The Ottawa International Animation Festival kicks off on Sept. 17 with a goal to co-mingle animators with audiences and business executives. The five-day event is the only one of its kind in North America and expects to welcome about 25,000 people who will screen over 135 animated films (including shorts) and attend a slew of special events geared to celebrate the toon.

Over the first two days of the fest, an additional 300-plus executives from the broadcast animation industry will explore new business opportunities during the fifth annual Television Animation Conference, held near the screenings at the Chateau Laurier.

Chris Robinson, OIAF’s artistic director, admits it hasn’t been an easy feat to keep the suits in Ottawa after TAC finishes.

‘In North America especially, there’s a lot of myopia that there’s only industry and there’s no awareness there is an artistic side,’ Robinson says. ‘The festival gives an opportunity to meet all of these different animators and get exposed to new ideas.’

Screenings are within walking distance and product ranges from obscure to familiar, with experimental animations unspooling alongside commercial TV work and music videos.

Execs planning to attend the feature, short, kids and schools competitions can expect to see a personal touch to the animations this year. Robinson says many of the shorts now delve into topics such as dysfunctional families, relationships and inner turmoil, and he has packaged many of these personal themes into the competition strands.

‘It’s a lot meatier and they’re dealing with personal issues, and that’s what I’ve wanted to see in animation,’ he says.

Some elements of OIAF’s special programming also speak to relationships. For example, artist Daniel Barrow’s audio/visual installation Everytime I See Your Picture I Cry explores tales of innocence.

There’s also the relationship between animation and live action for the Sunday afternoon screening of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 1988’s 2D/live-action hybrid film. Its animation director, Canadian-born Richard Williams, initially approached the organizers to talk about his master class DVD sets when they realized the film was celebrating its 20th anniversary.

With half of the seats for last year’s opening film Persepolis filled by the Ottawa community, Robinson saw an exciting trend that the fest was reaching beyond its creators and distributors. To continue this, he anticipates local audiences will watch Roger Rabbit, Pixar and Disney’s showcase screening of the short Presto, plus Aardman’s special presentation of its stop-motion shorts slate.

He also expects to see big attendance from local families for a screening of the Treehouse preschool series Yo Gabba Gabba, produced by The Magic Store and Wild Brain. Robinson says this screening is significant because it’s a retrospective of a series that only debuted this year.

‘I was unsatisfied with the kids work in general, so I wanted to celebrate the uniqueness of this program and show you can create something that’s some of the best animation I’ve seen that’s not derivative, and it’s respectful to its kid audience,’ he says.

In a parallel move, the exec who helped greenlight Yo Gabba Gabba, Nickelodeon’s president of animation Brown Johnson, will open TAC on Sept. 17 with a keynote. As the person who brought blockbusters such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer to the small screen, she will set the tone of day one, which features panels and seminars that include talks on responsible TV for children with Treehouse’s director of content Jamie Piekarz and University of Toronto’s Jonathan Freedman; pushing the limits of technology with Clem Hobbs from Decode Enterprises; and the business of shorts, explored by Aardman’s broadcast and development manager Helen Brunsdon.

There will also be a focus on Japan as it enters the international copro market with Eric Calderon from Wild Boar Media, Nelvana’s Doug Murphy and Shuzo John Shiota from Polygon Pictures.

The second day’s keynote from Robot Chicken’s Seth Green and Matt Senreich leads into a conversation about adult-skewed animation with Breakthrough Films and Television’s Stephanie Betts, Leap2ns Patricia Burns, Canwest’s Rachel Nelson, Cuppa Coffee’s Adam Shaheen, Smiley Guy’s Jonas Diamond and Matt Hornburg from marblemedia. 

Hornburg’s business partner, Mark Bishop, will speak later in the day about web-only series, with Jason Chaney from Corus Interactive, Frederator’s Dan Meth and Beavis and Butt-Head alum J.J. Sedelmaier.

There’s also a case study on Nerd Corps’ latest series, League of Super Evil, while innovative strategies on how to find new properties with execs from 20th Century Fox, Teletoon, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, round out the conference.