Nelvana
Nelvana Limited is a
Canadian entertainment company, founded in 1971, that is well-known for its work in children's
animation, among many things. It was named by its foundersâ€"
Michael Hirsh,
Patrick Loubert and
Clive A. Smithâ€"after a
Canadian comic book superheroine of the 1940s.
Corus Entertainment, a spin-off from
Shaw Communications, has owned the company since September 2000.
A leader in pan-American independent animation, Nelvana is one of the genre's most prominent enterprises outside the
United States, and in the entire world. Most of its films, shows and specials are based on licensed properties, mainly children's literature. But, as with most companies of its kind, original programming is also part of its roster. In spite of its status as a cartoon company, it ventured into the world of
live action from its establishement up until the late 1990s.
Well-known franchises from Nelvana include
Care Bears,
Babar,
Little Bear,
Eek! The Cat,
Franklin and
6teen, along with the North American dubs of the
anime series
Beyblade,
Cardcaptor Sakura and
Medabots. It also distributes the
Nicktoons,
The Fairly OddParents and
Danny Phantom, outside the United States.
As of , its library comprises of more than 1,650 cumulative half-hours of original programming.
[Fitzgerald, James (2001, May 1). "Nelvana's 30th Anniversary Profile". KidScreen Magazine. Retrieved July 1, 2006. (NOTE: the full article is available to site members only.)]1970s
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Scene from A Cosmic Christmas, Nelvana's first TV special |
Nelvana started in 1971 when two graduates of
York University, Michael Hirsh and Patrick Loubert, teamed up with a British animator-designer by the name of Clive A. Smith in
Toronto, Ontario. Hirsh and Loubert, who had a passion for
underground filmmaking, had founded a small company called Laff Arts in the late 1960s. Smith, whose interest was in
rock n' roll music, had previously been among the crew for
the Beatles'
animated series and their 1968 film,
Yellow Submarine. Hirsh has commented on the background of Nelvana's founding:
Soon after they stumbled upon a collection of local
comic books from the 1940s, the trio acquired the ownership rights. In turn, they made a half-hour television documentary for the
CBC focusing on Canadian comics. Their two-year travelling tour of the art from the
National Gallery of Canada, "Comic Art Traditions in Canada, 1941-45", gave locals a chance to revisit the country's past heritage in that field.
["Canadian Heroes" page at internationalhero.co.uk. Retrieved July 10, 2006.] Meanwhile, Hirsh and Loubert collaborated on a related primer from Peter Martin and Associates,
The Great Canadian Comic Books. Amid all this success, Hirsh, Loubert and Smith named their new enterprise Nelvanaâ€"after a Canadian comic book
superheroine from
World War II,
Nelvana of the Northern Lights, who was one of the characters in the
Canadian Whites canon.
A derelict apartment in downtown Toronto served as the company's first building, and a homemade wooden stand mounted over a toilet was among its first camera equipment. "To create zooms," Hirsh recalls his early experience with this machine, "we would pile up phone books under the art work." During their first year and a half, the trio lived off a superfluous
Chargex credit card that Loubert received at university, spending up to C$7,500 on it before they reclaimed double that cost as their first ever transaction.
[Fitzgerald, James (2001, May 1). "Nelvana's 30th Anniversary Profile". KidScreen Magazine. Retrieved July 1, 2006. (NOTE: the full article is available to site members only.)] Under those conditions, Nelvana was involved in the production of documentaries and live-action films. In the area of part-time animation work, they made ten C$1,500
fillers for the CBC.
