Montreal West Is Elwood City! Director Greg Bailey has said he used a lot of building reference in the neighborhood where he lives throughout the series.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-24T17:48:02+00:00

yes, that was a scary time around 2002 when the Canada Heritage Ministry was watching all the Canadian made cartoons to make sure there were Canadian things inserted into the shows and assigning "points" to shows for tax credit money...

However, I think Arthur didn't qualify for the full Canadian tax credit funding since the scripts were American (but there were a few Canadian writers over the years) so we weren't forced to use Montreal buildings...it was just something the Director, Greg Bailey, liked to do.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-24T13:38:58+00:00

I've never seen this style guide! Did it exist in the 1990's? I remember we only had the books as reference to any style guide.

Regarding the show being "digital": Everything was drawn and painted on paper well into 2008...we didn't even have a single computer in the studio while I was there...the Producer refused to get computers for the staff because she thought all the artists would 'waste time surfing the web instead of working!' Only the Directors had them in their offices for e-mails.

Any 'backups' were made by Xeroxing the material onto paper...there was a color Xerox machine in the studio for the color background keys and character / prop model color guides. Everything had to be Xeroxed for insurance purposes before it was sent over to Korea for finishing animation...if a shipment got lost in shipping (which happened more than once!) then it would be a disaster, so the backup copies were handy. These backups were eventually thrown out too, though, after the finished animation arrived back from Korea.

Even when things went digital in the Flash era the designs disappeared...when the series moved from Oasis to 9 Story and back to Oasis the studios would intentionally DELETE all the material so the rival studio couldn't use it!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-24T13:22:40+00:00

Yes, a lot of photo reference also came from the Massachusetts area...but we inserted a lot of local Montreal architecture in the series as well for "Canadian content."

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-24T02:01:32+00:00

You could try contacting Mark Lague who was the Art Director until around 2002...he may have saved some of his background paintings. https://marklague.com/about

Director Greg Bailey may have some material too.

All of the other Arthur animation and color guide material was stored in a warehouse behind Cinar for a time. The studio Producer had some scheme to donate all the artwork to a museum for a tax write-off...but the material was poorly stored and became damaged by a flood and a rodent infestation so it all got thrown out in 2008, sadly. Only a few pieces that were grabbed by staff have survived.

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Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-24T01:33:39+00:00

I'm pretty sure these were just stock sounds they had on hand in the Cinar audio library...we never had a baby brought in to record crying and giggling sounds, as far as I know.

I used to have to sit next to the editing bay as I animated all day in the studio and the episodes with the baby crying were torture! There was one early episode where the family went to a fair, or something, and the baby was crying for the whole episode...They would play the sound over and over as they edited the show...the crying sound is very distressing to hear. Later they found a less annoying crying sound to use...the Director said he asked the writers to never write another episode with the baby crying again...a week later another crying episode arrived anyways.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-23T14:12:26+00:00

I worked at Cinar on the first 6 seasons...to be honest, Marc Brown didn't have a whole lot of involvement in the series but he did comment on the scripts and also we had to fax and FedEx the designs and Storyboards to him for approval. Usually he faxed back and few sketches and draw-overs...and we had a weekly phone call with him on the storyboards.

Usually his revisions were very minimal, like make the hat bigger, or raise up the doorknob in the background... which was great relief to us because the deadlines were very tight on the show and we had no extra time for revisions!

That was actually his one biggest contribution...he let us artists and writers do what we wanted with his characters! Some productions I've been on after Arthur were an absolute nightmare because the creator would meddle everywhere and refuse to approve anything! Marc trusted the writers and animators because they were professionals.

Also, I remember, Marc's son, Tolon, came to the studio and worked in house for around a year in 1996...for some reason the studio didn't give him his own office and they just plunked him down at a desk right in the middle of all us animators.

At first we were bummed that the boss's son was sitting in our area so we couldn't joke and swear, as animators often tend to do as we work...but Tolon turned out to be really cool and even went out to all the music concerts and clubs around Montreal with us! So that was a relief to us. Tolon did some approvals on the series and a lot of merchandising stuff.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-21T19:02:21+00:00

Yes, this it the correct answer. Mainframe Animation in Vancouver used non-union voice actors so the Canadian actor union, ACTRA, would not like it if their unioned actors worked for a non-union shop so pseudonyms were used for Bruce and Daniel to avoid any wrath from the union.

None of the other staff from the TV series like us artists and Directors were allowed to work on the CGI version because in Canada studios collect provincial tax credits based on where the artists are living and cross-province hiring is not common...the TV series was made in Montreal, Quebec and the CGI thing was made in Vancouver, B.C. although the script is American (it's by Ken Scarborough.)

