Studio Tour: Behind-the-scenes at Atomic Cartoons

On our livestreams, Toon Boom Animation hosts monthly virtual studio tours with production crews that make exceptional use of Harmony and Storyboard Pro. These studio tours are intended to give industry artists a closer look at the work and culture inside a variety of studios producing 2D animation. 

Founded in 1999, Atomic Cartoons is an artist-driven animation studio with locations in Vancouver, Ottawa and Los Angeles. The studio’s work spans writing, production, animation and post-production on a wide variety of 2D and 3D projects. Notable productions include The Last Kids on Earth, Pinecone & Pony, and Night at the Museum: Kahmunrah Rises Again.

Atomic Cartoons' Nadine Westerbarkey (studio creative director), Carl Upsdell (head of 2D animation), and Chelsea Ker (supervising director)  joined us to discuss their work at the studio. This article is an excerpt from our livestream conversation, hosted last year on Twitch. 

Trailer for Young Love, produced by Atomic Cartoons.

What are your roles at Atomic Cartoons and what does a typical day in your role look like? 

Nadine: My role at Atomic Cartoons is studio creative director, which is a role that does not say much about what a person really does. I would say the majority of my focus is on supporting our directors and art directors. 

My day can involve anything and everything. I usually start quite early, so I try to do either art or any kind of mood boards early in the morning. Then going into meetings and having a lot of one-on-one conversations. In the evenings I spend a lot of my time reviewing what our teams are doing. It's always very inspiring to see the work. 

Chelsea: I'm the supervising director at Atomic Cartoons. My days are meetings. It's back-to-back meetings, basically. I even just came from an audio recording right before this.

I'm reviewing. I'm in an edit session. I'm in an audio recording looking at the latest animation. Every day I have to look at my calendar ahead [of time], like, “What am I doing today?” Because it keeps changing. 

Carl: I'm currently in a technical director role. I'm making sure that, as designs come through, it's achievable by the team. And making notes for design changes and moving into builds. I’m also looking at scene setup and asset tagging and just making sure that the scenes themselves are set up in a way so that can achieve what we need. 

But on a creative level, I'm also helping to find those final look targets. A lot of times there's an extra step beyond what's in the initial design for lighting, final staging, camera moves, and all those other filmmaking techniques that we use. 

How would you describe Atomic Cartoons and the type of animation that your studio specializes in? 

Nadine: I would say, from a studio side, it's culturally a very collaborative place. It's a studio that really fosters mentorship and collaboration. 

The type of work that we do is incredibly diverse. We do 2D and 3D animation, and we work in different formats. We do feature-length format, we do series format, we do shorts at times as well. And [for audience], anything that goes from preschool to adult. 

I've heard of Atomic being described as an “artist-driven studio.” What does that mean? 

Nadine: First of all, it really does mean that the studio was founded by a group of creatives. And everything that the studio does, from the leadership side to production, is always fostering the creative as best as possible. 

We have a lot of people who start in one department and then want to explore something else. We always try and provide mentorship opportunities so a person can do that switch. A lot of studios are potentially more restricted.

How would you describe your journey to your current role at Atomic Cartoons? 

Carl: The road to where I am now has taken some twists and turns, but you can kind of see how each role that I've had is a building block to the next. 

Coming out of school, I jumped in with two feet.I was an assistant animator. I got used to working at a very fast pace in TV animation. From there, I did some digital compositing and then digital ink & paint. 

Then I moved into animating and eventually supervising and directing. Being in each one of those roles was necessary to have a better understanding of what's required for the next role. I've been fortunate in my career to be within the studio and mentored along the way. Nadine is one of those people who's been an amazing mentor to me.

Chelsea: I was a Vancouverite and graduated in 2010, and then did a little bit of freelance and ended up at Atomic Cartoons in 2011 with what I call my ‘peeling potatoes’ job. It was my job to take a digital comic book page into Photoshop, use the lasso tool, remove the character from the background, and then relabel it. It got me in the door, and I haven't left since. 

I've tried on a bunch of different hats from there, I primarily did a lot of background art, but tried a little bit of compositing, a little bit of animation, and a little bit of design. I did storyboard supervising, then storyboard directing, and now I'm the supervising director. 

There's no way I could do this job now if I hadn't seen all these different departments, and seen what needs to function in those.

Nadine: I started in the 90s, in Germany. I was very passionate about animation. At that point in time, education within Europe was a bit trickier for animation, so I started as an intern on a feature film. And was just absolutely curious, and maybe annoying, towards a lot of people. 

I was lucky to basically start in in-betweens, and then going into clean-up, layouts, and animation after that. That was where I wanted to be. Then I was very fortunate to get an opportunity to work in Australia with Disney’s studio there for a few years. There I transitioned into supervising and more leadership roles. But I always wanted to come to Canada. I got a chance to move to Toronto first, working with Yowza. 

