The winner at the Ottawa International Animation festival for commissioned animation, Kensington Market depicts the evolution of a small shop within a vibrant community as new arrivals make their home within Canada. This is the 88th short in the series Heritage Minutes and the first to be animated. The painterly aesthetic was created using a hybrid of traditional animation and cutting edge 3D rendering to create a uniquely textured and vibrant film. 

Vive la Rose is a short film Bruce Alcock made for the NFB. It’s a rather tragic love story of a fisherman and his beloved, based on a traditional Newfoundland song performed by Emile Benoit.

To convey the history and character of this story of unrequited love, we rooted the film on location in Newfoundland, using a combination of live action and animation to tell the story. Bruce loves mixing up elements of things, so we combined digital and hand-made production – ink drawings with a variety of romantic and associative elements and objects – to create a stop motion film. Because it was all shot on location, we were able to make use of sunlight and the physical realities of the location. The film looks like it could have been made in the 1800’s: we used still cameras but the digital underpinning made it work.

The first of 6 films we did for "You, Me, Community" - a new shorts series by PBS Kids!

The series was created to explore valuable and necessary themes like diversity, identity, culture and civic participation. The films feature flexible, emotive animation and cute, geometric design, engaging young and old viewers, alike.

Series Credits:

Client - PBS Kids

Production Company - Global Mechanic Media
Director: Bruce Alcock
Executive Producer: Tina Ouellette
Producer: Rachel Welsh
Animation Director & Designer: Joe Bichard
Senior Animators: Daniel Sousa, Ross Plaskow, Ian Godfrey, Ryan Kane, Cesare Battista, Kevin Langdale, Max Ammo, Sebastian Boissett, Sitji Chou

Sound Design & Mixing - Dick & Roger's Sound Studio