When Netflix Animation Studios opened its 110,600-square-foot office in Vancouver earlier this year, it sent a clear signal about the city’s growing importance as an animation hub.
“Vancouver has been our home for over 10 years both as Netflix Animation Studios and previously under the Animal Logic banner,” Amir Nasrabadi, Chief Operating Officer for the studio, told Variety. “There’s a vibrant animation industry here and having an animation studio in Vancouver has given us the opportunity to work with some of the most amazingly creative and talented artists working today.”
Netflix Animation Studios employs more than 450 people out of its Vancouver office, most of them hired locally.
“There is incredible talent here and we’re really proud to be supporting the growth and development of the animation industry in Vancouver,” Nasrabadi says.
Netflix produces its films as one studio across all three of its locations, Nasrabadi says, but the company has been able to expand its Vancouver operation in recent years because of the size and quality of the local talent pool.
That pool has grown as more animation outfits – including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Atomic Cartoons, Bardel, Mainframe, Titmouse, Icon Creative Studio, and a Disney outpost – have established themselves in the city.
Netflix’s Vancouver team led the animation on Adam Sandler’s “Leo” and is currently working on “Steps,” Netflix Animation Studios’ first feature produced entirely in-house, which is scheduled for release Nov. 20.
But Nasrabadi says Netflix isn’t interested in imposing a single house style. “The Netflix Animation Studios slate is a mix of fresh, original features and bold, new franchises — all helmed by an exciting mix of both up and coming and established filmmakers.”
Stephanie Betts started at Atomic Cartoons more than 20 years ago, when Vancouver was “largely known for production services.” Now chief content officer at WildBrain, she has watched the city become “one of the most sophisticated animation hubs in the world.”
There’s a collaborative pipeline for artists, writers, directors, production teams and technology specialists that didn’t exist before. “I love that people can now build an entire career in Vancouver,” she says. “The ecosystem has matured enough to support talent at every level.”
It’s also become a place where projects can begin, rather than simply arrive. “[O]ver time it has evolved into a place where original ideas are created, developed, and owned,” Betts says. “Some of our most successful brands and original concepts have been shaped in Vancouver.”
Historically, the city’s animation industry was heavily rooted in children’s and educational programming, but the range of projects being made here has broadened considerably. Betts sees an uptick in anime-influenced projects, gaming content, features, hybrid productions and adult animation.
“The industry has matured,” she says. “You now have multiple generations of experienced creators who understand not only production but also brand-building, audience engagement, distribution, and franchise development, having honed their craft through years of production experience working on global IP.”
She also notes that technological developments have lowered some traditional barriers to development and content creation, creating more opportunities for independent creators and smaller studios.
But the expansion of major global streaming platforms into Vancouver has also intensified competition for talent – and pushed up compensation.
One of the creatives developing original IP out of Vancouver is Leah Nelson, whose first feature, “Tangles,” premiered at Cannes, played at TIFF and is part of the Vancouver International Film Festival – VIFF. Nelson, co-founder of creative studio and animation house Giant Ant, spent years adapting Sarah Leavitt’s graphic memoir about a daughter, a mother and Alzheimer’s into a mostly black-and-white 2-D animated feature.
Financing an adult animated drama, however, was not easy. Fortunately, Point Grey Pictures stepped in. Producers Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen already had a deep connection to Alzheimer’s through the nonprofit they had funded, Hilarity for Charity. Nelson figured that if she could get them to read the graphic novel, it might help her raise the funds. “But once they saw it, they really wanted to jump in and produce the movie with us.” Being able to recruit a prominent voice cast that includes Abbi Jacobson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Bryan Cranston also helped the film travel.
Nelson jokes that she was able to steal artists from their TV shows because they viewed the project as a unique and “refreshing departure” from kids’ TV content. “But I gave them back afterwards.” She built most of her team in Vancouver.
“People told me I was nuts,” she recalls. “But I felt like people would join it for the right reasons and we had so many people in our crew who were connected to Alzheimer’s and dementia in some way…. It was a meaningful story for them.”
Although it’s been a long journey, Nelson would love to make more films like “Tangles.” “It’s in a different category from maybe what we think of as animated movies or cartoons,” she says. “I think we need to see more [animated] films that are considered cinema where you can go to the theater and watch something dramatic and entertaining, and it just happens to be painted with an animation brush. It’s like limitless what you can do with this medium, and it’s so beautiful, and I think it can tackle really complex subject matter as well.”
For Métis filmmaker Amanda Strong, animation offers another kind of creative freedom – a way to tell Indigenous stories while retaining ownership over how those stories are made and who gets to tell them.
To that end, Strong founded Spotted Fawn Productions, a company that focuses primarily on animation and moving-image arts, particularly stop-motion.
Strong says that stop-motion is particularly suited to Indigenous storytelling because of the diversity and complexity of Indigenous narratives. Oral storytelling, shifting perspectives and stories that move between past, present and future can all find an expressive counterpart in animation.
“I think a lot of Indigenous storytelling is not just this A-to-B-to-C Western story construct,” she says. “The medium of animation, and in particular stop-motion animation, allows us to break out of what we would typically see in live action and just gives us this space to travel and go into different dimensions and portals of, I feel, what our stories can offer.”
Her studio operates on a very different model from the major commercial animation houses. Spotted Fawn relies primarily on arts-council grants and public funding and has co-produced work with the National Film Board.
Strong sees that producing infrastructure as particularly important for emerging filmmakers. She recently served as an animation mentor for VIFF’s animation accelerator, working with five teams developing projects for pitches at the festival. What struck her was how many talented artists were trying to make the transition from working for larger companies to directing their own films, but lacked experience on the producing side.
“Producing is not the fun part,” she says, “and often the part that I think gets overlooked a lot.”
The experience reinforced her belief that Vancouver has plenty of animation talent, but still needs more infrastructure for independent creators. Strong teaches fourth-year students in Emily Carr University’s 2-D experimental animation program and has hired students from her classes. She sees a wealth of talent coming through Vancouver’s post-secondary institutions, but says the city’s high cost of living remains a barrier.
“I think no matter whether you’re in industry or independent, I hope there’s more space for supporting independent works and story sovereignty for cultural stories,” she says.
She advises her students that there are multiple pathways to find themselves: “Do you want to be a service provider for other people, or do you want to tell your own stories?”