Canadian animation

The history of Canadian animation involves a considerable element of the realities of a country neighbouring the United States and both competitiveness and co-operation cross-border.

Canadians have contributed greatly to the technology and practices used to create animated television shows, movies and special effects. Starting in 1912, Canadian cartoonist and painter Raoul Barre introduced standard perforations in the drawing paper and "peg bars" to hold them in place which eliminated jerkiness when going from one image to the next. He also introduced the slash system, a method of drawing the background only once (instead of with each frame as had been done previously) on a separate sheet, leaving blank spaces for character movement. In 1913, Barre organized a systematic method of producing animated cartoons in an assembly line fashion. The assembly line method is essentially how all commercial animations (television, film etc.) are created to this day.

Prior to 1939, animation production was a very low scale with small production that were often discouraged by theatre chains like Famous Players. Such companies 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 short-lived period of co-production 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 cel 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 cel 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 The Guest Group in Toronto, a group of creative companies owned and run by Al Guest.

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