Ruffus the Dog is a Canadian children's television series which aired on YTV from 1998 to 1999; it was created by Robert Mills, who performs the title character, and developed with Cheryl Wagner. The show was produced through Radical Sheep Productions, a company founded by Mills in 1985 that also created The Big Comfy Couch. The Ruffus character had previously appeared in the educational video series The Adventures of Ruffus & Andy in the early 1990s, as produced by the Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga, Ontario, where Ruffus and his owner Andy learned medical lessons.
When Robert Mills left Radical Sheep in 2002, ownership and rights to the award-winning series were transferred to his new company, Hunky Dorey Entertainment. In 2010 Mills announced all of the original shows would be posted online under a Creative Commons license, and that they want to produce new episodes for online release. The first major production was a re-telling of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol with Ruffus playing Ebenezer Scrooge. Six of the show's original puppeteers, Robert Mills, Bob Stutt, Gord Robertson, Fred Stinson, Karen Valleau, and Ben Deutsch, returned for the project, as did songwriter JP Houston. Alyson Court, who played Loonette the Clown on The Big Comfy Couch, voiced the Ghost of Christmas Past.
In 2013, the Ruffus Project embarked on production of a new web series entitled: Ruffus The Dog's Steampunk Adventure.
Also in the works were a series of illustrated book titles and a pre-school web series entitled: Ruffus Rhymes.
Synopsis
Ruffus the Dog runs a bookshop in a small town. There, he reads a famous fairy tale to the viewers. In the story, Ruffus and several other characters portray different characters in the tale. At the end, he talks about the moral of the story to the viewers.
Wallace and Gromit is a British stop-motion animated comedy franchise created by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations. It consists of four short films, two feature-length films and has spawned numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The series centres on Wallace, a good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic beagle. The first short film, A Grand Day Out, was finished and released in 1989. Wallace was voiced by actor Peter Sallis until 2010 when he was succeeded by Ben Whitehead. While Wallace speaks very often, Gromit is largely silent and has no dialogue, communicating through facial expressions and body language.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
Andrew Vabre Devine was an American character actor known for his distinctive raspy, crackly voice and roles in Western films, including his role as Cookie, the sidekick of Roy Rogers in 10 feature films. He also appeared alongside John Wayne in films such as Stagecoach (1939), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and How the West Was Won. He is also remembered as Jingles on the TV series The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok from 1951 to 1958, as Danny McGuire in A Star Is Born (1937), and as the voice of Friar Tuck in the Disney Animation Studio film Robin Hood (1973).
Noddy is an English character created by English children's author Enid Blyton. Noddy first appeared in a book series published between 1949 and 1963, illustrated by the Dutch artist Harmsen van der Beek from 1949 until his death in 1953, after which the work was continued by Peter Wienk. Television shows based on the character have run on British television from 1955 to 2020.
Steven Ross Purcell is an American cartoonist, animator, game designer and voice actor. He is the creator of the media franchise Sam & Max, for which Purcell received an Eisner Award in 2007. The series has grown to incorporate an animated television series and several video games.
The Big Comfy Couch is a Canadian children's prop comedy television series which is about a clown named Loonette and her doll Molly who solve everyday problems on their eponymous couch. It aired from March 2, 1992, until December 29, 2006. It was produced by Cheryl Wagner and Robert Mills, directed by Wayne Moss, Robert Mills and Steve Wright. It premiered on March 2, 1992, in Canada and on January 9, 1995, in the United States on PBS stations across the country. The program was also broadcast on Treehouse TV from 1997 to 2011.
Radical Sheep Productions was a Canadian television production company known for producing series including The Next Step, Stella and Sam, and The Big Comfy Couch, the latter a Gemini Award-winning series for preschoolers which produced seven seasons and aired for over ten years on YTV and Treehouse TV in Canada and public television stations in the United States.
Bob Stutt is a Canadian puppeteer and writer, who has starred in various children's television programs throughout his career.
Shaun the Sheep is a stop-motion animated silent comedy children's television series which is developed by Aardman Animations. A spin-off in the Wallace and Gromit franchise, the series focuses on the adventures of Shaun, the eponymous sheep previously starring in A Close Shave, as the leader of his flock on a English farm. The series premiered on 5 March 2007 on CBBC in the UK, also airing on BBC Two. Since 2020, the series is streamed globally on Netflix. In March 2024, it was announced that the seventh series is in development and will premiere in 2025. With 170 episodes over 6 series, Shaun the Sheep is one of the longest-running animated series in British television.
Rod Espinosa is a Filipino comics creator, writer, and illustrator.
The Adventures of Blinky Bill is an Australian animated television series based on Dorothy Wall's books about Blinky Bill, and is a sequel series to the 1992 film Blinky Bill: The Mischievous Koala. The series is produced by the Yoram Gross companies: Yoram Gross Film Studios and Yoram Gross-EM.TV, with the main co-production of EM.TV and WDR. All three seasons of the series and the TV film were animated overseas by Colorland Animation Productions Co., Ltd. in Hong Kong. Set in Greenpatch, a fictional Australian bushland town, the series presents stories through the activities and misadventures of Blinky Bill, as well as his family and friends.
The Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television's 14th Gemini Awards were held on November 7, 1999, to honour achievements in Canadian television. The awards show, which was hosted by Rick Mercer, took place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre and was broadcast on CBC Television.
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YTV Jr. was a block on YTV for preschoolers that was launched in 1994 and aired weekdays until 2002.
Cheryl Wagner, is a Canadian puppeteer, producer, director and writer, who is the creator of the TV series The Big Comfy Couch, is a Gemini Award and Emmy award- winning Canadian children's television writer, showrunner and producer who began her career as a performer in both theatre and on the screen. Her Halifax-based touring Merrytime Clown and Puppet Company in which Wagner worked as a clown and puppeteer from 1977 to 1980 provided a fertile ground for her later work as a producer and writer in children's entertainment.
The fourth season of Adventure Time, an American animated television series created by Pendleton Ward, premiered on Cartoon Network on April 2, 2012 and concluded on October 22, 2012, and was produced by Frederator Studios and Cartoon Network Studios. The season follows the adventures of Finn, a human boy, and his best friend and adoptive brother Jake, a dog with magical powers to change shape and size at will. Finn and Jake live in the post-apocalyptic Land of Ooo, where they interact with the other main characters of the show: Princess Bubblegum, The Ice King, Marceline the Vampire Queen, Lumpy Space Princess, BMO, and Flame Princess.
The Gemini Awards for Best Children's or Youth Program or Series was presented by the Gemini Awards to honour English children's television programming produced in Canada.
The VeggieTales Show is an American Christian computer-animated television series created by Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki. The series served as a revival and sequel of the American Christian computer-animated franchise VeggieTales. It was produced through the partnerships of TBN, NBCUniversal, Big Idea Entertainment, and Trilogy Animation, and ran from October 22, 2019, to April 1, 2022.
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