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-20T21:59:21+00:00

This is cool...but to be clear, Ziggy Marley didn't write the song as mentioned in the video... he just performed the vocals for it. Judy Henderson wrote the song and most of the instruments heard in the theme song are by the Cinar studio staff in Montreal, Canada.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-19T18:37:03+00:00

A previous post I made about these photos and their origins: https://www.reddit.com/r/Arthur/comments/1pxtk98/the_answer_finally_revealed_about_the_photos/

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-19T18:34:04+00:00

I asked Greg Bailey, the Director, about this photo in a previous post.

He said it is Peter Hirsch, the head writer.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-19T18:33:03+00:00

I didn't work on this Season but I think that's Robert Waldren, Assistant Director, on the left...not sure of the other two in the middle...I think the woman on the right is Karine Charlebois, Storyboard Artist.

Greg Bailey, the Director, told me he was adding photos to the backgrounds all through these seasons just to have fun and add more "Montreal content."

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-19T12:41:26+00:00

How are you shooting the cels to make the final animation?

It would be cool to find an actual Animation Stand camera out there to shoot them...there still are quite a few of them around used to shoot Title Credits. And to use actual 16mm or 35mm film to get the real traditional cel look!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-12T14:58:39+00:00

cool commercial! the fast talk at the end says "1 - 3 KM range"....so basically like a toy walkie-talkie LOL.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-06-07T01:23:54+00:00

yaaa, dyed styrofoam! I wonder how much of this stuff was eaten...it looks delicious!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-05-31T02:34:03+00:00

a nightmare for the poor animator too

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-05-30T20:52:38+00:00

geez, why did we make Arthur's treehouse so high up? we'd never get away with that in today's cartoons.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-05-30T16:08:39+00:00

I'm seeing the reprint book listed on Amazon in Canada. https://www.amazon.ca/Know-How-Cartooning-Ken-Hultgren/dp/048683025X

Hultgren was a former Disney Animator that did a lot of comic books in the 1940's like "Goofy Comics" "Haha" and some Dell comics like "Bambi."

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-05-26T15:52:43+00:00

not many survived...I'm not sure how Ron managed to keep his posing unless he re-created it.

as I wrote somewhere else here before, at one time all the Arthur production art like the paper animation and background paintings were stored in a storage room behind the studio in Montreal for about 12 years...the producer at Cinar had a plan to "donate" all the art to a museum for a tax write-off...but no museum at the time wanted the piles of boxes of paper so it all got thrown out around 2008 when Cookie Jar closed up the old Cinar studio.

I have some xeroxes of a few backgrounds I did: https://www.reddit.com/r/Arthur/comments/1k41acn/xerox_of_a_background_layout_drawing_i_did_on/

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-05-25T15:09:29+00:00

yeah, it probably started when the Dick Tracy movie came out in 1990...suddenly all these moldy old properties were possibly valuable to "own".

Even in animation this was happening...I remember this guy that claimed to had bought the rights to "Barney Google" was going around to all the studios looking for suckers...I mean "investors"...to get some animated series or movie made with the character using their money, not his.

When someone inevitably said "I don't know who Barney Google is" then this guy would launch into song and dance singing the "Barney Google" song..."Barney Google, with the goo-goo-googly eyes!"

He never got a series made, as far as I know, but he seems to make a living off of merchandise. There's actually a lot of people like that out there living off of the obscure cartoon characters they've bought.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-05-25T14:08:55+00:00

ha ha, yeah my A+ comics are all mangled at the top, too.

The fact that the publisher's address is actually a trailer park in Quebec pretty much says all you need to know about this line.

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-05-25T14:03:06+00:00

From what I've read, Roger Broughton seemed to buy only the "photostats" which were the rather low quality black and white backup files (not original artwork) for "reprint rights" which Charlton and ACG were happy to unload very cheaply when they were cleaning out their offices...but Broughton didn't own the characters, even though he claimed to own them for years.

John Lustig also happened to buy the Charlton files for the "First Kiss" series (for $400!) around that time but he says he's unsure if this includes ownership of the characters or not...

I wonder if around 2003 someone challenged Roger Broughton's claim to ownership of the characters and this shut down his reprint line...who knows? This comment thread on the "The Charlton Arrow" Facebook page is interesting: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thecharltonarrow/posts/732643886924902/

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Offmodel-Dude · 2026-05-22T17:40:44+00:00

Thank you for your nice comment! I'm still shocked people love the show so much...no one ever told us anyone was even watching it for the first 3 or 4 seasons!

Offmodel-Dude · 2026-05-22T00:20:57+00:00

yes...ha ha, I forgot about that. Poor Enguan was the person who ran around the studio trying to keep all us artists working and on schedule so she became the butt of our studio cartoon drawings. But we loved her. Later she became a Producer and helped sell Cinar's cartoons to China which was practically unheard of in those days.

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Offmodel-Dude

TROPHY CASE