Adam Shaheen

TV Kids
Weekly, August 26, 2008

President
& Executive Producer

Cuppa Coffee
Studios

Cuppa Coffee
Studios has developed a distinctive look for its productions. Stop-motion
animation has become a signature of the Toronto-based producer, which operates
45 stop-motion stages, meaning 45 cameras and 45 setups for its shows. With
around two productions in the works at any given time, and a crew of 200 to 250
people, Cuppa Coffee has been churning out high-quality animated content for
close to two decades now, doing so with its very own distinctive style.

“I never
really had the great dream of stop motion is the be all, end all, it just
naturally evolved,” says Adam Shaheen, the president and executive producer at
Cuppa Coffee, who launched the studio some 17 years ago. Past hits such as Jojo's
Circus and Celebrity
Deathmatch helped pave
the way for Cuppa Coffee’s stop-motion programs in the international
marketplace, and the studio is hoping to continue that success with Life’s a
Zoo. TELETOON in
Canada originally ordered 13 half hours of the series, which is a “reality”
program featuring seven animals living in a house together for 20 weeks, but
the network has since upped the number to 20 episodes. “It’s basically seven
different animals, but we don’t refer to them as animals and we don’t have any
animal jokes,” Shaheen explains. “It parallels the human condition and things
that we as people do to irritate each other.” Skewed for teens and up, the show
makes its Canadian debut on September 1, and launches on SBS in Australia later
this year.

Though the
company is well known for stop motion, Cuppa Coffee also has a range of 2-D
animations that have been notching up successful sales across the globe. Bruno
and the Banana Bunch grew
out of a series of 50×1-minute interstitials, known simply as Bruno. After selling Bruno globally through Nickelodeon
International and rolling out a strong merchandising and licensing program, the
need for a full-length series quickly presented itself. Bruno found an audience in more than 80
countries, and the new expanded format has secured broadcast deals in territories
such as France, Scandinavia, Portugal, the Middle East, English- and
Spanish-speaking U.S., Korea, the Netherlands and French-speaking Canada, among
others.

“That’s a good
example of where we’re not particularly well known for 2-D, but it has a beautiful
design,” Shaheen says of the series. “I think the design sold parents and kids
on wanting to watch it and buy the stuff that goes with it,” and the L&M
franchise for Bruno has
really taken off, he explains. “The whole nature of that beast is that it’s
great for clothing and coloring books and other products.”

Being able to
cross styles successfully is something that Shaheen really values about Cuppa
Coffee, he says, and Bruno is a testament to that. “I think one of my proudest moments here
is actually that I’m somebody who gets a little bored quickly and I like the
fact that we’re doing 2-D stuff and developing other 2-D stuff as well as the
stop motion.”

And this
melding of styles has been at the heart of Cuppa Coffee from the very
beginning. “When I originally started the company, we were primarily doing
promos and broadcast design and commercials. It was very much a mixed-media
company, as in we would combine styles, like live action with stop motion or
2-D animation, a real mixed bag of stuff,” he explains. “We got a name for
ourselves in that, and that’s still part of the spirit of what we do.”

In fact, many
of the core ideas that Shaheen implemented when setting up Cuppa Coffee, in
1992, are still a part of its backbone today. Originally trained as a
photographer, Shaheen admits to falling into animation somewhat by default, but
his lack of structured, formal preparation played to his advantage. “What was
great, and it's still a bit of a philosophy here, is I really didn’t know what
I was doing. It was all that sort of serendipitous, make it up as you go along,
kind of happy accident stuff that really set Cuppa Coffee at the time aside
from other companies doing similar things. Simply because I wasn’t necessarily
thinking like the rest of the animation companies of its day.”

Even today,
Shaheen is fully invested in keeping the studio’s animations fresh with
innovative new designs and styles. “I particularly like the fact that while I
run the company, I’m still hugely involved in development, I’m still hugely
involved in sort of this quality control meets creative influences, I’m still
very much involved in overseeing a lot of the creative content… I went to art
school for many years and made stuff, so that’s still my first love and that’s
part of the job I will never give up because that’s what makes me get up in the
morning.”

—By
Kristin Brzoznowski