After setting up shop in London, Eng. in the early ’90s, Red Rover president and director Andy Knight was pretty sure he was never coming back to Canada.

But when Disney made a him great offer he couldn’t turn down, he packed up and brought the whole company home to Toronto.

Originally from Deep River, Ont., Knight’s interest in animation was planted while at a party with his brother Peter Knight (Holmes & Lee) where he was caught up in conversations with a group of aspiring young animators. With a knack for drawing and an interest in filmmaking, he decided to give it a shot and enrolled in Sheridan College.

Following graduation in 1983, Knight was offered his first job at Gaumont in Paris, working on storyboards and preproduction for two Asterix feature films.

From there, Knight landed jobs in Berlin and l.a., and in 1989 found himself in London where he became creative director at Passion Pictures and first started to dabble in commercials.

After four years in London, Knight ventured off on his own to launch Soho-based shop Red Rover.

Meanwhile, across the pond in Toronto, Disney had plans to open a studio and had an eye on Knight to head up the first film, Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas.

The deal was Knight would start preproduction in London, which he did for four months, then Disney would move his company, employees and all, to Toronto where he would complete the film and then return to Red Rover.

‘We had a successful business in London, my wife [Linzi, his partner in Red Rover] and I were both thinking we were never going back to Canada. But this was a golden opportunity at the right time,’ says Knight.

Knight is the creator and executive producer on Nelvana’s animated series Ned’s Newt, now in its third season, and has worked on the development of Francis Ford Coppola’s feature films Pinnochio and Jack.

Knight recently moved his animation shop further into the commercial realm by adding some live-action directors to the roster.

‘Linzi was doing a lot of film graphics and it was frustrating because she couldn’t get the right kind of footage she needed so we pushed her to shoot the live action as well,’ says Knight. ‘If we are doing the effects we know what we want so we might as well just shoot it ourselves.’

Some recent spots to come out of Red Rover include three Shake & Bake ads through bbdo that star talking farm animals, and a subliminal message for Molson Export featuring a woman in the beer bubbles.