CineGroupe’s new Pinocchio ready to fly

Montreal’s CineGroupe has fully realized its evolution from a mostly 2D-animation company to one spanning the gamut of digital imaging, including 2D, 3D and F/X work.

The company’s $12-million animated 3D feature P3K: Pinocchio 3000, a copro with France and Spain, is slated for a 2004 release, having made sales in England and various Latin territories. Christal Films is the Canadian distrib.

CineGroupe is also in production on the 3D series Tripping the Rift, a sci-fi spoof produced with Film Roman for Space and the U.S. SCI FI Channel. The late teens/young adult series goes to air early next year. Meanwhile, the company’s previously completed Galidor: Defenders of the Outer Dimension series will be airing soon on Radio-Canada.

-www.cinegroupe.com

NFB premiers three at Annecy

The National Film Board had three world premieres at the recent International Animated Film Festival in Annecy, France: Falling in Love Again, a stereoscopic short directed by Munro Ferguson; Janet Perlman’s Penguins Behind Bars, produced by Hulascope Studio for Cartoon Network and the NFB; and Paul (The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg) Driessen’s 2D or Not 2D, coproduced by La Sept ARTE, Cine Te and the NFB.

Meanwhile, Generation Extreme, a collection of seven animated shorts from the NFB’s French Program, is playing in Quebec theatres. The NFB has also launched a competitive short program for B.C. animators in partnership with British Columbia Film and CBC Vancouver.

-www.nfb.ca

Crews gather for Atomic Betty

Vancouver’s Atomic Cartoons is putting together crews for production on its proprietary series Atomic Betty, which has been picked up by Teletoon, France’s M6, Teletoon France and Cartoon Network UK.

Meanwhile, on the service side, the sun is shining on the shop as it has recently begun preproduction on its second 26-ep season of Nelvana’s Braceface.

Atomic has also revamped its all-Flash website. The new design is more streamlined, subtracting extraneous bells and whistles in favor of showcasing more high-quality examples of the shop’s artwork and animation.

-www.atomiccartoons.com

Red Rover, we want The Plumber to come over

Toronto’s Red Rover Studios, known for its prodigious spot work, has produced a five-minute 3D animated short entitled The Plumber in association with Bravo!FACT.

The short follows old Mario, who will stop his leaky bathroom faucet at all costs, even if exploding walls, falling ceilings and a house blowing up ensue. The piece was directed by Andy Knight and Richard Rosenman and produced by Randi Yaffa, a team that has collaborated on numerous spots.

Red Rover says the point of the exercise was to ‘test, experiment and push a very small crew to its creative limits.’

-www.redrover.net

Spin-ning out homegrown content

Toronto’s Spin Entertainment is in development with Teletoon on the tween CGI comedy series Deloris Deadhead, created by Alex Gorelick and Colin Davies, and the Flash adult comedy series Fugget About It. The latter is a partnership with Darius Films and creators/executive producers Nicholas Tabarrok and Willem Wennekers.

Spin recently formed a relationship with BA20 Entertainment (Bionicle) on the 2D CGI action series Terranoids, created by John Wagner, Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy, which the company says has attracted at least one Canuck caster. Another property Spin is shopping is The Five Fatal Fingers of Fearsome Fury, a Flash kung fu comedy series created by Dave Ibarretta and developed by Colin Davies.

-www.spinpro.com

Cinar’s Buster steps into spotlight

MONTREAL-based Cinar has announced a new half-hour spin-off series featuring the Buster character from Arthur.

Postcards from Buster, premiering on PBS Kids in fall 2004, will combine animation and live-action footage to promote literacy and multicultural understanding in school-age children. The project is brought to PBS by the net’s Boston WGBH channel and will be produced along with Marc Brown Studios.

Buster will accompany his airline pilot father as he flies the fictional Latin rock group Los Viajeros on a concert tour of the United States, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Buster will keep in touch with his friends back home via video postcards.

-www.cinar.com

Decode travels to far-off lands

Decode Entertainment is reporting a busy stretch. The Toronto company is currently in production on a new season of Franny’s Feet, the animated series on Family Channel about a girl who uses magical shoes to embark on far-off adventures. Local shop C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures provides the digital work.

Later this year, Decode will move into season two production on King and Blobheads, both of which premier this fall. King, coproduced with Ottawa’s Funbag Animation Studios, will debut on Family Channel. It tells the story of a 12-year-old who has a trap door underneath his bed that transports him to a fantastical land. Blobheads, to air on CBC, mixes live action with animation in its tale of a boy who discovers three messy aliens that arrive via a portal in his toilet.

