British animation industry booms

Calamity Island. Shipwrecks... and penguins

According to an article in today's Guardian, the British cartooning industry is booming as never before, thanks in large part to the tax credits put in place by Chancellor George Osbourne in April 2013. CBeebies, the UK's most popular broadcaster of animated children's content, is apparently doubling its output, and it is largely local talent which will reap the rewards of this new boom in UK cartoon spending.

Life After Pi - the sad end of R&H

In this excellent 30 minute documentary, the film-makers explore the sad end of Rythm and Hues, one of the world's finest visual effects houses, pioneers in photo realistic character animation. The film explores how R&H strove to be the best in the world, but also what was the financial cost of that search for excellence.

The chief villain of the film is the film subsidies coming from countries like Canada and the UK, where the Government offers tax rebates to create financial incentives for work to be done at home, stimulating domestic creative industries. What this leads to, of course, is a competitive auction for visual effects work, with artists acting as "pixel gypsies", following the studios to far-away cities in search of work, as changing tax subsidies send work to different countries.

Tax Breaks for UK Animation

Wallace and Gromit would be proud. Copyright Aardman Animation

Chancellor George Osbourne's budget speech yesterday may not have inspired many to believe in Britain's general economic recovery, but it surely gladdened the hearts of animators across the land that his government is committed to some serious tax breaks for the animation and visual effects industry in the UK.