Gordon Stanfield Animation (GSA)
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Gordon Stanfield Animation (GSA) is an historic animation service company based in Vancouver, British Columbia with over 20 years of development, pre-production and production experience. GSA was the first sub-contract animation studio in North America to provide major services on USA Network television shows.
[edit] History
GSA started in 1984 in Toronto as a Service Company for animation production on US Network TV shows. In 1984 the company (Then Gordon Stanfield and wife Janice) were hired by Gaumont, this historic Film Company based in Paris. The task was to perform animation services on the, 'Asterix vs Caesar'.
| Gordon Stanfield Animation Ltd. | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Owned by Gordon Stanfield (51%) Private Group (49%) |
| Founded | December 3, 1987 |
| Headquarters | Vancouver, B.C., CDN (GSA Media: Vancouver, B.C., CDN) |
| Key people | Gordon Stanfield (Head Creative and President) |
| Industry | Motion pictures |
| Products | Motion pictures Television programs |
| Employees | 9 (as of 2004) [1] |
| Website | http://www.pristineentertainment.com/, |
While In Paris Gordon worked as animator and designer. In 1985 after the films tremendous success in France and Europe, Gordon Stanfield was hired to direct animation for the LucasFilm series, 'Droids' already in production in Korea by Nelvana/LucasFilm. With the Droids series completed, Gordon Stanfield relocated home to Vancouver and at the end of 1985 began work on a sub-contract from Ross Bagdasarian, Producer of the Chimpmunk series.
Later in 1985 Gordon Stanfield began Unit Producing on the Care Bears series for Nelvana/ ABC and the Vancouver unit, formed by Stanfield storyboarded and performed the layouts for the first Canadian TV show, 'Grumpy's Three Wishes' to hit number one in the USA TV market. With the success of the 'Care Bears' and dozens of artists now employed and broght to BC by GSA, Nevana offered GSA many new contracts including, 'Babar' (Series and Movie), Beetlejuice (Fox), Jonny Quest (Hanna Barbera).
In 1987 work began on a sub-contract to animate; 'Strawberry Fields', the first CGI assisted animation feature film production. The film was never completed, but managed to start GSA preparing for the digital future. Also in 1987, Sefel Pictures hired GSA to co-ordinate creative matters Hungary and Poland on several European feature films it had in development in the soviet block countries. In 1988 GSA began work on the Storybook Billygoats and the first special, 'A Klondike Christmas'.
The show was picked up for development by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 'CBC' and a script was produced. The show was sold to Dr. Charles Allard and his television station ITV in Edmonton in 1989 and 'A Klondike Christmas' went into production. Later that year the show won a Golden Apple Award in the USA and went on to become a Canadian Christmas Classic, airing on ITV, Family Channel, CBC and Teletoon. In 1991 Distributor, Paragon International offered an advance for more episodes based on the characters and the show was also supported by ITV/WIC for broadcast and production began on 'The Ice Princess', 'Peeny The Clown' and 'Billygoat Bluegrass'.
GSA added a few more clients and serviced more shows such as 'Rescue Ranger'/Disney, 'The Simpsons'Fox, 'Taz Mania'/Warner Bros. and 'Bunch of Munsch'/Cinar. IN 1994 GSA went digital providing digital services to productions such as,'Katie and Orbie'. Combining its new digital prodcution with traditional GSA began work on a pilot for Kleo The Misfit Unicorn. In 1995 The a series of 26 episodes was pre-licensed by GSA to Leo Kirsch's TaurusFilm and later to WIC/Family Channel and in 1996 the series went into prodcution.
Late 1998 the series Kleo The Misfit Unicorn was delivered and also licensed to Radio Canada, Discovery Latin America and FOX France.
During 2000-2004, GSA purchased back its distribution rights to its proprietary productions and assigned all rights to the newly formed Pristine Entertainment http://www.pristineentertainment.com . Since 2004 GSA has continued to providing services to animation productions.
[edit] Sources
http://imdb.com/name/nm0822143/ http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JSF/is_43_12/ai_109568318
