing was take his buddies that were working with him on Papyrus. He took the very people who almost lost the Papyrus contract just because they were his working buddies.

And those who had saved the Papyrus show, who had been with the studio longer were told that they could go home once Papyrus was finished.

Many were okay when that happened.

But not me.

First, because I did not want to work on Pirate to begin with.

But also because I knew that being with the studio longer and saving the Papyrus contract was no guarantee of being hired on the next project.

So it was no surprise to me when that happened.

But as fate would have it.... Pirate was not ready once Papyrus was finished.

So everyone, even the supervisor and his buddies who were supposed to work on Pirate were sent back home. ;)

Ironically enough, I was the last one to leave the studio because I was asked to do some last minute designs for a 3D project called Sphinx. Which ended up never being produced... at least as far as I know ;). It was decided to produce another 3D series instead called Excalibur.

Ugh!

Excalibur (and Sphinx come to think of it) was one of the projects we had seen the demo for in one of our meetings, and it was one of the worst.... if not the worst.... of all the demos we had seen. So don't ask me why,,,, other then because the series had a known name for the project and a known artist who had done the designs..... I am not sure what motivation there was behind that decision.

So now that I was a free man. What were my options??

I had applied to work on Heavy Metal 2000 while I was still working on Papyrus, and as fate would have it, the very day that I finished working, we were hit by one of the biggest Ice Strom in history.

Yes, I am refering to the Ice Storm of 88.

So I decided to take some time off while waiting for an answer from Heavy Metal, and waited for the Ice Storm to pass.

So next time, I will talk about what I did during the Ice Strom, and how I got the job on Heavy Metal.

More soon.