The Current State of Animation in Wales: Part Two
In Part 1, we explored the history of animation in Wales, specifically during the eighties and early nineties, a time that’s been dubbed critically; “The Welsh Golden Age of Animation” and we took a look at the growth of Dinamo Productions from a small team in Cardiff to the largest producer of broadcast animation in Wales.
It’s difficult to isolate the point that things started to look worrying for Dinamo. There wasn’t any further work for the CG animation crew when Iconicles wrapped. Fortunate timing meant that a large portion of the crew walked directly onto a new show at Cloth Cat Animation for Jon Rennie. Ha Ha Hairies was a joint-production with Cartoon Network, S4C and Adastra Creative and was being produced, ironically, in the same studio in Cardiff Bay that Dinamo had once occupied.
Another series of Rastamouse was commissioned, as well as brand new 2D animation shows Soli and Mo’s Nature Show, Abadas and The Lingo Show, but life for Dinamo after these scheduled productions started to look a little hazy. Gemma reflects on this period at the studio;
“Sadly with the industry being as it was, and as a result, less and less work coming into the studio, one by one people left, leaving the now huge Dinamo studio very empty, and sad to say, a little unsettling. It became apparent that there were financial issues…maintaining such a huge space couldn’t have been cheap! Also, keeping so many permanent staff (myself included) didn’t do them any favours.”
In early 2013 after wrapping the second series of Rastamouse, almost the entirety of the stop-motion crew left, many for Ireland, where Calon had recently moved production of the new series of Igam Ogam. Gemma moved with another member of Dinamos’ 2D crew to Ireland and is currently Lead Animator at Kavaleer Productions in Dublin. She looks back at her time with Dinamo with equal amounts of pride and sadness;
“Despite the ever increasing job insecurity and negative outlook, everyone continued to give 100%, producing work to extremely high standards. It’s such a shame that a company that oozed that much talent had to end the way it did. I am still very grateful for the 5 years I spent there. It was an amazing place, with such potential, and I was glad to be a part of it.”
Finally in early July it was announced that the company had ceased trading and gone into administration. All 27 of the remaining staff were let go, but many of them found work with Jon Rennie;
“I was able to move quickly to continue work and keep the crew on Boj (Pesky Productions, CBeebies) and Wildernuts (Kavaleer, RTE), two projects that Dinamo were still in production on when they went into administration.”
Jon has fond memories of his time at Dinamo, but feels a sense of sadness now that it has gone;
“Our projects were small but ambitious and we always tried to achieve something new with each series. Animation is a risky business and sadly Welsh animation has never had a smooth ride.”
He has every faith that Owen and Aron will bounce back quickly;
“I’m looking forward to a new era of Dinamo working on development projects and focussing on original ideas but without the distractions of production.”
The Future
So now that we’re back from out little Welsh animation time-travelling jaunt, what have we learnt that we can take forward into the future?
I think the primary lesson is that the story is no different in Wales as it is across the UK. The broadcast animation game is changing…radically. Production-houses that rely solely on series work to survive are struggling. There are examples of studios that seem to be surviving on mostly series work; Blue Zoo in London, Brown Bag Films in Dublin and A-Productions in Bristol are three that immediately spring to mind. We could mention Aardman, but they have always struck a fine balance between series and commercial work and are arguably a brand in themselves now.
However, Dinamo didn’t rely on series work; they also produced a lot of VFX and Title sequences for S4C and BBC Wales, the recent series, The Story of Wales springing to mind. However the demand for VFX work in Wales is small compared to London and [as it is everywhere else] it’s also an extremely competitive market that demands a fast production turn-around. A sore subject in the Welsh Industry is despite the fact that Doctor Who is produced and filmed in Wales, the VFX are produced in London. As Dinamo’s CG and VFX department got smaller and smaller following the end of Iconicles and with nothing lined up to move them on to, they gradually lost the ability to offer this service.
Spiritual successors to Dinamo’s legacy are the guys at Bait Studios and Cloth Cat Animations, mainly due to the number of ex-Dinamo alumni that make up the production crews there at the moment. Currently in production on Series 4 of Grandpa in my Pocket, as well as the projects mentioned above that were carried over after Dinamo’s demise, Jon can empathise with Owen and Aron;
“Now that I am managing my own companies and projects, I can see how things might have been different in hindsight – cost control and not keeping such a large core team during the lean months. The challenges of rapidly expanding production on several large productions at the same time took their toll.”
Towards the end, Dinamo were making steps into the video-game production market and it’s here that I personally see a more viable future for animation production in Wales. Independent video-game companies like Wales Interactive and Dakko Dakko Ltd. are utilising new, innovative ways of funding and publishing their own IP via mobile game platforms and outlets like Steam, XBOX Marketplace and Playstation Network. Can we find similar scenarios for series animation production in Wales? There’s a lot of potential for Trans-media collaborations.
There’s a much larger story here and I’m very aware that we’ve only brushed the surface with some of the details, but hopefully this can get a few conversations started. With the recently announced tax-breaks for UK animation and video-games, maybe a little further investment in the industry I don’t see why we can’t see a return of the Golden-days of Welsh animation, we’ve just got to think outside of the box a little. Hopefully we’ll see the Dinamo guys back where they belong soon.