Among the studio's first productions was a low-budget CBC
short subject series,
Small Star Cinema, which combined live-action and animation to tell stories of ordinary life from a child's point of view. It was followed by 1975's
Christmas Two Step, a similarly-styled special in which a girl tries to be a lead dancer at a Christmas pageant.
|
Boba Fett, the Star Wars character Nelvana introduced in its segment of 1978's Holiday Special |
Then, thanks to new talent from
Sheridan College, all of whom were graduates of the institution, Nelvana worked on their first television specials:
A Cosmic Christmas (1977),
The Devil and Daniel Mouse (1978),
Please Don't Eat the Planet (better known by its subtitle,
Intergalactic Thanksgiving) (1979),
Romie-0 and Julie-8 (1979),
Easter Fever (1980) and
Take Me Up to the Ball Game (1980). During that time,
George Lucas, an aficionado of their work, commissioned the company to work on a 10-minute sequence for the
CBS TV film,
The Star Wars Holiday Special. This short scene, officially entitled "The Faithful Wookiee", would introduce audiences to the villainous bounty hunter
Boba Fett, who would make his first theatrical appearance in
1980's
The Empire Strikes Back.
1980s
|
The high cost of Rock & Rule, Nelvana's first feature film, almost made the studio bankrupt. |
At the start of the 1980s, Nelvana was offered the chance to work on
Heavy Metal, an animated anthology of science fiction stories that studios in Canada and other countries were working on. Nelvana declined this opportunity, instead going on to concentrate on the production of its first feature film,
Rock & Rule.
Based heavily on the earlier special
The Devil and Daniel Mouse, and originally titled
Drats!, the film was produced for five years using all of the studio's resources, totalling $8 million. Upon its release by in
1983, it received little promotion in the United States and quickly disappeared at the box office.
The financial demise of
Rock & Rule would have ceased Nelvana's operations altogether, had the company never saved themselves from debt by working full-time on children's television series. On its agenda at that time were its first three live-action franchises,
The Edison Twins,
:20 Minute Workout and
Mr. Microchip. With
DiC Entertainment, Nelvana worked on the first season of
Inspector Gadget, and animated the pilot episode of
The Get-Along Gang.
Early in the decade, the company worked on four television specials based on
American Greetings properties. They were
The Magic of Herself the Elf, which was spun-off into a
television series in the 1990s;
Strawberry Shortcake's Housewarming Surprise;
Strawberry Shortcake and the Baby Without a Name; and
Strawberry Shortcake Meets the Berrykins, the last three of which featured the
eponymous doll. There were two shows from Nelvana based on the
AmToy properties,
Madballs and
My Pet Monster.
|
Nelvana's work on the Care Bears franchise was among its earliest success stories. |
But its greatest success at the time came in the form of the
Care Bears, thanks to its acquisition of the character rights from American Greetings, the franchise owners. In early
1985,
the first movie based on the toy line turned the company's fortunes around, grossing
$23 million in the U.S., and another
$1.5 million in its native Canada. Its tremendous success gave way to two more big-screen movies,
A New Generation and
Adventure in Wonderland, as well as a
television series also based on the toys.
[DiC Entertainment also made 22 episodes of the Care Bears series before Nelvana reclaimed the rights for the animated franchise.]In the area of science fiction, Nelvana produced
Droids and
Ewoks, two Saturday-morning series based on
Star Wars, along with select episodes of DiC's
Dinosaucers. In 1986, there was talk of an animated CBS show from the studio, based on the
BBC's
Doctor Who; the plan never came to fruition.
[Lofficier, Jean-Marc (2003). The Nth Doctor, p. 9. iUniverse. ISBN 0595276199. Retrieved June 22, 2006.]For
Orion Pictures'
1986 live-action western comedy,
¡Three Amigos!, the company made use of
animatronics in one scene with a talking turtle. In
1987, Michael Hirsh produced Nelvana's first self-made film of this calibre, the
Whoopi Goldberg comedy
Burglar.
The company's fourth live-action series,
T and T, premiered in 1988 on Canada's
Global network. The show's title duo comprised of
Mr. T of
A-Team fame, playing a former boxer named T.S. Turner, and Canadian actress
Kristina Nicoll as an East Coast lawyer by the name of Terri Taler. Nelvana faced bankruptcy for the second time when the show's original American distributor was going out of business; in six weeks, they were saved when they found a replacement.