-www.decode-ent.com

Stop motion brewing at Cuppa

Toronto’s Cuppa Coffee reports its number of purpose-built stop-motion studios is now up to 25. The house is currently using the setup on the 52-ep stop-motion series Jojo’s Circus, premiering on The Disney Channel’s preschool block, Playhouse Disney, in September.

The shop is also in preproduction on Ted’s Bed, a 2D preschool series hatched right under its own roof. Meanwhile, it is developing an original animated Christmas special it hopes to see air in December 2004.

Cuppa is also looking to launch Cuppa College, a stop-motion animation-training program, in response to recent demand for stop-motion work.

-www.cuppacoffee.com

Expanding its Portfolio

Toronto’s Portfolio Entertainment has been developing a 26-ep animated tween show called Carl Squared. The series is about a teenager who clones himself, and Portfolio has commissioned character designs by Draxhall Jump, the Toronto studio behind the package designs for GI Joe and Transformers.

Meanwhile, Portfolio is reaping the rewards of its animated kids hit RoboRoach, which airs on Teletoon here and is distributed worldwide by Fox Kids Europe. The program, in season three, recently won the NFB Award for excellence in animation from the Alliance for Children and Television.

Mainframe’s Spidey senses tingling

Vancouver animation house Mainframe Entertainment is humming with work on a couple of classic kids characters. The shop is currently animating 13 episodes of Spider-Man for Sony Pictures Television and is in production on Barbie of Swan Lake, a third direct-to-video installment for Mattel.

Mainframe, which is diversifying into all manner of media, also recently created all the CG animation for the 2003 MTV Movie Awards. The shop’s animated segments introduced award categories and featured animated versions of hosts Justin Timberlake and Seann William Scott as superheroes.

-www.mainframe.ca

Studio B gets ‘A’ on both sides of border

Vancouver’s Studio B is heading into production on 26 x 22 eps of Being Ian, a 2D/live-action kids series following the adventures of a film-loving boy and his quirky family. The show airs on YTV in fall 2004. Also in the works is a new season of Yvon of the Yukon for YTV and BBC and 52 x 11 eps of international copro Yakkity Yak, which airs locally on Teletoon.

YTV will launch season three of Yvon on Canada Day with three new eps and three older faves. Meanwhile, Studio B’s D’Myna Leagues debuts in the U.S. on The WB in September.

-www.studiobproductions.com

Imarion explores Sacred Sites

Toronto’s Imarion Post Production, which has expanded to include animation and digital F/X in recent years, has been working on the Summerhill Entertainment doc shows Mysteries of Sacred Sites and Earth’s Natural Wonders for Travel Channel US and Discovery Channel Canada.

Imarion’s contributions to these projects include a full recreation of Stonehenge in 3D using Maya and compositing on Digital Fusion and Discreet’s Combustion. The shop also provided full shot creation, compositing on more than 30 shots for sky replacements, and other F/X.

The shop recently opened a new HD compositing and online suite and added a number of animation and graphic workstations.

-www.imarion.com

Lost Boys monkeys around

Vancouver boutique F/X shop Lost Boys Studios is one of several firms gearing up for summer work on Spymate, Keystone Entertainment’s latest chimp flick.

Lost Boys has recently completed animation and F/X elements for a couple of MOWs, including the Miramax/ABC miniseries A Wrinkle in Time, for which it provided 80 F/X shots with F/X supervisor Kevin Haug (Fight Club).

On Betrayed, produced by Minds Eye Pictures and Barna-Alper for CBC, the Boys created a 3D E.coli bacterium that spreads through the afflicted town’s water system, under the direction of Anne Wheeler (Suddenly Naked).

-www.lostboys-studios.com

Trapeze’s computer Doodlez

TRAPEZE, which began as an interactive marketing provider, opened the Trapeze Animation Studios early last year. Since then, the company, based in Toronto and Charlottetown, PEI’s new Atlantic Technology Centre, has been busy on various computer-animated projects.

The studio has delivered 11 eps of the show Doodlez for Charlottetown’s Cellar Door Productions and Teletoon, 10 eps of Zap Family for CBC Kids and a number of projects for Noggin/Nickelodeon.

Trapeze is currently in production on 39 eps of Doodlez’s second season. The company also continues to be a mentor at the American Film Institute’s Enhanced Television Program.

-www.trapeze.com

Virtually a reporter

Virtually Human Technologies, a Toronto-based tech firm, reports growing interest in its proprietary software engine, touted as providing 3D realtime human motion simulation at an economical price tag.

