Episode 42: Toronto Stop Motion Department Inc. Founders On How They Created The Studio From Scratch

This episode of the Animation Industry Podcast features Toronto Stop Motion Department Inc. Founders Philip Eddolls and Evan DeRushie, and Production Manager Annick Counihan. They share how the studio came to be and how they’ve managed to grow the business over the last year. You’ll also learn: *3 opportunities you have to get into stop motion in Toronto right now *The most difficult part about starting a stop motion focused studio *What a budget break-down looks like for a stop motion project ~[Sponsored Message]~ This episode is sponsored by Bloop Animation, which is an animation learning platform packed with premium online video courses for aspiring animation filmmakers. They have courses for all major animation programs like Maya, Animate CC, Toon Boom, Blender, TVPaint, and many others, as well as some non-software courses like a storyboarding course, Animation foundations course, and even one about making graphic novels, which covers absolutely everything you need to know from start to finish. The courses are all in video-form, so there’s no deadlines or application process, you simply pick a course and start learning in seconds. They even offer a free ebook titled “Making an animated short”, which covers their entire process, step-by-step, of how they made one of their films, from coming up with the idea, to storyboarding, animation and all the way to exporting the film. You can get that book for free at www.bloopanimation.com/animationindustry. You can check out their complete course library at www.bloopanimation.com/courses. *Free ebook on making a short film: www.bloopanimation.com/animationindustry *Bloop Animation’s course library: www.bloopanimation.com/courses ~~ More about Stop Motion Department: Stop Motion Department is a Toronto based studio founded by two stop-motion creators: Philip Eddolls and Evan DeRushie. Philip and Evan have individually created award winning short films, music videos and commercials, but together they worked as character animators for broadcast series with Cuppa Coffee Animation, and notably on the major motion picture "The Little Prince" (2015). Then after wrapping on “The Little Prince”,they formed the idea for a functional stop-motion studio in Canada and in October 2018, Stop Motion Depo Inc. was founded. Last November they moved into a 2000 sqft. warehouse studio space with multiple shooting stages, workshop, office and bathroom. Since then, SMD has produced and directed five interstitials for the PBS Kids show “Lets Go Luna!”, a three spot campaign for HSBC, and numerous other commercial spots for social media, all while ramping up their crew to begin production on a 20-minute short film in March of 2019. Animation for the film is ongoing, with a release planned for the year 2020. Check out Stop Motion Dept.’s website: https://www.stopmodept.com Follow Stop Motion Dept. on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stopmotiondept/ Learn more about this podcast: https://terryibele.com/animation-industry-podcast/