While Canada continues to act as a mecca for film and tv production, the sophistication and size of the post and effects industry has grown commensurately, offering an ever more comprehensive complement of gear and services.

The industry has grown in volume to an estimated quarter billion dollar business in 1997 and in profile – foreign producers now come seeking the talents of Canadian shops without the benefit of shooting in close proximity. The industry has evolved beyond back-end, fix-it-in-post expertise and Canadian shops have become major players in high-profile, front-end work, with imaging experts assuming a larger role in the production as well as the post process.

On the following pages, some of the bright lights of the Canadian post, animation and effects industry discuss some recent projects, where they came from and why.

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When Dynomight Cartoons originally opened its doors five years ago the company kept busy with sheet direction. Today the Ottawa-based animation shop has grown from four to almost 40 people and has its sights set on coproductions and more proprietary projects for television and the Internet.

Diane Craig, who cofounded Dynomight with brother-in-law Dan Craig, says the early focus helped establish the company’s reputation and paved the way for bigger things, hooking them up with different animators and allowing them the opportunity to work with such u.s. entities as Disney, Nickelodeon and Saban.

Last year, Dynomight animated sequences for the 20th Century Fox feature film Anastasia. More recently they completed work on a production bible for Sullivan Entertainment for a possible Anne of Green Gables animated series and handled layout and posing for Nelvana’s Franklin and Pippi Longstocking and Cinar’s Arthur.

The company also sold its Untalkative Bunny to mtv in the u.s.

Untalkative Bunny is the pet project of Canadian animator Graham Falk who, following his return from the Orient, is now in the nation’s capital developing ideas with Dynomight.

The animated shorts, featuring a very enthusiastic, laconic rabbit with enormous ears, are now airing on mtv’s Cartoon Sushi, and Craig says following discussions with Telefilm Canada she hopes to have the bunny out in half-hour episodes by next year.

For the Christian Broadcasting Network, Dynomight handled the preproduction for a seasonal, half-hour, direct-to-video special called Spunky’s First Christmas about a dog who gets lost in the big city, encounters some mean junkyard dogs, ends up in a Christmas pageant and is adopted by a young boy.

Also on the Dynomight production slate are 22 animated sequences for Noddy, a $10-million children’s show from Toronto’s Catalyst Entertainment in association with the BBC Worldwide America and the Enid Blyton Company.

The series, based on Enid Blyton’s best-selling children’s books, combines live action with puppetry and 2D animated sequences of Fractured Fairy Tales, by Dynomight, which are ’90s renditions of classic rhymes such as Jack be Nimble, Jack Be Quick with Jack on a skateboard. Other revamped tales include The Tortoise and the Hare, The Magic Porridge Pot and The Lion and the Jackal, each featuring a different look.

Angora Napkin, another new project out of Dynomight, is an animated short spoof by Troy Little and Nick Cross about a girls band ‘who are sweet but do awful things,’ which Craig describes as being ‘sharp and on the edgy side.’ The cyber series will kick off a new direction for the company, which plans to develop more animation projects for the Web.

‘dvd and Web tv will take over the world,’ says Craig. ‘And it is perfect for us, because it means limited animation and the animated elements that we work with convert really well to the Net.’

While Dynomight has yet to do a coproduction or full series, Craig says that the company is definitely headed in that direction and is searching out a coproduction partner.

She adds that because of the size of the company, their main focus for the time being will be service work.

‘We are not anxious to do anything until we are on really good footing. The bottom line is you have to be able to produce 13 half-hours well, on time and on budget. We have been slowly putting together a studio that will be able to accomplish that.’

*Also in this report:

Post/SFX showcase:

Collideascope injects hip B2

Gajdecki: body parts R us B4

Big Bang graduates from Dog’s World to Lost World B4

Lost Boy’s extraterrestrial experience B6

Spin in the series race B7

Animation shops to watch:

Bardel gets Dreamworks nod B10

Sargent York kids’ 3-pack B12

Canuck evolves from studio flicks to in-house picks B13

Red Giant spawns series B14

Canadian prodcos plotting boffo toonflick projects B15

Animation House, Lightbox both hit 15 B16, B21

B.C. post shops winning more of the U.S. visual effects B18