Having honed their skills on a variety of genres of projects from commercials to all manner of long-form service work, and having worked all over the geographical and stylistic map, Canadian animation companies are flourishing.

Many animation shops are now expanding in size and capacity, taking on new forms of work and high-profile jobs, with many stepping up to the production plate as independent producers. Herewith, a sampling of some of Canada’s new cartoon coconspirators.

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This year, two Toronto animation shops – The Animation House and Lightbox Studios – are marking 15 years in the game. Here they discuss the technological and creative evolution of the genre and their respective futures in commercial and long-form animation.

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On the occasion of its 15th birthday, The Animation House is exhibiting a penchant for self-expression and an urge to explore typical of many creative teenagers, but with a maturity of forethought uncommon in the breed.

Born in 1983, the Toronto commercial animation shop rang in the new year and its 15th anniversary by launching a major new initiative to refocus and recommit itself to the ethic of eclecticism that founded the company, a commitment which includes a partnership with a major u.s.-based animation concern (to be announced at natpe) which will form the basis of a new long-form development company.

Founded by animator Bob Fortier, The Animation House has grown into an international player in the commercial animation game, with more and more of its work coming from the u.s., Europe, and most recently, Asia. The shop began by offering an eclectic mix of animation styles and approaches and developed a renown for character animation, bringing to life the spokes-icons for Kellogg’s and numerous other character-driven clients and brands, with animation for kids of all ages and cartoon proclivities.

The company provides traditional animation ranging from raw sketchiness, claymation and stop motion to dimensional, sophisticated characters and became an early practitioner of live-action/animation methods, evolving from opticals to digital ink-and-paint technology.

With that accumulated expertise and Fortier’s stated desire to bring a new sensibility to the world of cartoons, the shop will redirect its efforts to long-form production, with a number of projects in development with its u.s. partner, including a stop-motion Christmas special.

‘It’s a wonderfully opportune time to explore a new frontier, to launch into an expansion program in terms of format, in terms of space and in terms of technology,’ says Fortier.

While the long-form initiative punctuates the company’s 15th anniversary, Fortier says he had already made a commitment to refocusing the skills of the shop about three years ago. Surveying the long-form animated offerings extant, Fortier says he wanted to apply the varied talents of the house to bring the genre to a new level.

The new entity will be Canadian-owned with offices in Toronto, l.a. and Paris. The company will operate out of the current Animation House building in downtown Toronto, in a neighborhood rife with what Fortier says are ‘a lot of cool potential production facilities.’

The new long-form company will also extend a production hand to other, smaller Canadian animation shops with arm’s-length production arrangements.

Fortier cites the abundance of quality animation projects being developed outside the framework of the studio giants, and the fragmented nature of the domestic industry.

‘Canada has taken the lead in this area,’ says Fortier. ‘But the Canadian market is in fragments. There are so many smaller production entities with ideas on the go, but what they need is financing or production backing.’

Fortier will assume responsibility for the creative direction of the new company and says he is aiming at developing a signature look for the long-form properties.

While Fortier immerses himself in the development and creative direction of long-form projects, The Animation House will continue its commercial activity in earnest as a division of the new company. With the commercial production shop growing its international presence to the point where about half its business originates outside of Canada, Fortier says those efforts will continue unabated, with the immediate aim of increasing the share of work derived from Asian, European and American markets.

The re-emphasis on an eclectic approach is also being applied to the commercial sector, and has been supported over the past two years with staffing fortifications.

‘Over the past five years the industry has evolved and we’ve evolved into [having a] reputation [as] being more of a character animation studio,’ says Fortier. ‘Now we’ve refocused ourselves to our original mandate to be very eclectic.’

Toward that end, the company relaunched its commitment to stop-motion animation by bringing on Philip Marcus, an animation director whose expertise spans the stop-motion genre from modeling to claymation. Marcus also provides added input during the cg rendering process, facilitating the dimensionalization of traditionally animated characters to get a sense of their spatial integration, lending them a 3D feel.

Last year the shop also brought on Hubert Den Draak, an animation director who ran his own studio in Holland. Draak brings to the company a background in experimental film animation and a less traditional multimedia approach to the art.

