Toronto-based animator Cuppa Coffee Studios has launched a new division, dubbed Cuppa Stories, which will focus on building a slate of projects more in-keeping with the company’s current creative wheelhouse.

The past couple of years have taken the animation studio down a different path creatively, with Cuppa wanting now to showcase a more mature slate of work, creative director Chris Morris told Playback Daily. The strategy behind the new division – which will operate under the Cuppa Coffee Studios banner – is to line up the company’s creative ambitions with the business side of the equation.

Cuppa Coffee Studios slate includes Celebrity Deathmatch and JoJo’s Circus, and while the company does not wish to dismiss these shows, it wants to draw clearer lines between its current direction (which is aimed more toward a mature style of filmmaking) and former work. Going forward, the company will continue to produce content with less of an artistic focus for its Cuppa Coffee Studio banner.

“In the past couple of years we’ve evolved to a more subtle style of animation, so [the new division] is a directed attempt to get people to associate Cuppa with this kind of identity,” creative director Chris Morris told Playback Daily. The newer work Cuppa is producing has a more “naturalistic and nuanced” style than its previous work, added Morris, as the company has begun to veer more toward producing animation with a cinematic quality.

This is especially important when shopping the new shows to buyers, added Morris, as it will allow the company to present a cohesive slate of work – a slate that will allow Cuppa to be seen as “more of a filmmaking studio, versus an animation studio,” said Morris.

Shaheen said that, beyond fulfilling creative objectives that will establish Cuppa Stories as a unique brand, the division has no specific business targets in its first 18 months. The Stories division is also developing three other projects – a live-action animation, a short film and a branded content series under the Stories banner.

The first of these’ projects is an as-yet-untitled short film about First World War, told from the perspective of a veteran (pictured). The film has been commissioned by an L.A. studio (Cuppa was unable to name the studio at time of press), according to Cuppa president Adam Shaheen, who is currently shopping additional projects under the Cuppa Stories banner in L.A.

To accommodate the extra project load, Shaheen also confirmed that Cuppa Stories will be drawing additional freelance animators, though from more filmic backgrounds than was Cuppa Coffee Studios’ previous norm. The company will also look outside of the Canadian talent pool, said Shaheen, to leverage connections with the U.K., France, Germany and the U.S.

Among the shows currently on the Cuppa Coffee Studios slate is an animated series based on David Duchovny’s novel Holy Cow: A Modern-Day Dairy Tale. In August 2015, Cuppa jointly optioned the novel with California-based Planet Grande Pictures.