Gordon Stanfield Animation
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Owned by Gordon Stanfield (51%) Private group (49%) | |
| Industry | Motion pictures |
| Founded | December 3, 1987 |
| Headquarters |
Vancouver, B.C., Canada (GSA Media: Vancouver, B.C., Canada) |
Key people | Gordon Stanfield (creative head and president) |
| Products |
Motion pictures Television programs |
Number of employees | 9 (as of 2004) |
| Website | http://www.pristineentertainment.com/ |
Gordon Stanfield Animation (GSA) is an 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.
History
GSA began in 1984 in Toronto as a service company for animation production on US network TV shows. In 1984 the company (then Gordon Stanfield and his wife Janice) were hired by Gaumont, the film company based in Paris. Their task was to provide animation services on Asterix vs Caesar. While in Paris, Gordon worked as an animator and designer. In 1985 (after the film's success in Europe), Stanfield was hired to direct animation for the LucasFilm series Droids (already in production in Korea by Nelvana/LucasFilm). With the Droids series completed, Stanfield relocated to Vancouver and at the end of 1985 began work on a sub-contract from Ross Bagdasarian, Jr., producer of the Alvin and the Chimpmunks series.
Later in 1985, Stanfield began unit production on the Care Bears series for Nelvana/ABC. The Vancouver unit (formed by Stanfield) performed storyboarding and layout for the first Canadian TV program, Grumpy's Three Wishes, to reach number one in the US TV market. With the success of Care Bears and dozens of artists employed and brought to BC by GSA, Nevana offered GSA contracts including Babar (series and film), Beetlejuice (Fox) and Jonny Quest (Hanna-Barbera).
In 1987 work began on a sub-contract to animate Strawberry Fields (the first CGI-assisted animated feature-film production). Although the film was never completed, it began GSA's preparation for the digital future. Also that year, Sefel Pictures hired GSA to coordinate creative affairs in Hungary and Poland on several European feature films it had in development in Soviet-bloc countries. In 1988, GSA began work on the Storybook Billygoats and the first special, A Klondike Christmas. The program was picked up for development by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and a script was produced. It was sold to 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 US and went on to become a Canadian Christmas staple, airing on ITV, the Family Channel, CBC and Teletoon. In 1991, distributor Paragon International offered an advance for more episodes based on the characters; the program was also supported by ITV/WIC for broadcast, and production began on The Ice Princess, Peeny The Clown and Billygoat Bluegrass.
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GSA added clients and serviced more programs, such as Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (Disney), The Simpsons (Fox), Taz-Mania (Warner Bros.) and Bunch of Munsch (Cinar). Katie and Orbie was the first series for which GSA provided digital production services (in 1994).
The company began work on a pilot for Kleo The Misfit Unicorn, combining its digital and traditional work. The program was pre-licensed to Leo Kirsch's TaurusFilm and (later) to WIC/Family Channel in 1995; in 1996, the 26-episode series went into production. The show was delivered in 1998 and licensed to Radio Canada, Discovery Latin America and FOX France.
From 2000–2004, GSA purchased back the distribution rights to its proprietary productions and assigned all rights to the newly formed Pristine Entertainment. Since 2004, GSA has continued providing services to animation productions.