[Daly, John (2001, January 31). [https://secure.globeadvisor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/LAC/20030131/RO3SOBS/TPBusiness/ROBM The Toughest SOBs in Business]. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved July 10, 2006.] Also that year, Nelvana established
BearSpots, a facility for producing television commercials that lasted until 1993.
[Fitzgerald, James (2001, May 1). "Nelvana's 30th Anniversary Profile". KidScreen Magazine. Retrieved July 1, 2006. (NOTE: the full article is available to site members only.)]As the decade came to a close, the revived Nelvana had its next big success with
a movie and an
HBO television show based on
Jean de Brunhoff's
Babar book series. This franchise, its first
international co-production, won many
ACE Awards in the U.S. and
Geminis in Canada. In September 1989, ABC began to air one of the company's products:
an animated series based on
Tim Burton's
Beetlejuice.
1990s
Following
Babar's success, the studio acquired the rights to animated series based on
Hergé's
The Adventures of Tintin,
Maurice Sendak's
Little Bear,
Joanna Cole's
The Magic School Bus and the British comic strip
Rupert the Bear. Nelvana had self-made successes of its own during the 1990s, such as
Eek! The Cat,
Dog City (with
Jim Henson Productions) and
Ned's Newt.
In autumn 1993, Nelvana signed a multi-year project to produce five feature films for
Paramount Pictures, with
Kathleen Kennedy and
Frank Marshall producing; the first two began production the following summer, at a cost of over US$20 million each.
[McRoberts, Kenneth (1995). Beyond Quebec: Taking Stock of Canada, p. 175. McGills-Queens University Press. ISBN 0773513140. Retrieved June 22, 2006.][Maddever, Mary (1995, September 11). "Nelvana boosts feature involvement". Playback Magazine. Retrieved July 2, 2006.] Three of the projects were based on books by
E.B. White (
The Trumpet of the Swan),
Clive Barker (
The Thief of Always) and
Graeme Base (
The Sign of the Seahorse); an original production called
Mask Vision was also in the works.
[Tolusso, Susan (1994, March 28). "Nelvana joins the public procession..." Playback Magazine. Retrieved June 30, 2006.]However, none of those films ever made it past the finishing stage. During the 1990s, another set of features from Nelvana was distributed by different companies. A
1993 live-action thriller called
Malice came out under the
Columbia Pictures banner;
1997 saw
Palm Pictures' release of a low-budget science-fiction film called
Spaceman, and the studio's retelling of
Pippi Longstocking from
Legacy Releasing; and
Babar: King of the Elephants was released in Canada by
Alliance Atlantis in 1999. Among them, only
Malice would go on to achieve box-office success in North America. Its US$46 million gross was the highest ever attained by a Nelvana production,
[Box office data for Malice at the Internet Movie Database. Retrieved June 22, 2006.] doubling what the first
Care Bears Movie received during its original release.
In September 1996,
Golden Books Family Entertainment was in talks to acquire the company for US$102 million, just after becoming the owners of
Broadway Video.
[Golden Books is Negotiating to Buy Nelvana. (1996, September 26.) New York Times. Retrieved June 29, 2006.] Many of the company's staff members, including Smith and Loubert, expressed interest in the proposition. But Hirsh went up against it, arguing with then-
COO Eleanor Olmstead about its possible effects on his institution. Two months later, possibly with this situation to blame, Golden Books withdrew from the deal without giving any explanation, and stated that they would concentrate more on children's entertainment, an ironic twist of fate given Nelvana's established expertise in that field.
[Daly, John (2001, January 31). [https://secure.globeadvisor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/LAC/20030131/RO3SOBS/TPBusiness/ROBM The Toughest SOBs in Business]. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved July 10, 2006.][Golden Books Withdraws Offer for Nelvana. (1995, November 5.) New York Times. Retrieved June 29, 2006.]In 1997, a small
computer animation company called
Windlight Studios was absorbed into Nelvana's assets. Its co-founder,
Scott Dyer, became Nelvana's senior vice president in charge of production in late 2001.
