History of Canadian animation
From Free net encyclopedia
The History of Canadian Animation involves a considerable element of the realities of a country neighbouring the United States and the formidable competition from Hollywood.
Prior to 1939, animation production was a very low scale with small production that were often discouraged by theatre chains like Famous Players who did not want Canadian competition to their parent companies' product.
1939 saw the establishment of the National Film Board of Canada which provided a strong government supported organization for the creation of distinctively Canadian work. Animation was essentially an afterthought, but an initial and shortlived period of coproduction with the Walt Disney Company in the making of animated propaganda films helped establish a core of animators who continued production after Disney withdrew.
Initially, the artistic focus of the crew was to explore types of animation apart from regular cell animation since it was decided competing with the American companies in this field was counterproductive. With that approach, luminaries like Norman McLaren made their mark with innovative work in forms like drawn on film animation. In addition, the agency eventually gained the confidence to produce cell animation as well.
Apart from the National Film Board, Canadian production in the commercial sphere was largely as limited as before. The biggest contribution in the 1960s and much of the 1970s was in the field of voice acting with many major television productions like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Spider-Man sporting Canadian voice actors like Paul Soles and Paul Kligman. Some of the animation for these features were sub-contracted by such Canadian studios as Crawley Films in Ottawa and Krantz Animation in Toronto, which further propelled the career of a swaggering young animator named Ralph Bakshi.
The situation began to change in the late 1960's and early 1970's, as independent companies were formed to produce low budget children's programming. Some examples are The Undersea Adventures of Captain Nemo, and Rocket Robin Hood, both of which were fostered by the Guest Group, a group of creative companies owned and run by Al Guest.
Longer term successes began with the founding of Nelvana Animation in 1971. Nelvana took advantage of the new Canadian content broadcast rules to produce a successful series of acclaimed TV specials. They also had some success in the United States, working on productions like the animated segment of The Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. However, the confidence arising from this success led to the company into an ill advised and troubled production of a feature film, Rock and Rule which proved a crippling box office failure. The company turned to television animation work which proved successful with series like Inspector Gadget and Care Bears. The company eventually became a prime supplier of animation work into the American network TV market. Two new players suddenly appeared in Ottawa, with Atkinson Film Arts producing a series of TV specials based on the Lynn Johnston comic strip For Better Or For Worse, as well as The Adventures Of Teddy Ruxpin and Dennis The Menace. Meanwhile, Hinton Animation Studios toiled on another successful Canadian TV production, The Raccoons.
In the 1980s the animation department of the French division of the CBC in Montreal took centre stage by winning two Oscars for its animation shorts: Crac in 1981 and The Man Who Planted Trees in 1987. Both were produced by Frederic Back. In about the same period private and public colleges started offering complete animation programs. In 1984 Sheridan College of Toronto won an Oscar for Charade, by one of its graduating students, Jon Minnis.
With the renaissance of animation in the 1990s, Canadian animation further prospered with conventional fare from companies like Nelvana and Cinar while innovative work from Mainframe Entertainment such the first computer animated series, ReBoot drew considerable success on its own.
In 1997, Teletoon was established as Canada's first dedicated animation television channel whose broadcast license agreement stipulated at least one original animated television series a season.
Further reading
- Karen Mazurkewich, Cartoon Capers: The History of Canadian Animators. Toronto: McArthur & Company, 1999.