Mark Mayerson

Reels, Lecture and Podcasts

I worked in drawn animation from 1976 to 1984, with a brief return in the early 90's. While I worked on multiple TV specials, one series and an industrial, the work that had the highest budgets were commercials. They're the most polished things I animated using drawings. These commercials were done in Toronto from 1981 to 1984 for Nelvana Animated Commercials and Boxcar Animation.

I started working in computer animation in 1985, when the work was almost entirely flying logos. In 1987, I worked for Arcca Animation, which was producing the computer animation for Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, the first TV series using computer animated characters. There were two robots, Sauron and Blastar, who were henchmen for the villain Lord Dred. The show featured an early form of interactivity. Mattel made guns that would react if a viewer shot at the screen and hit the blinking signal on the robots' chests.

The Kraft cheese commercial was done for Side Effects Productions, which later changed it's name to Spin Productions. The dragon was done at Dome Productions as a pitch for a TV series based on Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders series. The show was never made. The Zappers commercial was done there as well. The duck piece was done at Catapult as a pitch for the TV series Sitting Ducks, which we did not get.

In 1992, I joined Catapult Productions with the intent to write and direct a computer animated TV special. Our first attempt was The Land Without Books and we created a short promo as a sales tool. We learned that broadcasters were not willing to disrupt their regular schedules for specials unless it was for Halloween or Christmas. With this knowledge, we later pitched and sold Monster By Mistake as a Halloween special that eventually turned into a series.

In 1996, Catapult producer Kim Davidson put the Monster By Mistake half hour special into production. This is the promo made to sell the shows to broadcasters. It aired on Canada's YTV for Halloween of 1996. The promo was written by Mark Mayerson and the visuals were created by Mayerson and Robert D.M. Smith. Music was by Bruce Fowler of Modular Music. The show was expanded into a series that ran for 52 episodes, airing in Canada on YTV and several European Disney channels.

Below is a reel of sequences I directed for the Monster By Mistake series.

In August of 2020, Gio Petti invited me to be a guest on his podcast, The Gio Show. Much of the discussion was about Monster By Mistake, but it included an overview of my whole career in animation.

On March 19, 2014, I gave a talk to Animatic T.O, a speaker series featuring people in the animation industry to fellow professionals and students. It was based on my experience attempting to sell projects while at Catapult Productions. Here's a video of the talk.

Guys With Pencils was a podcast created by two Sheridan animation alumni, Andrew Murray and Adam Hines. They were gracious enough to have me on several times. Here is episode 22 from 2012.



Here is episode 60 from 2012.



Here is episode 156 from 2014.