Animation Artist

While Canuck Creation's prime focus has always been on feature animation, industry shifts have forced the company to change direction, according to its president, Alan Kennedy.

"Our studio was predominantly a feature studio, but we've really pushed the (TV) series end of things because features are too sporadic," Kennedy says. "Four or five years ago, we would get a feature and right after that, another feature. Now, though, it's definitely a changed market. If we don't have a feature, some of our top people can be directing or supervising on series work, and then jump back onto feature work when we get a feature job."

That kind of versatility to jump back-and-forth between jobs is obviously a plus for such studios. Indeed, the artists at smaller studios are often forced to demonstrate greater versatility than their major studio counterparts.

Character Builders of Ohio specializes in character design and layout.

"They have to be able to adapt to different styles, and in some cases, do more than animate," says Jane Baer, owner of Baer Animation Company, an LA-based classical animation house that worked on Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Disney's 1990 theatrical featurette, The Prince and the Pauper, among other projects.

Perhaps the most attractive selling point to a major studio for such shops is the freedom and experience to create a complete animation unit from the ground up, almost instantly.

"We can basically ramp up an entire studio within a week or so," states Rocky Solotoff, executive producer with North Hills, Calif.-based Toon Makers, Inc. "If I don't have the personnel at hand, and I've got to get on it first thing in the morning, I have no problem calling up somebody that I may have beaten out for the job and asking them to work on it, because we have to keep kith and kin together, too."

For service shops like Toon Makers and Baer Animation that draw from the Los Angeles talent pool, the salary wars spawned by the '90s toon boom made hanging onto talent a nearly impossible challenge for a time.

"It almost put us out of business," admits Solotoff. "They were offering animators more than we could pay to do nothing but sit there and wait for a project to start." But given the current downcycling in the industry, keeping talent is no longer as complicated, though problems have not ended. "Right now, unemployment in animation is tremendous, so the talent pool is wonderful and we can get the best of the best," says Baer. "But on the downside, there's not as much work."

Because there are fewer major studio projects coming in for small shops these days (as opposed to an increase in CD-ROM, DVD, Web, and commercial work), many niche studios have taken the step into developing their own projects in order to survive.

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