Cinesite Studios Vancouver (formerly Nitrogen Studios Canada, Inc.) is a CGI animation production company located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 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, however some footage of their animation was still used until the eighteenth series, such as the intro, credits, and the roll call. It is run by husband and wife team, Greg Tiernan and Nicole Stinn. Nicole is President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and Greg is the Chief Creative Officer (CCO).
Nitrogen Studios was purchased by Cinesite Studios in March 2017.
The studio also had several models originally used to film the series before the production was converted to CGI, but most of them were later moved to the Hara Model Railway Museum in Japan after the series moved to Arc Productions (later known as Jam Filled Toronto).
Staff
Greg Tiernan directed the series while Nicole Stinn produced the series. Arlyn Bantog was the production manager and Kevin Pavlovic was the editor. Ellery Van Dooyeweert was the assistant editor.
Boris Andreev was the art director from 2008 to 2010.
Other Work
They provided animation for the films, "Happily N'Ever After", "Sausage Party", "The Addams Family" and "Arkie". They also worked on the television series' "Dan Vs." and "Trollhunters".
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, purporting to be animators who worked on the film in question, made claims including that Nitrogen forced them to work overtime for free and that some employees were threatened with termination (meaning fired).
One poster stated that Tiernan had developed a reputation for "disturbing behaviour 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
- Thomas (content)
- Edward (smiling)
- Henry (sad)
- Gordon (concerned)
- James
- Percy (happy)
- Toby (scared)
- Duck (happy)
- Oliver (content)
- Emily (content or smiling)
- Murdoch
- Spencer (smug)
- Molly (happy)
- Stanley (shocked)
- Salty (happy)
- 'Arry and Bert (smirking and cross)
- Rheneas (laughing)
- Rusty (laughing)
- Annie and Clarabel (happy)
- Henrietta
- Toad
- Rocky (happy)
- A mail van
- A fuel tanker
- A green express coach
- A red express coach
- One of Emily's coaches
- Harold
- Sir Topham Hatt's Car
- Cranky (smiling or grumpy)
- Sir Topham Hatt (large scale model)
- Maithwaite
- Kellsthorpe Road signal box
- A cattle truck (Märklin and Tenmille)