[Maule, Christopher J. and Acheson, Archibald Lloyd Keith (2001). Much Ado About Culture: North American Trade Disputes, p. 122. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472087894. Retrieved June 22, 2006.][Yaffe, Samatha (November 20, 2001). "Loubert goes solo in wave of consolidation". Playback Magazine. Retrieved July 6, 2006.]In late 1997, Nelvana and Britain's
Channel 4 began work on
Bob and Margaret, the company's first animated franchise for adults since
Rock & Rule. It was based on the
National Film Board of Canada's
Bob's Birthday, an
Academy Award winner for Best Short, which Channel 4 also produced.
[Maule, Christopher J. and Acheson, Archibald Lloyd Keith (2001). Much Ado About Culture: North American Trade Disputes, p. 122. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0472087894. Retrieved June 22, 2006.]In August 1998, Nelvana acquired
Kids Can Press, publishers of the
Franklin children's books upon which the
television series was based. This turned them into an "integrated company"â€"in which Kids Can's subsequent publications would begin with Nelvana's franchising of those works.
[Klein, Naomi (2002). No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, p. 147. Picador. ISBN 03122421435. Retrieved June 22, 2006.] The company's first two computer-animated shows,
Donkey Kong Country and
Rolie Polie Olie (with Paris-based
Sparx*) premiered on American TV in 1998. That same year, it held a monopoly on CBS' Saturday-morning schedule; the deal included
Franklin,
Flying Rhino Junior High,
Anatole,
Birdz and
Mythic Warriors as part of the package. In January 1999,
Franklin (on the CBS line-up) and
Rupert (a part of
Nick Jr. since 1991) swapped networks.
[Adalian, Joseph (1998, December 14). "Nick vet CBS-bound as nets alter kidvid skeds". Variety Magazine. Retrieved June 22, 2006.] |
George Shrinks, one of the six shows that Nelvana produced as part of the Bookworm Bunch |
In August 1999, Nelvana made a US$40 million deal with the
Public Broadcasting Service to produce its first ever Saturday morning shows, all of them based on popular children's books.
[Collins, Geneva (Aug 16, 1999). "Public TV again turns to Canada for kidvid". current.org. Retrieved June 23, 2006.] The six seriesâ€
"Timothy Goes to School,
Seven Little Monsters,
Corduroy,
Marvin the Tap-Dancing Horse,
George Shrinks and
Elliot Mooseâ€"were launched the following September as part of the
Bookworm Bunch line-up.
[Bedford, Karen Everhart (July 31, 2000). "New offerings from PBS and Nick Jr./CBS". current.org. Retrieved June 23, 2006.] That same month, it acquired the North American rights to its first anime property,
CLAMP's
Cardcaptor Sakura.
[Ross, Carlos (1999, August 9). Of All Things Nelvana and Card Captor (Sakura?) Editorial at THEM Anime Reviews. Retrieved June 24, 2006.] Purists of the original Japanese version criticised the resulting English dub, which was broadcast on
Kids WB! in the U.S. market and
Teletoon in Canada.
2000s
On
April 12,
2000, Nelvana announced its purchase of the
Palo Alto-based children's book publisher
Klutz in a US$74 million dealâ€"at that time, its largest buyout everâ€"
["Nelvana Buys Book Publisher" at AllBusiness.com. Retrieved June 30, 2006.] and integrated it into its Branded Consumer Products division. The company, founded in 1977, was best known for its children's series,
Books Plus. Nelvana's separate subsidiary, Kids Can, started taking advantage of the acquisition by making its output available through Klutz merchandise.
[Shirkani, K.D. (2000, April 13). Nelvana adds Klutz books to kids shelf. Variety. Retrieved June 30, 2006.]On
September 29,
2000, after almost two weeks of negotiation, Corus Entertainment acquired Nelvana's operations for C$554 million.
