Pitching pilot ideas for u.s. specialty networks Nickelodeon and mtv was the golden apple up-and-coming Canadian animation houses were reaching for in 1994. It would be instant success for any company that came up with the next Ren & Stimpy or Beavis and Butthead.

Everyone – production studios and service companies alike – was pitching ideas. Ottawa’s Fun Bag Studios had Whacked Out Mountie and countless others, and Vancouver’s Bardel Animation funded a local freelance animator to develop his project for presentation to the American nets.

But with the exception of Vancouver’s Danny Antonucci, whose Grunt Brothers is airing on mtv, and Toronto’s Nelvana, which is doing Little Bear for Nick, Canadian animation houses are not having much luck pitching their gems south of the border.

Linda Simenski, director of animation for Nickelodeon, says she has made an effort to attract Canadian animators. ‘I’m inspired by the films of the National Film Board, particularly the Winnipeg animators,’ she says. Translation: her energies this side of the 49th are channeled into convincing Winnipeg-based animators Richard Condie, Cordell Barker or Brad Caslor to develop a project for Nickelodeon.

The slow development on the specialty channel front means many animation companies are executing Plan B – breaking into the multimedia field of cd-rom and interactive games. Until recently, companies specializing in desktop publishing or corporate video dominated this field. However, animation houses, laden with talent and high-end equipment, are in a position to snatch a piece of the action.

Chris Wallace of Toronto-based commercial animation house TOPIX Computer Graphics and Animation says his company has the human creative power and exact infrastructure to do multimedia projects. As a matter of fact, the topix team is currently designing an interactive game called Something’s Fishy at Camp Wiganishie based on the audio cd by children’s performer Al Simmons. Wallace learned of Simmons’ work when topix was hired to do the graphics for his cbc special. Wallace says he was so impressed with Simmons’ wacky sense of humor, he negotiated rights for a cd-rom. Some of the material shot by producer Henry Less for the cbc special will be incorporated into the topix cd-rom.

To service or to own

‘Companies can choose to either be a service bureau where they don’t own anything, or in multimedia where they can have the opportunity to own rights to a property,’ says Wallace. ‘The key is to identify new intellectual property and get a piece of the action,’ he adds.

The second game project the company is embarking on is Tone Cat and Metal Mouse, a cd-rom based on the tv series – essentially Tom and Jerry on the Internet – and developed by the Toronto team of Atul Rao, Greg van Riel and Steve Propas. topix, hired to do the computer-generated backgrounds, took the next step and negotiated the cd-rom rights.

Gord Coulthart of Fun Bag Studio in Ottawa says his company is pursuing cd-rom properties. Fun Bag recently hired Curtis Crawford as its new creative team director to explore this area.

KLA Visual Productions in Ottawa jumped onto the multimedia bandwagon two years ago when it approached Ottawa’s Corel Corporation to do a desktop publishing package. kla founder Lee Atkinson hired his father Vic Atkinson (founder of the now-defunct Atkinson Studios) to design over 1,500 animated clip art items which can be used as screen savers, business presentations, company flow charts, etc.

Now that this project has wrapped, Corel has agreed to publish some cd-rom titles for kla, including an animated children’s dictionary for use in schools and at home, and an interactive storybook based on the classic, The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

‘Real computer animation’

‘We got into multimedia because we wanted to see real computer animation,’ says Atkinson, who adds that as the industry matures, consumers will demand full animation and more innovative designs. And if by year 2000 the industry balloons to $5 billion, he predicts all the large animation companies will enter the fray.

The prospect of animation houses breaking into the field does not worry Warren Leepik of Knowledge Systems in Toronto. He says animation houses like topix are high-end and charge accordingly, whereas his office can be rented out for as little as $75 per hour. ‘The work we do is similar to the larger companies, but it’s at a much lower price,’ he says. ‘What’s different is the features and the speed.’

Knowledge is just one of many small production houses in Toronto specializing in multimedia projects. Kinetix, a year-old company, uses Alias and Softimage program systems to design 3D clip art for its clients.

But whereas Knowledge and Kinetix are essentially service operations selling themselves on their talent and equipment, other companies such as Eloi Productions, an arm of Electra Media, a corporate video company, are producing their own titles. Next month, the company is launching its first cd-rom interactive game, Jewels of the Oracle, which will be published by Toronto-based Discis, one of the leaders in children’s software development. Eloi plans to hire more animators and develop more titles in the future, says Paul Chato, who cofounded the company with Courtland Shakespeare and Aurel Langlois.

Not everyone is jumping on the bandwagon just yet. John Coldrick, senior computer animator at Toronto’s Spin Productions, a large commercial animation house, predicts the huge demand for multimedia work and interactive games will level off.

But Spin, too, is ‘nibbling’ at some bait, he says. ‘Commercials have been our bread and butter, but when you look at the money going into games and multimedia projects, and commercial work is dropping slightlyÉyou have to keep your options open.’