I would say the best part of my career was finding Atomic Cartoons. It was a studio that didn't just offer projects that excited me; the team was amazing. I started as animation director at Atomic together with Carl, progressed into the head of 2D and then into my current role, where I get a chance to actually expand my knowledge further out towards 3D.

Did you find that working in different animation markets was beneficial? Was it helpful seeing very different production pipelines? 

Nadine: One hundred percent. I'm very, very thankful for those experiences, because it is actually quite different to work in Europe in comparison to working in North America. 

The size of studios was very different at the time, and over there I had the chance to jump into different departments. Understanding what other departments do and need is so important for my current role. 

There’s a question in the chat that I'd like to raise. When developing your career, is it more beneficial to get experience from multiple studios or to focus on one specific studio and work your way up? 

Nadine: It’s a very interesting question. I would say there is no set rule. I joined many studios, and that came more from finding available work and projects I was interested in. Within that transition, I sometimes went from artist to leadership, or I would go back into an artist role. And then again maybe progress forward. I like those changes. 

Chelsea: I feel like I'm a unique case for animation. I have been at the studio for a really long time. It just doesn't really happen often because the work is so contract-based. It just happens that a contract will come up, and then a new show will show up. Atomic Cartoons will offer me it, and I'll say, “Yeah, okay, that sounds good.”

I had the opportunity to change positions at Atomic as well. If I was just stuck in one lane, maybe I would have jumped ship and tried different studios. I don't know if there is one way of doing it. This worked for me, but I wouldn't say it's the only way. 

Do you have advice for artists and animators interested in sending portfolios to studios like Atomic Cartoons? 

Nadine Westerbarkey: Absolutely. Reach out beforehand. Look us up on LinkedIn. Currently, I connect with quite a few people. We will find somebody who is an expert in the field that you are interested in, and then can help guide portfolios a little bit more or highlight studios that are out there and are currently looking.

And always send in an application. Even if you're entering an application for general interest, we will always keep the applications. Whenever there's an opening, we'll revisit all of the applications we have. So there is no lost application ever, even if you might not receive an immediate answer where maybe that team isn't looking for somebody. 

Chelsea: For storyboards, I'm a big believer in matching the artists to the show. And we have so many different shows. So even when I'm looking at portfolios, I'm thinking, “Oh, these boards are great but they're so action-oriented. You know what? I'm going to message another team that's looking for board artists that are action.”

But in terms of making the portfolio, I would say if you want to go into action boards, or if you want to go into comedy boards, tailor your portfolio to that. Because if you're passionate about it, then we want you on that team. 

Carl: For technical director roles, having a pretty strong understanding of what's required for design, for build, for animation, into effects, final comp and final delivery has helped me quite a bit. It’s understanding where that balance is between departments. 

I would say another thing supporting that is soft skills. Artists tend to suffer in silence, and it's sometimes hard to pinpoint what they need or where they need assistance. I think it’s something that can be very helpful in those leadership roles. 

When applying for an animation position at a studio like Atomic, how much of a challenge is it if an applicant doesn’t use the tool that the studio primarily uses? Maybe someone coming from a Flash background joining a Harmony production.

Nadine: I love learning new tools, so I would always highly recommend just digging in and playing with a tool that you know is out there and is used by a studio. 

It is actually very helpful to see something in your portfolio that was done with a build. From traditional animation towards puppet-based animation, there is a little bit of a learning curve. I went through it myself. I think the transition for somebody who's familiar with Flash to Harmony is more straightforward. 

We do have mentorship in place where we’ve successfully transitioned a lot of artists with Flash backgrounds into Harmony. Is it beneficial to get familiar with a tool before you start? For sure. It's something I can always recommend.

Carl: The inside scoop is that [technical directors] are also using Toon Boom’s references and resources. So we're also going on to the website and finding the most recent release notes on the latest version of Harmony, figuring out what the new modules can do. Sometimes we're even just dropping them into shots and testing them, just to see what's new out there or what's fun and exciting. 

And there's quite a bit. The latest Harmony releases have added quite a few weighted deformers as well as ways to stack deformers, which opens up brand new possibilities. I would say if you're looking at a technical role, maybe on the comp side, get creative. Try some of the new tools out there and maybe show us a new trick or two.

Chelsea: I had to learn Storyboard Pro when I first started. I think as long as you're willing to learn to use the program, figuring out the timeline, those are the basics. Once you have that, then you can build on top of that. There's a lot to it that even I'm still discovering. 

Original livestream broadcast with Atomic Cartoons' Nadine Westerbarkey, Carl Upsdell and Chelsea Ker.

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• Want to see more from Atomic Cartoons? Visit the studio's website and careers page, and also be sure to follow Nadine Westerbarkey, Carl Upsdell, and Chelsea Kerr.
• Interested in learning how to use Toon Boom Harmony? Artists can download a 21-day trial and find instructor-led online training courses for a variety of studio roles.