[NELVANA LTD Report of Foreign Issuer (6-K) SIGNATURES at EdgarOnline. Retrieved June 23, 2006.] Heather Shaw, the Executive Chair of Corus, remarked on this event:
A year after Corus' purchase, co-founders and co-
CEOs Patrick Loubert and Clive A. Smith left the studio for good. Loubert voluntarily left his establishment on November 16 after its new owners eliminated 50 positions from the staff. "The time has come that Corus will stop acquiring for a while and start operating.
John Cassaday[Cassaday is the prseident and CEO of Corus Entertainment. (NB: His name should not be confused with that of the comic book artist.)] has made that clear, but this makes my job less rather than more," he commented on the state of Corus' affiliation and his resulting departure.
[Yaffe, Samatha (November 20, 2001). "Loubert goes solo in wave of consolidation". Playback Magazine. Retrieved July 6, 2006.]In 2001, the studio began to work on computer-animated feature films aimed at young audiences. So far, only
one of them, based on the
Rescue Heroes toy line and TV show, has seen the light of day in U.S. cinemas. The rest of them, based on
Rolie Polie Olie and the
Care Bears, have been released
directly to DVD.
In 2001, Nelvana acquired the rights to the English-language version of yet another anime series,
Medabots. The following January,
Beyblade (in association with
Hasbro and
Mitsubishi) became its third such property.
["Nelvana Spins a Deal to Bring Beyblade Phenomenon to North America". 2002, January 10. PR Newswire. Retrieved June 24, 2006.]In October 2002, during one of Nelvana's most difficult years, Corus announced that Michael Hirsh, the last remaining co-founder among Nelvana's staff, was stepping down as CEO of the company which he co-founded. The following month,
Paul Robertson, former president of Corus Television and head of
YTV, took his place, and became leader of the studio's senior management, while it was making its way back to full-time animation. He explained the reason for the status change circa 2003: "We were perhaps getting a little farther afield in doing live action and extending ourselves into a lot of new areas that weren't exactly our core capabilities." With Hirsh's departure, Corus announced a C$200 million writedown for the company; by next August, it planned to reduce the staff down to 200.
[Daly, John (2001, January 31). [https://secure.globeadvisor.com/servlet/ArticleNews/story/LAC/20030131/RO3SOBS/TPBusiness/ROBM The Toughest SOBs in Business]. The Globe and Mail. Retrieved July 10, 2006.][Ball, Ryan (October 23, 2002). "Nelvana CEO Hirsh Steps Down". Animation Magazine. Retrieved June 23, 2006.][Ball, Ryan (November 6, 2002). "Corus Ent. Names Hirsh's Nelvana Successor". Animation Magazine. Retrieved June 24, 2006.]["Focus on Canada", June 2003. WorldScreen.com. Retrieved July 2, 2006.] |
6teen, an example of a recent Nelvana series aimed at the older demographic. |
The following September, Corus launched
Nelvana's home entertainment division. Texas-based
FUNimation, along with British company
Maverick, has distributed titles from the studio with this label, including
Redwall,
Pecola,
Tales from the Cryptkeeper,
Timothy Goes to School and the Disney Channel TV special
The Santa Claus Brothers.
[Ball, Ryan (September 25, 2003). "Nelvana Home Entertainment Launched". Animation Magazine. Retrieved June 24, 2006.] Nelvana's newer titles have been distributed by MGM,
Lionsgate and
ADV Films, which have no involvement with the label.
On
May 8,
2006, Nelvana joined forces with
ion Media Networks (owners of TV network
i),
NBC Universal and
Scholastic Books, along with
Classic Media and its
Big Idea Productions unit, to launch a new children's entertainment endeavour spread across all medium platforms, including video-on-demand on digital cable. The new project,
Smart Place for Kids, will feature new and library programming from the partners, each one producing a new show every year.
