Animation Artist

Baer Animation hopes to develop "Popsi Power" for TV.

"We're trying to break away from being so much of a service studio, so we've been doing a lot of development work specifically aimed at direct-to-video features," explains Baer, who is currently developing a project called the "Popsi Power Show", featuring a character based on a doll that is made entirely of recycled plastic bottles. Toon Makers, meanwhile, is working to develop a prospective theatrical feature called The Ornament.

Yet another means of survival for small toon shops is to attempt to become full-service operations in their own right. That's the path followed by Homewood, Illinois-based Star Toons International.

"People are always amazed by where we're located," says Star Toons' executive producer Caroline Manalo. "We're in this little suburb outside of Chicago, and not in Chicago. But we're one of the only (regional) production companies producing television work for a national series."

Because of Star Toons' recent merger with an overseas animation production house-India's Heart Entertainment-it has the ability to take on the workload of producing an entire animated TV series. But even prior to that merger, the company was an out-source shop for Warner Bros. Television Animation, churning out episodes of "Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs" and "Steven Spielberg Presents Histeria."

Star Toons of Illinois has the infrastructure to do full-service television animation work.

While the norm for studio animation has always been to send the actual animation work to finishing shops overseas, usually in Asia, Star Toons often ended up with episodes for those two shows to make sure that the barrage of pop-culture jokes that characterized the two series survived intact.

"We would be given particular storylines that Warners felt were aimed strictly at American sensibilities," says Manalo. "They were doing a lot of parody work on celebrities, so they felt that if we understood who Joe Pesci is, for example, we would animate the scene better."

Such shops are managing to survive even as the animation market, like the rest of the entertainment industry, suffers through a few jitters these days. While the major animation studios do not exactly advertise their reliance on such regional service boutiques, it seems likely that they will continue to use them to one degree or another.

"We're guns for hire," Toon Makers' Solotoff notes. Even the biggest names in animation can sometimes use a little extra fire power.

Return to Animation Artist Magazine Home Page