Ottawa animation is Growing Faster Than Ever: Everything You Need To Know About its Exploding Industry

When Vancouver's Thunderbird Entertainment recently announced that it was expanding its children's division, Atomic Cartoons, to Ottawa, it was pretty naïve and exaggerated by the Ottawa media

people already entrenched in the Ottawa animation community (for full disclosure, I'm a member of the Ottawa International Animation Forum). For me (including myself, who has spent the past 28 years at the festival), the atomic movement was probably less a boom than the moment the secret gem of the animated world was finally discovered.

Before diving into the current scene, it would be useful to look at some of the contributions the Canadian capital (yes, it will be Ottawa) has made to the world of animation.

For any city, it's a pretty great list of achievements. It's even more impressive for the smaller cities (the population may reach just a million), which have been mislabeled as eternally dull, government towns and are often overlooked by the big bright lights of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver (all of them have their own stable and influential animations). Have a community).

If anything, the Ottawa animation community feels a bit more stable today. Before the mid-2000s, there was no shortage of commercial animation service jobs taking place in the town. From Hinton Animation studio (1980s) to Lacewood Animation (later Amberwood), Funbag, Dynomight, Spümcø and Boomstone (which are all gone today), these companies seemed to be coming and going.

In rare cases there was no stable employment for the artist. Changes began when Vancouver・based Mercury Filmworks (2004) moved to the town, followed by Jam Phil Entertainment (co・founded in 2007 by Algonquin University alumni Jamie Leclerc and Phil Lafrance), Clattenburg Film and Television (co・founded by the University of Algonquin alumni Jamie Leclerc and Phil Lafrance), and the New York Film Festival (co・founded by the University of Algonquin alumni Jamie Leclerc and Phil Lafrance). The Brothers (2007) followed by Big Jump Entertainment (co・founded in 2008 by former Funbag Animation co・owner Rick Morrison).

The fact that these studios (including Pip Animation, which started in 2000) are not only still doing business, but have continued to grow and expand (with the exception of Kratts, which produces only the Wild Kratts series) is a considerable achievement for what has been a fairly volatile local industry.

So...It's no exaggeration to say that something is happening in the Ottawa animated scene these days, so that all its context is out of the way. On a brutally cold day earlier this year, I decided to chat with some of the major players in the Ottawa animation scene and drive around town to find out why Ottawa is suddenly this obvious hotspot.

A common theme during the day was content. With the dramatic transition from traditional broadcasters to streaming services, there is an unprecedented demand for original content. "It's a golden age of content," says Chris Wightman, Studio manager at Atomic Cartoons Ottawa. "And it's a bit like an Uber effect...Suddenly, the taxi is doing something different. Traditional broadcasters have always been great in the animation industry, buying a lot of Canadian programming, but now you're showing up in the industry they have a lot of work to try to produce, but the ability to do it is not so much.

"There seems to be a global entertainment boom due to the demand for digital streaming services," said Tori Coulthart, head of production at Jam Filled. It is not necessarily the Ottawa boom. With the transition to streaming and producers going straight to the studio, Canadian producers were able to make their names internationally.

"It's busy," says Cory Morrison, Executive Vice President of Development at Big Jump Entertainment (who has recently expanded from 4000sq. 10,000 from the foot). "There's a lot of content being produced here. The biggest problem we have is the talent base here in Ottawa.

"Demand beat supply," adds Rick Morrison, President of Big Jump.

Big Jump has tackled some of this challenge by partnering with Herzing College in Ottawa to create a 1-year animation program. "Algonquin alone is not enough to be produced here," says Cory Morrison. "You have several studios competing for 20-30 graduates. The more courses and programs here in Ottawa, the more you can start building on that foundation.

Having an insatiable desire for content is one thing, but the studio needs to have the talent to put it all together. "When Algonquin College started in 1989," says Neil Hunter, coordinator and professor at Algonquin College. You can take someone out of the street. It all changed. The entry-level position is a full-fledged animator."

"There are a lot of junior animators who are a year or two from school,"" says Chris Wightman of Atomic," but many senior people with mentorship around them are happy in the studio where they are now, and that's understandable."

To their credit, Algonquin has so far resisted increasing their student intake (now stands at 95). "There's pressure from the university to increase intake, but there's no pressure from the studio," Hunter admits. "If we have more students, we need more teachers and more space. And the studio knows you want quality and you may not get it if we increase enrollment. Now there are a lot of one-on-one with students. If we expanded admissions, it would be hard to do that. We feel we are at our limit and we are okay with that for now.

"We can only grow that much," admits Coulthart of Jam Filled. "It takes a certain amount of years for an artist to graduate and find their footing and grow."

With limited talent available, it leaves Ottawa Studio with the fun task of selling this "dull government town" to young graduates dreaming of a big city. "Right away from school, it's hard to convince a young crowd to come to Ottawa," admits Cory Morrison.

"There are a lot of people in the atomics in Vancouver who come from Algonquin or Sheridan and they are dying to want to come back," Wightman says. "Hopefully we can get more older people back. We do a lot of work. 容量は利用できませんthere...so Does Ottawa have capacity - hope so. We also hope that people are interested in coming to Ottawa from other parts of the country.

Morrison sees another benefit of working in Ottawa: "You go where work is at the end of the day. So why not go where you can afford a house and avoid paying ridiculous rent in Toronto and Vancouver-"

"So that no one's parade will rain," says Clint Eland, founder and CEO of Mercury Filmworks, "but I'm not a nerd." We are not sure that the animated scenes in the studio have seen significant growth. Much of the public relations behind the film's stage announcement was closely followed by Atomic importing a handful of people from the West Coast. While we're happy to welcome Atomic, I think most of the animation studios here agree that it's a reallocation of artists from the pool that previously existed. I have hope, but they have a whole 787 Dreamliner full of animators along the way. That said, animation production activity in the region is still strong, but not proportional to the general increase seen in other regions.

"Astronomically, it's a boom," laughs Hunter from Algonquin University. "Astronomical anime boom. It really, in my mind, has been a slow and steady growth, with some ups and downs over forty years. But for those looking out who didn't pay much attention to Ottawa, there may seem to be a boom. Suddenly all this talent and all these studios are doing world-class work out of the blue. Maybe it's just recognition of the boom because it's such a low-key industry and not associated with the reputation of Ottawa's government. "

"Ottawa has been an incredible talent hub for animation for a really long time," says Coulthart of Jam Filled. "There are a lot of great artists here, probably more per capita than in Toronto," he said. Ottawa has always attracted a lot of art. It's not a shock for me because I grew up here and have always been a part of it. By contrast, it's much more rewarding for me because you're in this bureaucratic town. It's not so exciting because you expect it from a big city. You're in a little jewel in Ottawa. It's very magical.

For now, the feeling is bright, and people who are part of the growth of the city's animation believe that anything is possible. "Vancouver's film industry was once a small one, but then it exploded," says Chris Wightman. You can just feel the excitement about Ottawa. People are taking attention.”

.