[ION Media Networks, Scholastic, NBC Universal, Corus Entertainment, and Classic Media/Big Idea Unite to Launch Groundbreaking Multi-platform Network for Children. Press release at ion Media Networks site. Retrieved June 24, 2006.] The
NBC network will start airing the block in September, with Spanish-speaking sister channel
Telemundo to follow in October.
|
The Nelvana logo used from 1985 to 1995 |
Many of Nelvana's TV shows are based on properties from other companies, most of which started in other forms of media. A great deal of them are based on children's and comic books; examples include
Anatole,
Babar,
The Berenstain Bears,
Franklin,
Jane and the Dragon,
Little Bear,
Pippi Longstocking,
Redwall,
Rupert,
Tintin,
Wayside School and the shows in the
Bookworm Bunch block. "We bring good books to life," Michael Hirsh has replied when asked on the faithfulness of such shows to the original source material.
["Nelvana creates animated magic". The Ontario Business Report, March 2001, pp. 1-2. PDF file retrieved July 2, 2006.]Nelvana has also had considerable success with animated fare based on toys; American Greetings'
Care Bears has been the most familiar example of this. Also, there have been series and specials based on
Strawberry Shortcake (also from AGC),
Madballs and
My Pet Monster (from AmToy) and
Rescue Heroes (from
Fisher-Price).
It has also translated big-screen franchises to televised properties, such as
Star Wars (
Droids and
Ewoks),
Beetlejuice,
An American Tail (
Fievel's American Tails),
Free Willy and
The Neverending Story. It has even ventured into the video game world with a show based on
Nintendo's
Donkey Kong Country.
In the field of anime, the company holds the North American rights to CLAMP/
Kodansha's
Cardcaptor Sakura series. Also, it holds international licensing rights to
Beyblade and
Medabots.
|
Eek! The Cat, a popular Nelvana show of the 1990s |
As with many other animation studios, there is also original programming within Nelvana's roster.
6teen,
Clone High,
Mission Hill, and
Eek! The Cat among others, are some Nelvana cartoons not based on any other source material.
As of , the studio has made close to 25 feature films for theatrical, home entertainment, and television distribution. Well-known releases include
Rock & Rule, all five Care Bears movies, two
Babar films and 1997's
Pippi Longstocking.
Live-action has been a part of its mainstay from its early years. The company has had
Burglar,
Malice and
Spaceman as its own feature projects in that area, and has contributed as such to
The Star Wars Holiday Special and
¡Three Amigos!. On television, Nelvana has made live-action shows such as
The Edison Twins,
T and T,
:20 Minute Workout,
Nancy Drew and
The Hardy Boys.
|
The Fairly OddParents, one of two Nicktoons distributed internationally by Nelvana |
With its historic headquarters in Toronto, Nelvana has offices in Hollywood, London, and Tokyo; it also owns a distribution branch in
Shannon, Ireland.
[Fitzgerald, James (2001, May 1). "Nelvana's 30th Anniversary Profile". KidScreen Magazine. Retrieved July 1, 2006. (NOTE: the full article is available to site members only.)][Nelvana information at Corus website. Retrieved June 14, 2006.] In the United States, the company's series have been broadcast on the ABC, CBS, FOX, PBS and
WB networks, and cable stations including
Nickelodeon, Disney Channel,
Showtime,
Cartoon Network,
adult swim, and
ABC Family. In Canada, they can be seen on Teletoon, YTV, CBC, the
Family Channel and
Treehouse TV. Elsewhere, they have aired on the
Boomerang channel (in Latin America); on Channel 4,
ITV,
Tiny Pop and the
BBC (in the United Kingdom); on
RTE (in the Republic of Ireland); and on
FR2 and
FR3 (in France). Nelvana's franchises have been shown on over 360 television stations in more 180 countries, in approximately 50 languages.
