Ottawa: Not since Expo ’67 has Canadian art talent been wooed as openly and brazenly. A gold rush quality surrounded the Ottawa Animation Festival as corporate animators fought for talent to feed their animation machines.

Disney invited a packed house to its second floor recruiting suite; flyers shouted ‘nelvana needs you!’; or asked ‘What does it take to be an animator at Pacific Data Images?’; Nickelodeon wondered ‘do you have the vision to create the next great animated feature?’; Lacewood hoisted a ‘now recruiting’ banner above its booth; and Industrial Light + Magic quietly announced, ‘ilm is seeking the finest Character Animators and Technical Directors.’

No wonder universities and community colleges around the world are scrambling to set up animation courses to train the troops. University of Toronto, for example, is up and running and will take $5,000 – Seneca College $6,000 – for a three-month course in computer animation. And Sheridan staffers are in Singapore to set up a brand new school.

Industry professionals at the festival agreed that the ability to draw is the key factor for success and confirmed that it takes years to develop, whereas ‘computer skills can be taught within weeks.’

They urged animation hopefuls to study classical cel animation frame by frame, always carry a sketchbook and ‘draw, draw, draw – and then draw some more.’

Despite the old-home-week, family-party atmosphere of North America’s biggest and most prestigious, internationally recognized animation get-together – occurring every two years – the future of the art form was on everyone’s mind.

Optimists saw the industry expand, providing a diversity of animation for a never-ending proliferation of full-blown features, television programming and dedicated channels, plus applications in interactive games, cd-roms, computer networks and yet to be discovered media.

Pessimists have seen cycles come and go and worry about a world of flooded markets and unemployment, where anyone with cheaper and cheaper software can turn their desktop into a competitive but poor animation studio.

Yet Kaj Pindal, beloved mentor of generations of Canadian students and acclaimed international animator for half a century – working on his first cd-rom in California – believes that great animation will always rise to the top while popular animation could well become the next great folk art of the future.

The u.s.’s Tim Johnson received the Grand Prize for Best Television Production for ‘Treehouse of Horror IV: Homer 3-D,’ a computer-generated episode. The Simpsons series itself was singled out for special praise by the jury for raising primetime industry standards through quality production and intelligent writing.

The u.s.’s Igor Kovalyov was presented the Grand Prize for Best Film for his mythical Bird in the Window. A clearly surprised Kovalyov received his prize, leaned towards the microphone, and announced: ‘This should have gone to Priit Parn.’ Estonia’s award-winning Parn is known for poking merciless fun at authoritarian systems and cultural pretensions. This time, with his 1985 – an irreverent history lesson with co-author Janno Poldma – he had gone too far and managed to annoy even the jury itself with his barbed wit – and had to settle for a Special Prize for Design.

Russia’s Alexij Kharitidi won both the Gordon Bruce Award for Humour and a Special Prize for his Gagarin – the aerial antics of an inquisitive worm.

The u.s.’s Carlos Saldhana’s ‘Big Deal,’ a minimalist and elegant commercial acted by a telephone cord with personality, wriggled away with the Best Computer Animation Prize for Bell Atlantic.

The u.k.’s Anthony Hodgeson’s brilliantly directed and moodily lit Hilary scooped up three awards: the Public Prize, Zack Schwartz Award for best story and the Chromacolour Prize for best student film.

Canadian winners were Derek Lamb and Pindal’s dope-fighting thriller Goldtooth, Norman Roger’s split-screen The End of the World in Four Seasons, Robert Doucet’s traditional La Chasse-Galerie/ Flying Circus and Cordell Barker’s quirky and fast-talking spot for Bell Canada’s Intermax.

Despite 1,000 entries from 40 countries, no awards were issued in the categories of ‘educational productions’ and ‘animated productions especially produced for television, which are part of a series.’

Indeed, Linda Simensky from the Cartoon Network, as moderator of ‘The Business of TV Animation,’ asked her panel of programming experts and the packed room of would-be program creators if anyone knew what was meant by the forthcoming ‘educational’ network requirements. Nobody knew.

She also recalled that in former years she would have been on panels advising independent animators on funding and grantsmanship instead of ‘how to pitch your property’ and ‘how to cut a deal.’

In all likelihood it will have to be the independent animators and small studios who will develop a new kind of ‘educational product.’

There seems to be room for intelligently written, multigenerational programs without pointless violence and stereotyped genders – presenting a larger than u.s. view of the world.

Joel Leader from Disney admitted she felt like a politician when she tried to answer questions from the audience such as ‘Why do all Disney women look and act the same, regardless of ethnic origin, historical period and their non-American culture?’ or ‘Has Disney considered doing any productions without a Broadway-style musical soundtrack?’

On the social front, Walt Disney Animation Canada threw a superb opening night party with a great local jazz group at The Cave, a hip downtown club; Ottawa’s artist-run Funbag Animation Studios hosted the next night at Barrymores, the coolest local dance venue; Lacewood Productions treated the festival crowds to a live performance by Canada’s own Ashley ‘The Ghost Fiddler of Sable Island’ MacIsaac at the National Arts Centre; and Toronto’s Nelvana wrapped the festival with another dynamic Ottawa band rocking the West Block on Parliament Hill.

Peeter Sepp is an independent animator and globally mobile fax-toting storyboard artist. He can be reached at sepp@intacc.web.net.