February’s Biggest Stories From The World Of Animation

Welcome to the latest edition of our members-only review of what happened in the animation, vfx, and gaming industries over the past month.

Many trends from January have carried over this month, with the main talking points among our readers being artificial intelligence, mass layoffs, and unionization.

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by negativity if one spends too much time and attention focusing on the internet animation community. But if one is inclined to do a bit of digging, there are silver linings to be found, too. Independent animation is flourishing on free streaming websites, incredible films are winning awards around the world, and we’re finally nearing the end of a months-long drought of U.S. studio animated features in theaters.

Here are ten topics that had our readers talking in February.

1) Awards

The Oscars are right around the corner, but before focusing too closely on the Academy Awards, we clocked some of the other important honorific ceremonies held around the world, including the Annie Awards, France’s César Awards, the U.K.’s BAFTAs, Spain’s Goya Awards, the VES Awards. The Academy was busy in the leadup to this year’s Oscars and finally gave animation its own branch and two seats on the board of governors. The organization also announced it will host a full day of animation-dedicated activities at the Academy Museum on Saturday, March 2.

2) Box Office

While the North American box office was largely stagnant in February, the latest Boonie Bears film had a record-breaking release in China and Toho’s Haikyu!! The Movie Decisive Battle at the Garbage Dump opened in first place at the Japanese box office. In February’s final week, American audiences were treated to one big-name animation release in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – To the Hashira Training, a collection of the tv series’ episodes spliced together and screened in theaters that made $11.5 million in three days.

3) Artificial Intelligence

The biggest AI story of February shook up far more than the world of animation when OpenAI revealed a first look at its Sora model that can create minute-long photorealistic animation from text prompts. Apple developers released a research paper based on a study of its Keyframer model, which lets users generate animation and edit the results with additional text prompts. Disney unveiled the startups it’s backing for the 10th Accelerator Program, three of which are AI companies.

4) Behind-the-Scenes

Vivienne Medrano, one of the internet’s most successful indie animators, joined us for a video interview discussing her new Prime Video show, Hazbin Hotel, and why she’s enjoying life as a director. We took a closer look at this year’s animated feature Oscar race by speaking with Robot Dreams storyboard artist Maca Gil, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse character designers Kris Anka and Jesús Alonso Iglesias, and Elemental vfx supervisor Sanjay Bakshi. Indie cg artist Julian Glander gave us an early look at his upcoming feature debut, Boys Go to Jupiter. Hungarian director László Csáki shared production details and storyboards from his documentary Pelikan Blue. Shadowmachine animation director Brian Leif Hansen showed off some of the set and puppet designs that went into making Peacock’s stop-motion series In the Know.

5) Feature News

Laika boss and Oscar-nominated Kubo and the Two Strings director Travis Knight was tapped to direct a Masters of the Universe feature based on the iconic 1980s animated series. Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho will begin production on his previously-announced animated feature later this year. Classic faith-based animated IP Veggie Tales is being rebooted once again, this time with a LarryBoy superhero feature. Disney revealed that a previous Disney+ Moana animated series has been retooled as a feature and will hit theaters this Thanksgiving. Spanish filmmaker Roc Espinet shared the breathless first trailer for his upcoming feature debut, Girl and Wolf. Netflix announced a new hybrid Woody Woodpecker feature that will debut on April 12.

6) Layoffs and Closures

Paramount laid off 800 employees, including its entire Noggin team. The company will shut down the preschool streaming platform later this year. Moonbug shut down Singaporean Oddbods producer One Animation less than two years after acquiring the studio. But gaming employees were the hardest hit in February, with Sony laying off 900 employees from its Playstation division and EA letting go of roughly 670 workers and shutting down Seattle’s Ridgeline Games.

7) New Titles

Last year’s biggest indie animated pilot, The Amazing Digital Circus, will get nine more episodes to create a full first season. Nickelodeon is rebooting its Fairly OddParents franchise with a new animated series. Loads of new titles came onto the global marketplace at Berlin’s European Film Market, so we highlighted some of the big animated films from among the lot.

8) Artist Rights

Dreamworks Animation and Flying Bark production workers took major steps towards unionizing with The Animation Guild in the U.S. North of the border, DNEG Montreal became the company’s second Canadian outfit to unionize with IATSE, and workers at DNEG Toronto have already applied to their labor board for approval to do the same. Voice actors have a new union contract after SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP struck a deal to essentially extend their previous contract from 2020.

9) Distribution

GKIDS will give the iconic 1997 anime feature The End of Evangelion its first U.S. theatrical release in March. Disney announced a release date for its upcoming Morphle series. Viva Kids picked up U.S. theatrical rights to Toonz Media Group and Gold Valley Films’ Emma’s Big Adventure. Trafalgar Releasing brought Peppa Pig to theaters worldwide for Peppa’s Cinema Party. Crunchyroll released a trailer for the first Spy x Family film, which will be released on April 19.

10) Ukraine

For the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we did a pair of articles about the stories of Ukrainian artists and industry figures who have had their lives disrupted and sometimes displaced by the conflict.

On the Move

Warner Bros. Pictures Animation appointed Kim Mackey and Jessie Carbonaro as executive vp of production talent and vp of production talent, respectively, and promoted Susan Akinbola to vp of development.

RIP

Kent Melton, Disney and Laika maquette maker; Mark Gustafson, stop-motion veteran who co-directed Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.