The meeting of creative, technical and bottom line considerations ­ the ‘beautiful circle,’ as one animation producer puts it ­ is key to success in the emerging new media field. The convergence of those elements is also enough of a rarity that Canadian animation companies aren’t typically falling all over their crayons to make the leap to new media projects. A number of Canadian animation companies have been summoned to bring their particular visual creative skills to multimedia projects ­ servicing cd-rom and Web projects here and in the u.s. ­ but few have undertaken the considerable risk of producing projects.

Curtis Crawford of Ottawa-based Funbag Animation says while the company will provide creative animation for cd-roms it won’t pursue the slippery market as a producer. ‘We find that for most of it, when it’s funded by retail sales, the funding is very shaky,’ says Crawford. ‘If we were to enter it, it would be with an affiliation with someone already in it.’

Vancouver-based Bardel Animation has provided animation for u.s. developers and president Barry Ward says some players have scaled back projects in the face of uncertain returns.

‘At first there was a push for the highest production value possible,’ says Ward. ‘Everyone was trying to compete with Disney.’

Bardel worked on cd-rom projects with u.s. developers Lightspan Partnership and Cloud Nine Interactive. According to Ward, both companies scaled back the level of their productions after a taste of the marketplace. Ward says Bardel was called in to provide high-end animation, which the producers assumed would give them a leg up in accessing the market. And while Lightspan continues to crank out titles, he says it is now attempting to produce entirely in-house.

Busy with the likes of the upcoming Fox feature Anastasia, Bardel is focusing on developing and producing tv and film properties, but Ward says the cd-rom industry likely won’t be a major area of growth in the future as broadband applications join the realm of the possible.

Toronto-based Big Animation is doing motion capture work for a Soccer Learning game from San Mateo, California-based Sanctuary Woods. Big’s Jocelyne Meinert says the company’s primary business is making pictures and that while Big has discussed the possibility of a games division over the past few years, it’s deemed the market is too saturated and decided it’s often more prudent to become involved in servicing a project with one’s own area of expertise.

Ward says much of the difficulty in animating for new media lies in making high-end animation interactive; typically the animation company would be contracted to provide the linear animation between interactive bits.

Adam Shaheen, head of Toronto’s Cuppa Coffee Animation, says the company has garnered interest from producers looking to create new media projects, and while the market is growing, one of the challenges so far has been to stress the ‘new’ part of the equation. ‘I think people to date have rehashed that ‘new media’ in very traditional ways and means that would be better told through existing media.’

Ward says one of the primary problems with new media content development has been distribution, which he says has improved in terms of cd-roms and will likely evolve towards Internet distribution.

Cinar vp of animation Lesley Taylor Ward agrees distribution has improved but adds there;s still risk. ‘You can spend a lot of money and there’s no guarantee it will be successful.’

Ward says unsatisfactory returns in the interactive realm have also resulted in a reversal of the tv-to-cd dynamic as multimedia producers seek higher revenues by repurposing product for tv.

‘Many of these projects are well developed with a lot of potentially good characters and story ideas,’ says Ward, ‘and producers are thinking why not make them into a broadcast product. We’ve been approached by people to help do that.’

Ward gives an example of a new show being pushed in the Fox lineup, Sam and Max, which began as a comic, became a top-10 cd, and then came to the tube. ‘The cd-rom business is a lot like the music business; you’re either in the top 10 or you’re in the unknown area,’ he says.

Picking up where the cd-rom industry drops off, Ward says broadband Internet tv will be the interactive content driver of the future. Bardel is working on developing shows for broadband and Ward says the challenge will be developing versatile talent to bridge the differences in the two media.