Work was slow at Ad-Dispatch in the summer of 2013 and our animation team meandered off to Miramichi for a small conference. It was quaint, likely the quietest corner of Canada I’d ever stayed. It was also the first time I met Tom Bancroft and Tony Bancroft, the Bancroft brothers. Meeting them was a wonderful surprise. And all the sudden relative to what their first time in Miramichi must have felt like, our animation team no longer seemed like the fishes furthest out of water. (It’s a fishing town, you see.)
I even had the good fortune of being shamed in a drawing contest by Tony, above-left. The Bancroft brothers were of course there giving talks at the conference, one of which included a frame by frame look at some of Tony’s animation of Pumba from The Lion King (1994), above-right. On that same feature Tom had animated young Simba in part. It just so happens that their work at Disney was a large component of what lead me into art and animation, in particular of wildlife, and here we all were ― in Miramichi. The Bancroft brothers both have great books out now for animators and visual storytellers. Tom’s is a book on character design, and Tony’s, on directing animation.
The Jalloo animation conference was even slower in Miramichi in the summer of 2013 and San “the man” Mathew and I headed out to the nearby Kouchibouguac National Park for an afternoon.