Peter Chung, character designer for the series Alexander, disapproves of the term ‘anime.’ The animator who brought an anime stylized look to mtv with Aeon Flux says the term anime is used incorrectly. ‘Anime is the Japanese phonetic abbreviation for animation,…

In 1994, Mainframe Entertainment was the only game in town. For two years, the British/Canadian alliance that spawned ReBoot did not face much competition in the television marketplace. Its closest rival at that time was Fantome Animation in France, the company…

When Danny Antonucci decided it was time to pitch Cartoon Network on a series, he faxed a one-page drawing of his characters Ed, Edd and Eddy to Linda Simensky, vp of original animation for the cable station….

After Rythm and Hues did the pig lip syncs in Babe and Industrial Light & Magic created jungle book characters in Jumanji, ‘fur’ – the creation lifelike hair – remained the final frontier in cgi technology….

In 1982, striking animators at Warner Bros. studio in Los Angeles waved picket signs to protest against the rising tide of Canadian animators on their shores. The protesters won the battle but not the war. Since the animation boom of the…

Medieval fighters and evil sorcerers – this is the stuff of numerous series bibles making the rounds among broadcasters. The science-fiction/ fantasy genre has long been the domain of video games, comic books and paperbacks. But as low-end producers master 3D…

Back in the ’80s, when animation was relegated to Saturday morning slots, auteur artists working in television were considered ‘sellouts.’…

jerusalem: Telefilm Canada may have yanked its travel grant for Canadian filmmakers invited to last month’s Jerusalem Film Festival, but that did not stop director/ coproducer Ric Esther Bienstock from traveling to the Holy Land with her film Ms. Conceptions in…

jerusalem: The Israeli film industry is not unlike the Canadian film industry of the mid-’80s. Service production of big American pictures like Rambo iii and Not Without My Daughter dried up in 1991 when government incentives were withdrawn, u.s. independent production…

Pitching pilot ideas for u.s. specialty networks Nickelodeon and mtv was the golden apple up-and-coming Canadian animation houses were reaching for in 1994. It would be instant success for any company that came up with the next Ren & Stimpy or…

Industry representatives and CBC insiders are cautiously optimistic about the naming of CBC’s new president, Tony Manera. Most industry insiders believe the Liberal government made a conservative choice appointing Manera. ‘As bureaucratic decisions go, it was a good one, but it…

Jackie Richardson has just been called in to play Sister Hubert for the last three-week run of the play Nunsense. Like most actors in Canada, Richardson juggles theater and television in order to make a decent living….