Ron Doucet - Animation Director

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History & Philosophy

I spent most of my childhood drawing, reading comics, and watching television. My parents were never able to keep typewriter paper in the house as I would steal it for doodling as early as the age of 3. Ninja Turtles, Flintstones, Pink Panther, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Looney Tunes, Astroboy, Mad Magazines, and The Muppet Show became major sources of inspiration. When I became a teenager I saw shows like Ren & Stimpy, Batman, Animaniacs and then I slowly realized that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of his life.

In 1999, I finished my diplomas in Graphic Design and Digital Animation and quickly became a dedicated full-time cartoon junkie. I began work as an animator at Collideascope Animation Studios, and later became a designer, director and consultant on numerous projects for that company. Thus far I've worked on several productions over the last 16 years, including shows for Cartoon Network, BBC, Nickelodeon, Warner Brothers, Teletoon, and YTV.

Thus far in my career, I've hired and supervised over 500 animation artists. In 2001, I helped produce one of the very first fully-animated Flash series for television. Since then, I had the pleasure of animating, designing, storyboarding, supervising and managing on many different shows, music videos, pilots and demos. Gaining experience in writing, voice recording, visual development, post production, and editing - all while meeting so many awesome people along the way. During my period at Copernicus, I had recruited over 200 animation artists and supervised over 50 individuals on a variety of different series, and I had the privilege of working on my first feature film Teen Titans Go To The Movies!

In recent years I've obtained experience in budgeting, scheduling, and developing of various production pipelines. If there's one thing I have learned about the crazy world of broadcast animation, is that planning is still the most important part of the production. You round up the script, your boards and designs, and talk to countless people about your idea; then you attack. Once the road has been cleared, Flash makes the rest of the production quite painless. The scene turnover rate is incredible, and the quality is as good as you want it to be. I feel that it is just as important to tell a good story as it is to make a drawing move beautifully. The speed at which Flash (or any 2D digital animation tool) allows one to put together a short film or broadcast-quality animated series is amazing... just think, we can give those sweatshops a break and bring more work back to Canada!

Animation is a complete and total collaboration. Although it's best to have one person with a vision of where the story's going, it's the input and creativity from every person in every department that makes it great. Of course, you've got to shake out the bad ideas but it's all in the building of entertaining characters and a good story. With every department (including animation) in the same building, communication is open for everyone - you can watch the shows come together every day and fix anything as it gets designed, boarded, animated and composited. I learned that having the entire production in-house is vital to a smooth-running operation. It's how they did it back in the day, it's how I love doing it now, and it's absolutely what works the best.

I've had some experience in directing animation remotely; supervising and managing an overseas animation crew can be far more challenging. I learned with the right amount of planning at the front end; wth designs, boards and art direction all well prepared and organized, anything is possible. Animation is the perfect marriage of drawing and acting. The only limits are the edges of the frame and your own imagination.