Pinocchio

Eric Goossens and Anton Roebben go back a long way. The two principals of Walking The Dog, now one of Belgium’s leading animation companies, grew up in the same region and both got their start in the film business more than 20 years ago. And now, 20 years on, they’ve racked up an impressive list of credits, working as line producers and co-producers on hits such as EuropaCorp’s smash, A Monster In Paris. At Walking The Dog, business savvy, innovation and creativity go hand in hand.

In the early 1990s, Little Big One was a fertile breeding ground for top Belgian animation talent. As Roebben recalls, one of his colleagues at the company was Ben Stassen (Sammy’s Adventures: The Secret Passage) with whom Roebben made the the first CGI 3D ‘thrill ride’ movie, The Devil’s Mine, which became a huge success in theme parks all over the world as well as winning numerous awards at animation festivals.

At Trix (owned by D&D), they worked on more simulation ride movies, commercials and visual effects for feature films. Goossens however eventually grew tired of the repetitive nature of the work and left to set up his own documentary company, Off World. A short time later, he bumped into Roebben and together they founded a brand new animation company, Walking The Dog. ‘The main reason we started together on our own was that we’d be able to select our own projects and to embark on new challenges,’ says Roebben.