Rounding out the talent principals is Terry Godfrey, character animation director since The Animation House’s inception and the shop’s top animator, handling the international commercial work coming through the company.

Being a player throughout much of the growth period of the Canadian commercial industry, The Animation House has evolved with the industry, adapting stylistically and as a business entity, but Fortier says many of the core creative principles of the art of animation remain constant.

Assembling a historical reel to commemorate the company’s anniversary, Fortier had a chance to look back on a body of work and the evolution of commercial animation, but aside from the technical applications, Fortier says to varying degrees the work is the same. ‘It’s kind of ironic, you look at the stuff and say conceptually and creatively it could have been done last week,’ says Fortier, reflecting on the film-based projects predating the advent of the Henry era.

The company employs USAnimation/Toon Boom animation software running on Silicon Graphics workstations which handles painting and compositing electronically, but, as Fortier says, ‘animators still draw.’

‘Animation has been one of those art forms that hasn’t changed in terms of the creative process since Disney started doing character animation in the 1930s.’

Fortier describes the evolution of commercial animation as a series of regenerations and rebirths, where past styles are sought to capture a new or different look for a spot. That style cycle has also been accompanied by a greater willingness to experiment and a creative openness on the part of clients, where, in some cases, even brand icons are open to interpretation.

The shop recently completed two jobs for Kellogg’s Rice Krispies, one through Leo Burnett in Chicago, one through the agency’s Toronto office, with each creative team requesting a different animated delivery of the enduring, onomatopoeic cereal shills, Snap, Crackle and Pop!

The Animation House provided a kind of 1960s retro execution for the Chicago client, where the characters revisited their heyday, a very strictly 2D existence (the spot was done in color but the animators dumped it down to black and white, adding scratches to produce a spot that was indistinguishable from one that might have been seen in that bygone era).

The Canadian creative called for a completely 1990s version of the characters, who come to life with personalities and opinions. The spot called for a live-action environment and the animators used a 2 1/2-D rendering technique for a more dimensionalized and spatially oriented look, even providing more contemporary sartorial tweaks.

‘It was an interesting comparison; both spots were successful and did exactly what was intended,’ says Fortier. ‘It’s interesting how animation can cross over and you can do anything with it now.’

In that spirit, the efforts of the shop to retain an infinite animated variety have been manifest in the diversity of recent commercial work. For a Heinz canned pasta spot out of DDB Canada, the shop took an ‘overly cg’ approach to approximate the look of a high-end Website, while another recent spot for the client utilized stop motion. For an aids awareness spot out of Toronto agency Taxi, the shop created animated spiders using a minimalist, rough animation.

That rough-edge animation gained notoriety in the second generation Molson Canadian ‘I Am’ spots out of MacLaren McCann for which Fortier’s own pencil sketched out unscripted stream-of-consciousness images that appeared as a raw, surreal accompaniment to live-action scenes.

A campaign of three stop-motion spots was also recently completed for client 3M out of Japan, the latest geographical area to come into The House. The influx of international jobs came about five years ago, says Fortier, with Europe and Asia ripple effects from a successful penetration of the American market.

The shop gained a profile among large international clients, who Fortier says at that time were looking for ‘worldwide connection,’ a conceptual shot heard around the world that would transcend cultural specifics.

International work started out traditionally, with big-name Kellogg’s characters (there is nowhere in the world where Tony the Tiger isn’t recognized, says Fortier) and grew in scope from there, particularly in Japan.

In addition to Internet approvals easing the process of globalization is the culture-spanning quality of the art. ‘That’s the great thing about animation,’ says Fortier. ‘Once you get down to the drawing after the quoting is done it becomes a kind of universal language.’

Fortier says with increased competition for eyeballs he has seen a general raising of the creative level, with clients willing to experiment in order to break through.

‘You still run into the process of falling back on a traditional approach,’ says Fortier. ‘But I think that’s the challenge to us as an animation company, to come back and say let’s push the genre a bit – bend it to the point of breaking it and see if we can teach it some new tricks.’

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*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

Dynomight’s Net direction B11

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