Vancouver: The latest addition to Vancouver’s busy animation scene is Atomic Cartoons, which was founded last month by four principals including Rob Davies, who was nominated for a 1999 Emmy for his directing work on Steven Spielberg Presents: Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain.

After two years working in l.a., Davies was a victim of the layoffs at Warner Bros. T.V. Animation. He returned home to Vancouver to join other locals Trevor Bentley, Olaf Miller and Mauro Casalese.

Casalese is a former Ren and Stimpy animator and Universal Cartoons director and Miller has worked on projects including Sony’s Little Witch, Nickelodeon’s Cat Dog and Nelvana’s Ned’s Newt at Studio B Productions.

According to Davies, Atomic will specialize in animation preproduction – storyboards and the design of backgrounds, props and characters. Miller says the goal of the shop is to move into the proprietary production arena, developing shows for other studios and developing its own concepts.

Atomic is presently under contract with Korea-based Sunwoo Entertainment to design 26 half-hour episodes of Milo’s Great Adventure, a story about a bug who protects his realm from an evil empire. The company is also involved in the design of Edd, Ed ‘n’ Eddy, a 26-episode series by Vancouver-based AKA Cartoon for the Cartoon Network, and is doing layout work on a new experimental shorts program from Film Roman called Capbusters.

Atomic recently undertook some storyboard work for New York’s Stretch Films series Courage the Cowardly Dog.

With files from Teressa Iezzi.