[Nelvana information at Corus website. Retrieved June 14, 2006.][Nelvana company overview at dfait-maeci.gc.ca. Retrieved June 14, 2006.]Danny Phantom and
The Fairly OddParents, two Nicktoons created by animator
Butch Hartman, are distributed by Nelvana outside the United States. The latter has been in the top of the ratings for Nickelodeon, YTV and the BBC, and has also been successful among viewers in several European markets and Australia.
[Program information for The Fairly OddParents at Nelvana site. Retrieved June 24, 2006.]Apart from its trio of founders, there have been several key personnel from Nelvana's past and present, a great deal of whom have left the company. Among the most well-known people to work in the studio are
Bill Perkins,
John de Klein,
Wayne Gilbert,
John Halfpenny,
Peter Hudecki,
Vincenzo Natali,
Arna Selznick,
Laura Shepherd,
Susan Snooks and
John van Bruggen. Voice work from the company's past and present includes, but is not limited to,
Melleny Brown,
Alyson Court,
Don Francks,
Dan Hennessey,
Jim Henshaw,
Hadley Kay,
Bill Kopp,
Martin Lavut,
Julie Lemieux,
Stephen Ouimette,
Susan Roman,
John Stocker,
Cree Summer,
Colin O'Meara,
Brent Titcomb,
Louise Vallance, and
Chris Wiggins.
Two former Nelvana employees,
Roger Allers and
Charles Bonifacio, went on to become staff members at
Walt Disney Feature Animation in the 1990s. Allers is best-known as the director of 1994's
The Lion King, and Bonifacio was among the crew of 2002's
Lilo & Stitch.
Lenora Hume, from the company's early years, is the senior vice-president of
DisneyToon Studios.
Nelvana had a planet named after it in the
Star Wars series, on Cartoon Network's
Expanded Universe series
Clone Wars. During Chapters 23 to 25,
Anakin Skywalker travels to a planet called "
Nelvaan".
Clone Wars also pays homage to the franchise's animation predecessors in the form of the planet's dog-like inhabitants, who resemble characters from
Rock & Rule, the studio's first film.
[Trivia for Star Wars: Clone Wars at the Internet Movie Database. Retrieved June 28, 2006.]Another well-known series in the genre,
Star Trek, has made reference to the company name with a system of five planets
named after it. One of them, "
Nelvana III", is notably mentioned on a
Next Generation episode, "
The Defector".
[Episode information for "The Defector" at TV.com. Retrieved June 28, 2006.]The "Nelvana Independent Short Film Grand Prize", given out at the
Ottawa International Animation Festival since 2004, pays homage to the name of the company. The first two recipients of this prize have been 2004's
Ryan, the
Chris Landreth biography about Canadian animator
Ryan Larkin,
[Smith, Patrick (2004, October 12. "Ottawa Animation Festival 2004: One Animators [sic Perspective"], pg. 4. Animation World Magazine. Retrieved July 19, 2006.] and 2005's
Milch from director
Igor Kovalyov.
[Kovalyov wins Grand Prize. November 2005 archive page at CalArts School of Film/Video site. Retrieved July 19, 2006.]Related topics
*
Cinema of Canada*
History of Canadian film*
History of Canadian animationRelated Canadian companies
*
National Film Board of Canada*
Cookie Jar Entertainment (formerly Cinar)
*
CinéGroupe*
Atkinson Film-Arts (defunct since 1989)
*
Studio B Productions*
C.O.R.E.
*Stoffman, David (2001).
The Nelvana Story: Thirty Animated Years. Toronto, Ontario: Nelvana Publishing Company (ISBN 1894786009).
*
Official site*
*
Stamp of the superheroine after whom the company was named*
"Three Men and a bear: Nelvana at 25" by Ellen Besen and Marc Glassman,
Take One (Autumn 1996) at
LookSmart's Find Articles
*
Canadian Jewish News: "Nelvana has found the formula for success" by Sheldon Kirshner
