Floor Kids all started with a six-step animation cycle. By "six-step" I'm talking about the sequence of moves referring to the most basic floor footwork in break-dancing, which, appropriately, comprises of six steps.

I had just finished Asthma Tech. I was breaking quite a bit at the time, and was working on a small animation contract to tie me over on rent. I was working on the scene for this contract, and I just didn't feel like doing it at that moment, so I began to sketch my simple style characters, similar to Asthma Tech, but as little bboy kids. As soon as I started I couldn't stop drawing them. They were totally addictive. I immediately just drew a character in the middle of the page in a break move. Then I put another sheet down and drew the next pose. Pretty soon I had a basic cycle of him six-stepping in a circle. I quickly threw the drawings under the camera, and line-tested it. I threw a beat on it and I was hooked. Next thing I knew, I had animated 30 seconds of rough animation.

I had met Kid Koala at the NFB while he was working on my friend Lillian's film Jaime Lo, Small and Shy. He called me up to go catch a movie with some friends and so I stopped by, and showed him the little quicktime video of Nugs.

With his next album Your Mom's Favourite DJ, coming out within the month, Kid Koala proposed that we come out with two solo character trailers each month and finally releasing the full battle video a few months later.

I was working on Spiderwick Chronicles at the time. I had a contract doing 3D pre-viz in Maya for a Hollywood studio that came up to Montreal to shoot. I was working 12-14 hour weekdays, so I had very little spare time to work on Floor Kids. So I ended up working on Floor Kids on the go, on the bus, on the metro/subway. I took my plexiglass animation disk, a stack of Chromacolour paper and a pack of ball point pens with me everywhere I went.

I wanted to give both bboys a distinct dancing style. Bboy O-Live has a kind of latin flavor to his moves. It's more rounded, fluid, and influenced by different types of latin dances. He kind of has a more fun attitude. Nugs has a more cut, scribbly, choppy style, and more of a bad-ass attitude.

I also decided to keep it as one single shot. I wanted a Youtube, hand-held camera feel to it.

The film played all around the world at various film festivals, but the best screening I had was to a large group of kids at a public school in Toronto. The screening was organized by TIFF group under the Special Delivery program, where they bring in a large screen and a sound speaker system into the school gymnasium. There were about 100 kids between grade 4-6. Before showing the film, the principal was presenting me like this big time director who they had to respect and be quiet and keep hush-hush during the film. Then I stood in front of them and said to do the total opposite. Be as loud and rowdy as you want, because this film is meant for you to cheer loud and get wild. The kids went absolutely nuts. And that's how I think it should be.

Look out for the Floor Kids video during Kid Koala's shows, because he has a tendency to play it during breaks in his performances.