Axyz Animation is a new player on the Toronto field where numerous animation houses have cropped up of late. But with five jobs wrapped after only two months in the game, it’s clear partners John Stollar and John Coldrick have managed to push their way onto the crowded field.

The first job they landed, a 60 for American Express through Ogilvy & Mather Direct, shows the new spotco’s game plan in action.

Its base at Axyz Edit is clearly one of its first draws. ‘You have available the whole package of editing and animation all in one place,’ explains Stollar, who was approached by Axyz Edit co-owners Bruce Copeman and Dave Giles about setting up an animation division. ‘There are good animation houses in the city, but you can’t go to another shop and find the combination of a Henry artist like Giles, 10-year matte artist John Fraser and Copeman’s talent all under one roof.’

The Partners’ Film Company director Clay Staub needed some animation work done on the American Express job and Copeman hooked them up with the new partners.

Stollar says it was their solid rep on the animation scene, not the bottom line, that clinched the deal. ‘Staub wasn’t worried about people cutting their teeth on the spot – it’s a new shop but everyone here is experienced and well-known,’ says the 12-year animation biz veteran who helped develop Omnibus Computer Graphics and set up and ran the animation division of Dome Productions for six years. Coldrick has been animating for 10 years. Virginia Chan, whose eight years’ experience includes a stint at Dan Krech Productions, is currently working on contract.

With the quick turnover times expected in commercial production, Stollar says he can’t afford to bring junior talent on board. In fact, he first hesitated about starting the animation company because he was concerned about the lack of experienced animators in the city.

‘We can set up the best equipment and software in the city, but if we can’t find experienced talent then it’s going to be a tough go,’ he says, noting that over the last year the exodus to the States has increased, with many of his colleagues at Dome now working at Industrial Light and Magic in San Francisco. But when Coldrick jumped at the opportunity to become a partner, Stollar decided he had the top animator required to give the new company an edge.

Although reasonably happy with the prices Axyz is getting, Stollar says clients increasingly want more for their money in a shorter amount of time. ‘It makes for a more intense production period,’ he says, noting that a $60,000 job which he used to do in six weeks, Axyz is now turning around for slightly less money in half the time.

In eight weeks the company has quoted on six fairly large jobs, losing out on only one.

But bargain-basement prices isn’t how Axyz is scoring its jobs, says Stollar of the company’s rates, which he calls medium to high.

Stollar says low bidding is the road to ruin for a small company like his. ‘If you bid 20 grand lower than your competitors, you use up your capacity on a job paying you less than it should and you may have to turn down a more profitable job because you don’t have the resources to do it.’

Keeping the animation company limited to a tight, talented group is also key to the Axyz competitive strategy. Beyond the advantages of lower overhead and higher profit margins, Stollar says it impresses clients to see they can devote all their resources to a project, especially as cg animation increasingly becomes a tool to manipulate live-action spots and animators have to take the time to be on set to monitor live shoots. ‘We want to build a rep based on the quality of our pictures, and that will be the difference between a client choosing our shop or someone else’s.’

Technology and, more importantly, seeking out innovative opportunities to use it, has also helped the new company pick up work. A just-wrapped, live-action 30 for Trident is a case in point. J. Walter Thompson and the production team at Partners’ were mulling over various options for shooting billboard scenes and were considering building and shooting model billboards and tracking 2D pictures into the models.

‘That raised a flag with me,’ says Coldrick, who noted the potential problems in this approach. ‘It was going to be time-consuming and limiting in terms of control. Once effects work is shot in camera, that’s it, changes are limited.’

He offered a better solution. Being one of two shops in the city running Renderman, he could provide computer-animated billboards with the photo-realistic look the client wanted as well as the ability to make scale and detail changes in post.

Axyz landed the job with its last-minute proposal and the quality of the previous American Express spot.

Axyz plans to install isdn lines. ‘It’s just a step towards fiber optics,’ says Stollar, ‘but we thought it was important to make a statement in that direction so clients can see we are investing in the future.’

That future includes expanding into series work.

‘I think it’s dangerous to be strictly a commercial or broadcast house,’ he says. ‘This market is very volatile – it can be busy for three months and then nothing.’

With the variety and creativity of commercial effects work, animation companies can develop reels that are stepping stones to film and tv jobs. But unlike shops which abandon commercials and broadcast openers once they’ve made the leap to film, Stollar has a different tactic in mind. Commercial work will remain Axyz’s bread-and-butter base, and when a series opportunity comes their way he plans to open up a separate facility to take on the new workload, rather than tying up commercial space.

‘It’s a hell of a gamble to use up all your capacity on a series and not one I’m willing to take,’ Stollar says, having witnessed that if you lock out regular commercial clients for eight months they don’t come running back when the series work dries up.

‘You can get killed if you don’t know what you’re doing,’ says Stollar, summing up production service politics.