View the Kickstarter here
Verne Andrusiek is just one of the amazing talents who helped breathe visual life into a seminal Canadian animated classic, Rock and Rule. For the later part of his entertainment career, he went by the shorter version of his last name, and not everyone made the connection. With this Nelvana Entertainment film recognized as a cult work in the Canadiana hall of fame, anyone asking for a release will be in for a disappointment. A remaster is not likely to happen. What Verne preserved at home, though, will become part of the backbone of Rock and Rule Behind the Scenes, a video documentary that includes interviews with the directors and writers of this project. He announced this project to folks visiting his booth during Fan Expo Vancouver 2026!
With a crowdfunding campaign launching April 6, 2026, he also hopes to put some long-running fan debates to rest. He put it this way: “I became a bit of a jack-of-all-trades over my career going from music to electronics, art, film and computers in large part due to times, the 1950s through to 1980 were a period of dramatic change when not much of anything we take for granted today existed. Basically, if you wanted something you had to figure out how to do it yourself because there were no off-the-shelf solutions.”
This self-described K-mart kid grew up moving between communities as his dad climbed the ranks at S.S. Kresge‘s, the K-Mart predecessor, in Regina, eventually landing a senior executive role in the Toronto head office. Settling in was never easy. “I was enrolled in Roman Catholic schools until grade six, which put barriers between me and neighbouring kids, who all went to public school. The only left-hander among 6 squabbling siblings made me the odd man out at home and gave the nuns licence to try and beat it out of me, they considered left-handedness a sign of possession. That made me double-down with what I had, leading to a strong sense of independence, deep distrust of authority and excellent mind-hand control.”
The real game-changer arrived with the family’s first television set in the early 1960s, when Verne was around eight. “From then on Sunday evenings after dinner usually started with The Wonderful World Of Disney, where I was amazed with Jose Feliciano’s guitar playing, followed by cartoons including The Flintstones, then off to bed. That got me started in music and animation with Kennedy assassinations followed by Kent State providing the subtext.”
An even bigger revelation came a few years later. Back then, TV stations produced a lot of local content, including a lunchtime puppet show. A classmate invited Verne over to see something special. “Making our way into the garage I was struck by the sight of the exact puppet show stage I watched. While that blew my young mind, it was the vision of the haphazard way the stage was made, surrounded by clutter of laundry, boxes and other basement stuff that hit hardest, it was all an illusion made up of cardboard, tape and sleight of hand in the camera framing.”
His teen years kicked off around 1967, right in time for the Summer of Love and Woodstock, a golden era in music, thought, culture and art, and he was in the middle of it. Robert Crumb invented the underground comic movement with Zap!, which soon led him to discover the indie publishing scene, and working at the Canadian Graphic Collector. Some years were rough. He created Captain Cannabis at a time when trying to legalize the plant met with serious wariness, but he found a way to weave counter-culture and cannabis culture into the work.
“Central to the story is that smoking cannabis transforms Hal Lighter into a superhero. That leads to questions like, what makes that cannabis special and where does it come from? That put me on a path of deep research into everything I could find related to cannabis, which led to aliens, Roswell and the Captain Cannabis universe. I compiled and published my notes in Outside the Box for those into the strange and unusual.” Verne’s plans for the character are ambitious.
On the Rock & Rule connection, he was direct: “It would take Lucas’s Star Wars to move visual effects to the next level, which is where I needed it to be to tell the Captain Cannabis story, and Rock & Rule was using the same special effects technology Lucas was. So it was an excellent training ground for leading-edge visual effects, just a few years before CG turned it all into a buggy whip.”
He wasn’t shy about the film’s shortcomings, either. “Rock & Rule turned out to be more an exercise in what not to do, from a filmmaking point of view. Don’t get me wrong, there are moments of sheer brilliance in that film, but for me it’s overshadowed by the lack of story work and a free-range production approach that spawned a toxic work environment that delivered the film years late, millions over budget and in an unfinished state.”
With digital tools now dominating production pipelines, do you feel something is lost compared to the analog slit-scanning and optical techniques used on Rock & Rule? Or does modern technology open new creative doors?
I find I’m far more productive with technology than before. On Rock & Rule we had two camera stands, a big manual Oxberry for multiplane work, and a Mechanical Concepts computer-controlled stand for visual effects. That’s, in fact, where I got my start in technology. After Rock & Rule I pivoted into tech and went on to become a systems analyst; Apple’s Steve Jobs liked my work so much he flew me into San Francisco for an afternoon meet and greet. That is to say, I know both sides of the technology argument very well, having lived in both.
That said, whenever I approach a new assignment I always start with a big, blank 18″ x 24″ paper pad and a pencil. Why? Because we are constrained by the tools we use, and the only constraints on pencil and paper are imagination, which computers can never have. I still don’t draw on the computer. I use it for finishing and formatting, but my art is always pencil on paper first.
Beyond nostalgia, what are you hoping to preserve or clarify with Rock and Rule Behind the Scenes?
Years ago I uploaded my Rock & Rule clips to YouTube as part of my portfolio. To my surprise, views have climbed into the millions, with many questions arising about what happened during production. So the central mission is to answer viewers’ questions. Beyond that, I’ve got the only remaining stash of leftover production art that needs to find a home, and Kickstarter seems like a great way to match fans with collectibles they won’t be able to find otherwise.
From your perspective, is a true 4K restoration possible given what has survived?
“I’ve heard from senior management that the fire did happen and all was lost, so I take that as fact. 4K is not going to happen and not worth it if it was possible, IMO. YouTube and other streaming services downsample everything to 720p HD for broadcast, so 4K is a waste. Frankly, I can’t see the difference between HD and Blu-ray, so there’s really no point. More attention should be put toward the story than gadgets to transmit it. A friend at CBC told me that while they have a 4K camera, they never actually use that resolution for shooting, and certainly not for transmitting large AV files over the internet, which is how things go to air these days.”
Where does the proposed production art book fit into the larger preservation effort?
“This is the first, and maybe the last, time the Rock & Rule story is collected in one place with notes, visuals and supporting graphics from the actual production. In today’s digital world most of the techniques we were using have become irrelevant, so I hope it stands as a time capsule of what was. It is certainly the most comprehensive look into what went on during the production of Rock & Rule so far.”
Can you share who has already been interviewed or is on your wish list?
“I’ve interviewed Clive Smith (Director, The Devil and Daniel Mouse), Dave Ross (layout/Marvel artist), Wayne Gilbert (senior background artist, The Mummy 2), Lenora Hume (ran camera, Beetlejuice) and John Celestri (animator, Boba Fett in Star Wars Holiday Special). I’ll be interviewing Tom Sito (animator) and Michael Hirsh (producer), with more pending.”
In Part Two of Rock and Rule Behind the Scenes, we
dive into production myths and answer a few fan speculations
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