The capabilities of Virtually Human’s toolbox were recently demonstrated on ROB TV. On June 12, the specialty net introduced ‘Bridget King, Canada’s first virtual reporter,’ created using the company’s system of AI and scripting language, which enables an animator to efficiently create a motion sequence.

-www.virtuallyhumantechnologies.com

Image Engine hums on blockbuster prods

Settled in its new 7,000-square-foot Vancouver facility, Image Engine Design has been reaping the benefits of the blockbuster features shooting in B.C.

The shop completed F/X for Fox’s futuristic Will Smith starrer I, Robot, shortly after contributing to Fox’s X2. It has now moved on to the Warner Bros. feature Scooby Too while continuing on eps of MGM’s Stargate SG-1 and the new MGM series Dead Like Me. The shop’s responsibilities on the latter included designing and building a CG creature called a Graveling.

Image Engine’s new facility boasts a 2,000-square-foot practical F/X studio and is fully HD ready.

-www.imagine-engine.com

Calibre gets Fool-ish

Toronto animation and F/X shop Calibre Digital Pictures is providing F/X on a trio of film and TV projects.

The first is the Canuck caper flick Foolproof, produced by Alliance Atlantis and Ego Film Arts. Calibre is adding 3D elements including an elevator shaft explosion and the matte painting and tracking F/X that go with it.

The house is also working on F/X, compositing and CG elements for the NBC HD MOW (and potential pilot) The Legend of Butch & Sundance. Meanwhile, it is creating CG snow, a 3D helicopter, compositing, CG butterflies and matte paintings for the CBS MOW Surviving Love.

-www.calibredigital.com

Spy Kids 3 means 3D for Hybride

Montreal’s Hybride Technologies is putting the finishing F/X touches on director Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over, which, naturally, contains sequences in 3D. Having worked on the first pair of Spy Kids features, Hybride is creating various types of F/X, including entire 3D environments, along with CG vehicles, characters and assorted cool gadgets.

The shop also built a digital 3D village for the Max Films comedy feature The Great Seduction, using matte painting and virtual camera moves.

Hybride recently finished its internal expansion, increasing its work area from 9,500 square feet to 16,000 square feet.

-www.hybride.com

All smiles at Smiley Guy

It’s right back at it for Smiley Guy Studios. The Toronto firm is returning to work on Odd Job Jack, airing on The Comedy Network. The Flash-animated comedy series, which features the voice of Don McKellar, follows a schlemiel who gets into all kinds of trouble taking on a new job with each episode.

Smiley Guy is producing new eps after a successful launch on Comedy this past spring. The shop is also developing an animated, interactive program for kids with the National Film Board.

-www.smileyguy.com

Zodiac unveils heavenly slate

NEW Toronto-based prodco Zodiac Media is producing the series Maple Shorts with CBC. The program, debuting early next year, will feature four Flash animation shorts and asks its young viewers to vote online for their favorite after each episode. The series has been sold to various territories.

Zodiac says it will begin animation soon on the kids show Cottontail Avenger, which will launch in early 2004 alongside a companion comic book written by Mike Grell. Also in development is the one-hour animated Halloween special Jack of Souls, which tells the ‘true story of the Jack of the Lantern’ in rockin’ MTV fashion.

-www.zodiacmedia.com

DKP gives life to game characters

Animation and F/X house DKP Effects has been busy with U.S. broadcaster UPN’s upcoming CG-animated primetime pilot Meet the Breaknecks, produced by powerhouse team Carsey-Werner-Mandabach (The Cosby Show, That ’70s Show). The pilot follows a suburban family comprised of video game characters; Toronto’s DKP designed the characters with a variety of keyframe and motion-capture tools, many of which it devised on the premises.

DKP also recently collaborated on the Scourge of Worlds: A Dungeons and Dragons Adventure interactive DVD with Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro, creating more than 200 minutes of CG animation.

-www.dkp.com

Elliott stands on Sitting Ducks

Toronto-based Elliott Digital has just wrapped season two of Sitting Ducks, a 26-ep CGI series for Universal Studios that airs in the U.S. on The Cartoon Network. Elliott also provided extensive digital 3D animated sections for Phunkee Zee (Savi Media/Nightingale Company/Megafun Productions), a 13-ep live-action series to air on YTV.

Meanwhile, company principals George Elliott and Brian Irving have launched Elliott FX, a visual effects boutique studio affiliated with the firm’s other animation activities.

-www.krislincompany.com