Thomas the Tank Engine Wikia
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Nitrogen Studios Canada, Inc. was a CGI animation production company located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was ran by husband and wife team, Greg Tiernan and Nicole Stinn. Nicole was President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and Greg was the Chief Creative Officer (CCO). They provided over 1,000 minutes from the twelfth series and then animated all Thomas & Friends specials and series until the sixteenth series in 2012, despite some footage of their animation being used until the eighteenth series, such as the intro, credits, and the Roll Call.

The studio also had several models originally used to film the series before the production was converted to CGI, that were used as references for many CGI renders. Eventually, most of the models were later moved to the Hara Model Railway Museum in Japan or back to Mattel in storage after the franchise transferred to Arc Productions, later known as Jam Filled Toronto.

Nitrogen Studios was purchased by Cinesite Group in March 2017 and in May 2018 Cinesite Group officially closed Nitrogen Studios and turned it into their Vancouver studio. 

Staff

Other Work

They provided animation for the films, "Happily N'Ever After", "Sausage Party", "The Addams Family", "The Addams Family 2", "Arkie" and the "Roxy Hunter" movies. They also worked on the television series' "Dan Vs." and "Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia".

Controversy

Several days after the release of Sausage Party, allegations of poor treatment of Nitrogen Studios employees surfaced in the comments section of an interview with Greg Tiernan and co-director Conrad Vernon, featured on the website Cartoon Brew.

Various anonymous posters, claiming to be animators who worked on the film in question, made various statements that Nitrogen forced them to work overtime for free and that some employees were threatened with termination.

One poster stated that Tiernan had developed a reputation for "disturbing behavior and abusive management style". Publications such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Film have picked up the story.

Models formerly on display

Notes

  • Nitrogen had a few quirks in their animation duties on the show that were dropped after Arc Productions took over in Series 17.
    • In distance shots of characters laughing, the steam engine characters would occasionally emit clouds of steam whenever they did so.
    • Any time an engine blows their whistle, the whistles would budge up and down, as if the valves were sliding open. Following Series 16, this type of quirk would only show up two more times before the All Engines Go reboot.
    • In numerous episodes, Emily's safety valve would emit steam whenever she moved, acting as a second funnel. This was dropped beginning in the sixteenth series.

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