Role Call Roundup: Bardel Entertainment, DreamWorks, ZÖIC, ILM

Look alive, recruits! And welcome to CartoonRecruit.com’s weekly Role Call Roundup. On the main page, I monitor and curate links to job posts (updated daily) from an ever-expanding list of animation studios. This blog is where I reflect on job posts from the past week and take a closer look at hiring trends across the animation industry.

This week, I started curating Animation Industry Starter Packs on Bluesky to help connect artists migrating from the website formerly known as Twitter. If you have not encountered Bluesky’s Starter Packs before now, I’ll give you a quick run-through at the end of this post. Also in this issue are new job opportunities at Bardel Entertainment, DreamWorks, ZÖIC, ILM and many more!

Are you a spoony bard in Vancouver, British Columbia, or Montreal, Quebec?

Bardel Entertainment was founded in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1987. The name was derived from a portmanteau of co-founders Barry Ward and Delna Bhesania. The studio’s best known for their service work on 2D productions like Carol & The End of The World and Solar Opposites as well as 3D productions like The Dragon Prince and Sausage Party: Foodtopia. Bardel Entertainment is currently hiring for 6 roles, split between Vancouver and the new studio in Montreal, Quebec, which initially opened its doors earlier this summer.

Teamwork make dreams work in Glendale, California

DreamWorks was originally founded in 1994 by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. The company may be best known for its subsidiary DreamWorks Animation, which created franchise-spawning feature films such as Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon. In 2013, DreamWorks Animation partnered with Netflix to produce TV series like Turbo Fast, The Adventures of Puss in Boots and The Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show, among many others. DreamWorks Animation Television is currently hiring for two roles in Glendale, California:

Gently kneading CG VFX into plasticine in Vancouver, British Columbia

ZŌIC is an artist-owned VFX studio headquartered in Culver City, California, with divisions in Vancouver and New York City. The studio provided VFX services on television series like The Good Place, A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Boys, as well as feature films like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny. The studio is currently hiring multiple CG artists in Vancouver, British Columbia, for a new stop motion VFX project.

What’s the smoke and mirrors in San Francisco, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia?

Industrial Light & Magic is a VFX studio that was founded by George Lucas and acquired by Disney. While the studio is best known for their work on Star Wars, they also contribute VFX to countless blockbuster movies including Deadpool & Wolverine, Alien: Romulus, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. ILM is currently hiring for a senior compositor in San Francisco, California, and three other roles in Vancouver, British Columbia.

More job highlights from the past week

United States:

Canada: 

United Kingdom:

Australia: 

Hey there, Mr. Blue

This Friday, we curated our first Starter Pack on Bluesky: Animation Industry And Artists Vol. 1. For those just dipping your toes into the platform, Starter Packs are a helpful way to quickly find accounts to follow. The goal of our Starter Packs is to collect a wide variety of artists, industry professionals and trade publications on the platform for animation artists who want to follow discussions on Bluesky. Each pack contains 150 artists and I plan to release a new volume every week.

Starter Packs, like all lists, are subjective and somewhat arbitrary. The accounts that I follow might not necessarily match up with what you would enjoy following — but do I feel that my choices are useful or at least interesting. Additionally, as the list collects artists who work on a variety of projects, as well as following their own artistic interests, there may be nudity and mature content. Discretion is advised. 

Help us keep this production going

CartoonRecruit.com is a website built from the ground up for industry artists searching for their next animation production. Our directory will always be provided to the community as a free service. With that said, if you find our project useful and want to help connect more artists to meaningful work, you can contribute by becoming a Patreon Supporter.

When artists contribute to our $1 / Pay What You Want tier, they gain full access to CartoonRecruit’s Discord community. You also help cover costs associated with running the last website on the internet that isn’t attempting to sell you a mattress immediately after you just bought a new mattress.

Are you responsible for hiring decisions at your studio? Get in touch with us on LinkedIn! We are currently working on Q&A discussions with recruiters at studios, and participating could put a link to your studio's career page directly in the inboxes of talented artists searching for their next production.

We believe that the best thing that artists applying for a job can do is to research the studio they are applying to, and we want to help provide specific advice for artists applying to a wide variety of studios.

Signing off for now

That’s all for this week, recruits! Have thoughts or feedback about our project? Feel free to message me by email at mike@cartoonrecruit.com, or send a DM to our LinkedIn page or @cartoonrecruit.com on Bluesky. I will do my best to reply to every non-spam message I receive.

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