Clyde Henry Productions began by designing puppets and illustrating for various clients, including Vice Magazine, for whom they produce a monthly comic strip called The Untold Tales of Yuri Gagarin. In March 2000, they signed a worldwide representation agreement with Toronto's Spin Productions.[4]
Lavis and Szczerbowski's film debut was the stop-motion animated puppet film Madame Tutli-Putli produced by the National Film Board of Canada, which they both worked on from 2002 to 2007.For the first time in the history of animated film, the puppets had “real” eyes that were digitally inserted. The as "groundbreaking" (groundbreaking, innovative) praised innovation went back to painter Jason Walker, who was responsible for the visual special effects of the film. Lavis and Szczerbowski were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2008.[5]