Vancouver company rescues archive of Canadian animator who worked on The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, The Care Bears

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Animator Norm Drew and Norm Drew Productions may not be household names these days.

But in 1986, the Kenora, Ontario-born and raised and Vancouver-based Drew, along with Gordon Standfield, co-created the storyboard for an episode of the Nelvana/ABC hit series The Care Bears titled Grumpy’s Three Wishes.

Standfield’s company, Gordon Standfield Studios, recently acquired the Norm Drew Productions film archive via a sale at Langley-based Able Auctions.

“When the opportunity to get into a bidding war for his archive came up, I got really involved and acquired his original film masters,” said Standfield.

The archive, which includes decades of the trailblazing animator’s work, contains film reels, cells, cartoons and more. Drew’s extensive list of career highlights include work on shows such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a credit on the legendary feature Yellow Submarine by The Beatles.

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“Norm was pioneering as one of the very first Canadian animation guys to gain global recognition, working in London on George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine and many other places before returning to Canada,” said Standfield. “He was the first person I hired to work on a storyboard for an episode of The Care Bears, which we worked on for about a month before he moved to Japan for work.”

Standfield, who has run an animation and live-action studio in Vancouver for decades, has been working on preserving his own film archive and thought that Drew’s archive would benefit from being handled by someone with “an animator’s touch.”

“Norm did cartoons, a live action and animated program called the Gastown Gang and a nice, educational series for BCTV, among other things,” said Standfield. “The truth about our business is we often don’t promote our work, because of the legalities of what we can and can’t show is caught up in copyright and contract issues.