New Cartoon Creators

Another visual effects house goes into the animated feature biz:

Vancouver-based vfx and animation studio Rainmaker has unveiled its first-ever slate of original animated feature projects and is pitching them to distributors. ...

... Rainmaker hopes to get its first feature out in two to three years and release a feature every 12 to 18 months. ...

Good luck with that.

As we've mentioned here maybe sixteen times, there is little money in doing visual effects for live-action feature films. The job shops in Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Pacific Northwest and other points of the globe slice each others' throats by low-ball bidding work, to the point where profit margins are next to nada.

The solution? Start making animated cartooons! Start owning content! Become the next Pixar!

Which of course sounds enticing, but is often difficult to do. (Just ask Sony Imageworks.) It is not enough to have an experienced production crew in place, it is also necessary to have a story team that knows how to maximize entertainment value with whatever property that's being done.

It's also useful to choose the right property in the first place.

All this sounds simple, straightforward and easy, but so many production houses have loused the process up over the years, that it's reasonably clear to the reasonably intelligent that, based on history, maybe it's not.

But good luck to Rainmaker anyway. The more successful animation projects that are out there, the more artists there are gaining production experience. And that's a good thing for the long-term health of animation.

The link above will take you to Variety's subscription wall, just so you know.