Nelvana

The first one is, it's either going to be a hit or it's not going to be a hit.

I'm thinking, jumping around here, I'm thinking in terms of Nelvana Animation.

At the time that they had the rights to Elfquest, to do the Elfquest animated movie, they were working on a movie called Rock and Rule.

that was voiced by, among other people, Debbie Harry of Blondie, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Sim, okay, scared shitless it is then.

At the time, I kept coming up with other things that I would think was, yeah, boy, I'll do Cerebus this month, but then I'll try to have something else just as interesting to do in the off month.

I went to Nelvana Productions in Toronto, the animation studio that's doing the Elfquest movie now.

and talked to Clive Smith and said, quote, how about if I come down and work in the off month, unquote.

I'm thinking of, like, cartoons.

Nelvana cartoons.

They did a lot of good cartoons.

Now that I think about it, the Polka Dot Door, Today's Special, those were pretty awesome.

And so it was an incredible time to be in kids' TV.

We also acquired an animation company called Nelvana, and you will all know it because they produced shows like Babar and did – I think they did the majority of service work for Nickelodeon and Disney.

So Bubble Guppies, Max and Ruby.

I mean, I could just go through the list and you'd be like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

Like, they did, did a lot of kids shows.

They were called Nelvana.

They did, like, Rupert the Bear.

They did, uh, Magic School Bus.

Okay.

And she's got some of that Nelvana money.

Good for her.

Can I have some?

And so, oh, I'm going to put some New Age music on this.

I'm going to turn this into an art project.

So I sent it to Nelvana, to see if I can get a job directing for them.

And they were looking at it when Queensryche walked into the office and saw the screen.

I got a funny Legion story.

I do storyboards for a company called Nelvana in Toronto, and...

I had to be trained to draw on the computer on a system called Toon Boom.

So they brought me in and they went to find somebody who could sit there and teach it to me.

Like, only about 18 months really after the movie opened, Beetlejuice became an children's animated TV series.

So it premiered on ABC September 9th, 1989, and was produced by Nelvana with Tim Burton serving as executive producer.

So, uh, Stephen Ouimette voiced Beetlejuice.

I think that's how you say his name.

[upbeat music] Alison, what was it like working behind the scenes and being a voice talent on these kids shows?

Well, I was very fortunate to be a child actor in the '80s, and we had this small company [chuckles] here called Nelvana.

Clive Smith, Michael Hirsh, Patrick Loubert, these three guys, they'd been doing this for a while.

They started in the '70s making movies like, um, Cosmic Christmas and Take Me Up to the Ball Game, Rock and Rule.

They did the Star Wars Christmas special, and they also happened to do live action as well.

So my first job ever working with Nelvana, it would've been when I was about 10 years old.

I did an episode called Robbers and Robots.

It was an episode of Edison Twins.