High profile animation studio drawn to Vancouver's animation talent pool
Vancouver, BC - May 3, 2010 - Pixar is officially open for business in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Academy Award-winning CGI animation company set up its satellite studio in the city's historic Gastown district on April 20, 2010. It will begin training its staff in late May and start work on its first project by August 2010.
While Pixar Animation Studios, which is based in Emeryville, California, has created feature films such as Up, Wall-E, Finding Nemo and Toy Story, Pixar Canada will focus exclusively on producing non-theatrical animated shorts based on popular Pixar characters like Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story, and Lightning McQueen and Mater from Cars. In fact, Mater will star in the new studio's first production. Pixar Canada will also animate the characters hanging out in iconic Vancouver locations, such as Buzz Lightyear exploring the Stanley Park forest, and Wall-E and Eve basking in the English Bay sunset.
These three-to-five-minute animated shorts will be distributed worldwide on network television, DVD compilations, the web, and in Disney theme parks. Using the company's pipeline system, work done in the Vancouver office will be seen immediately in the main studio in California, where the final stages of production will take place.
Pixar Canada is the first studio to open outside of the US. According to Amir Nasrabadi, general manager of the Vancouver studio, Pixar was attracted to the city for tax incentive reasons (the BC government offers tax breaks to the film and production industry), as well as its pool of talented animators, proximity and shared time zone with California.
The Vancouver studio will be called the Glenn McQueen Pixar Animation Center, named after Canadian-born Pixar animator Glenn McQueen who died from skin cancer in 2002. The studio already has 20 employees, including 16 Canadians of whom 13 are either Vancouver-area residents or former Vancouverites moving back to the city. Within the next year and a half, another 55 animation jobs are expected to become available at Pixar Canada.
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