Editor's Note, as printed in the June 2007 issue of “aNYmator”:
ANIMAGIC LAYS OFF ENTIRE STAFF
On May 21st, Jeff Nodelman's animation studio Animagic laid off its entire staff, about 75 people, after 6 weeks of employment on "Nate the Great." Animagic is a subsidiary of Creative Group and Moe Green Entertainment.
"Nate the Great" was a show that PBS bought from Creative Group last year. Unlike most shows, which run for about 10 test episodes, "Nate" was picked up for a whopping 40 episodes that were going to syndication.
The staff was called into a meeting at 11am Monday morning and was told that the poject was cancelled. Nodelman labeled it a haitus and sent all the artists back to their desks to pack up, where they found the information on their computers inaccessable.
According to a source, PBS itself is shocked at the cancellation, which stems from the investors pulling out their funding.
Meet New York's New ANImagician
ANImagic's Jeff Nodelman talks about the studio he helped create after abdicating as CEO of his own successful independent animation house
by Jake Friedman.
*Originally published in the February, 2007 issue of Animation Magazine
As far as new animation studios go, it's hard to find one with the kind of zest and creative freedom as ANImagic, headed at the canopy organization of Creative Group in New York City by Jeff Nodelman. Nodelman came fresh off Noodle Soup Studios (Venture Brothers, Hopeless Pictures), an independent animation house he founded five years ago, to head animation production and I.P. development for projects at ANImagic.
“This place here is built for how best to tell a story,” asserts Nodelman. “It doesn't matter who the idea comes from, whether it's a top supervisor or from the guy who cleans to kitchen.” While no longer a CEO, Nodelman wears his new position with pride. “It was fun to be an entrepreneur, but I'm a storyteller at heart.”
Nodelman was hired by Creative Group CEO's and Chairman Joseph Avallone and President Tom DeFeo earlier this year to help build an animation studio in an already burgeoning multi-media company. “As a CPA, Joe is the real business man and Tom is an Emmy-award-winning editor with decades of experience, and they both have a distinct vision for what they want this place to be,” says Nodelman. “Tom is a storytelling pro, and he's directing one of our flagship projects, Nate the Great.”
ANImagic is slated to produce forty 22-minute Flash-animated episodes of Nate the Great for PBS, in which Nodelman acts as art director, to begin airing in 2008. In addition, the studio is producing an original CG 7-minute short for the festival circuit called Tree Elves, an international project utilizing Creative Group's wholly owned Beijing animation facility.
The beginning of next year, ANImagic goes into production on its first feature film, The Fourth Horseman. It will be the first animated feature for Fangoria Entertainment, one of the most recognizable leaders in the world of horror and also a subsidiary of Creative Group. Both projects will be directed and written by Nodelman. The studio already got some attention for its online revival of Speedracer earlier this year.
“I want this place to be said in the same breath as the great story-telling studios in Los Angeles. As you walk through ANImagic, it's like an animation campus because we have the ability to go from concept through completion, just like the big Hollywood boys. Real estate is expensive in the city and any room that doesn't generate revenue can be seen as wasted space,” says Nodelman, “but ANImagic is fully funded by its parent company, the Creative Group, and their goal is to be creating and working on projects that we own the rights to, that we can then generate revenue through. The best way we can do that is to have a place where the artists can get together and talk through the process.”
Because the studio is producing self-financed projects, there's very little red tape for the creative team to hurdle. “Joe and Tom challenge everyone to do the job we were all brought on to do. When we bring ideas to them, if they like it, we move right ahead. If not, we literally just go back to the drawing board.”
The studio also sports 98,000 square feet of facility space over four buildings, as well as the highest-end tools for all the employees. In the back are sound-stages for stop motion and motion capture, not to mention recording facilities. “If it's got a button on it, we make sure everyone who could use one has one,” adds Nodelman. Perhaps that's why ANImagic has been able to bring in artists from Canada, Ireland and LA, as well as seasoned animation heavyweights like storyboard artists Diane Kredensor and Jeff Buckland.
Clearly, Nodelman has high aspirations for ANImagic and their projects. “But my greatest production is my two boys, Dylan and Spencer. And I want to sit in a movie theater with my wife Melanie and my two boys, eating popcorn, and watching a film that Daddy created that was once their bedtime story. That, I think, would be the ultimate dream come true.”