Three Things, Ten Jobs: Animation Festivals and Killer Robots
Ahoy recruits! And welcome to Cartoon Recruit’s blog. This is the Fortress of Solitude where I pause to reflect on the animation industry. And highlight job posts that might otherwise go overlooked.
This week’s post is a little late, with me up proofreading in the wee hours of Labour Day as we tick into September 1st. I’m looking forward to attending the Ottawa International Animation Festival later this month and recently had a chance to check in with the crew behind Baltimore’s Sweaty Eyeballs festival on Toon Boom Animation’s YouTube channel.
What else have I been looking at this week? I’m geeking out about a Crunchyroll superhero series, meanwhile Netflix released their first guidelines for generative AI use on productions, and there’s a new video of another scary android that might be waking up.
Three Things:
Why did nobody tell me about To Be Hero X?
I recently stumbled on a BlueSky post from Kasey Gifford about To Be Hero X, a Chinese animated series available to stream on Crunchyroll. In the series, social media popularity gives heroes powers and weaknesses in a way that is much satirically sharper than I would have expected a Bilibili co-production to be. The series also experiments with a wide variety of animation styles, both CG and 2D.
Netflix publishes guidelines on generative AI use
Netflix released a new document about generative AI, intended to give productions best practices when developing content for their streaming service. The main concerns weighted appear to involve legal risks, audience perception, and impact on union roles, though it does list reference images as ‘low risk.’ It’s worth noting that Netflix has faced criticism from Riot Games employees over an AI generated promo image for Arcane last November.
Glitch Productions releases first trailer for Knights of Guinevere
Glitch Productions, best known as the studio behind the smash hit indie series, The Amazing Digital Circus, released an official trailer for their new 2D series, Knights of Guinevere. Co-created by The Owl House veterans (Dana Terrace, John Bailey Owen and Zach Marcus), the series is described as a psychological thriller set on a planet-wide theme park with a broken princess android deciding the fate of the protagonists. We also noticed at least 50 separate job postings from the studio since last summer, which is always a plus!
Ten Jobs:
Senior Gameplay Animator at Blizzard (Hybrid from Albany, New York or Irvine, California) “As a Senior Animator, you'll be animating a diverse range of compelling characters and creatures that support an engaging, dynamic, and satisfying gameplay experience.”
Senior Character Artist (Contract) at Insomniac Games (Remote from Burbank, California) “In this role, you will be responsible for modeling character art assets (models, textures, and shaders for characters, props, and other key assets) at the highest quality level set by Lead Artists and Art Directors.”
Compositor (Temporary) at Company3 (On-Site from Santa Monica, California) “Company 3 currently has openings for a project hire Compositor to work on projects within our VFX department.”
Production Coordinator at Brown Bag Films (Remote from Toronto, Ontario) “To ensure that all assigned aspects of the Production are executed in a timely manner, of high quality and in accordance with the schedule in liaison with the Production Manager, the crew and/or external partners.”
Digital Design Lead at Guru Studio (Hybrid from Toronto, Ontario) “You’ll be the creative spark behind bold digital campaigns, visually stunning pitch decks and high-impact videos (Shorts, reels, etc) optimized for today’s fast-moving platforms.”
LookDev Supervisor at DNEG VFX (On-Site from Vancouver, British Columbia) “As a Look Development Supervisor, you will guide the creative and technical standards for lookdev across productions, ensuring assets are visually striking, production-ready, and pipeline-efficient.”
Development Animator at ICON Creative Studio (On-Site from Vancouver, British Columbia) “We’re looking for a Development Animator to help shape the visual narrative of our animated TV shows.”
VFX Editor (Shaun the Sheep) at Aardman (On-Site from Bristol, England) “You will be required to track the status and be aware of all VFX shots throughout the movie and be the main point of contact of editorial for the VFX department.”
Environment Generalist TD at DNEG VFX (On-Site from London, England) “Environment Generalist TDs at DNEG are passionate about collaborating and problem solving to create and compose spectacular photorealistic environments on our highest calibre feature film projects.”
Toon Boom Harmony Compositor at Elk Studios (Hybrid from Dundalk, Ireland) “We are on the lookout for experienced Compositor to join the growing team as we start production on an exciting new long form 2D animated series.”
Didn’t find the opportunity you were looking for? In the past week, we added 69 new jobs to CartoonRecruit.com! That’s three more than last week. Also: nice.
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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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