The fi ne art of style guide design The fi ne art of style guide design

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C E L E B R A T I N G 1 0 Y E A R S • S P O N S O R E D S U P P L E M E N T
THE SAVE-UMS: 78 episodes x 11 minutes
Ka-Chung, Custard, Noodle, Jazzi and Foo © 2004 DECODE/Save-Ums Productions 2 Inc.
and a squirrel who was obviously mentally challenged. “The
producer thought it was really PC so it would sell in the States,”
he says. “They called it The Handicops – get it? Priceless!”
Fortunately, the creative team managed to fi nd more
workable products that not only worked in the U.S., but
internationally. With preschool programming established and
kid-targeted animation such as Angela Anaconda becoming
an early international success and establishing Decode’s
reputation for innovation, the company’s evolution into live
action programming seemed a natural step.
Yet moving beyond animation wasn’t an easy task in an
industry more familiar with Decode as a toon shop. “Even
though Steven had 11 years of putting together some of the
10 ANNIVERSARY
EM.Entertainment congratulates on
10 years of first-class entertainment
th
most important live-action shows ever seen in Canada, and
I had a history in primetime and John Delmage had a much
longer history of producing live action, people were like,
Decode? Live action?” Stevenson says.
The international community realized Decode found its sea
legs in live action when tween-targeted series such as The Zack
Files, Naturally Sadie and Radio Free Roscoe started to pick up
key international broadcasting slots on channels like Disney,
Noggin and ZDF. Together with partner, John Delmage,
DeNure and Stevenson lured many of the people they had
worked with in the primetime sector to develop a new level of
creative infl uences to the kids live action genre. “People hadn’t
done that before because it used to be people who had worked