Life in Cartoon Motion

WHEN ASKED WHY he moved back to Montreal after years of working in places like New York, Los Angeles and Spain, Sébastien Bruneau offers an unlikely answer: Winter. “It might seem strange, but it’s like the entire city is bustling from the inside during the cold months,” he says. “From music to painting, from film to theatre, we stay warm and focus on our creative work—and that’s just part of the culture.”

Bruneau, who has worked as an animator with major studios like Sony Pictures, Blue Sky Studios and DreamWorks and on feature films like Hotel Transylvania and Captain Underpants, returned to Montreal six years ago, curious to see for himself how the creative industry had grown since he left the city. When he learned that a renowned animation studio from Dallas was opening an outpost in his hometown, Bruneau couldn’t pass up a chance to join the team, and he’s now heading the animation department.

Reel FX was established 25 years ago with the aim of recruiting the most talented artists in the business to bring cutting-edge technology to the media industry. The firm was known as a pioneer in the use of digital-effects tools among Texas’s advertising and marketing community, and it has retained a reputation for innovation since delving into the entertainment industry in the early 2000s. Now, Reel FX wants to redefine storytelling through the use of augmented and virtual reality.

“Our primary vision has always been to assemble amazing, creative people and offer them a physical and cultural environment where they can thrive and dedicate themselves to their craft,” explains Reel FX’s CEO, Steve O’Brien. “We have a strong desire to create stuff that’s distinct in the marketplace, even if that means doing everything from scratch.” Jorge R. Gutiérrez’s Book of Life, a 2014 movie co-produced by Guillermo del Toro and featuring Channing Tatum and Ice Cube, is a perfect example of that approach, employing vivid CGI to tell a story of death and grief—subjects rarely touched upon in animated features for mainstream audiences.

Turns out the qualities that made Reel FX famous—a taste for the quirky and the unconventional, a sense that pushing boundaries can only lead to more possibilities—are precisely the ones that Montreal offered when the company was looking to expand beyond the United States. Add to this the right economic incentives and an attractive talent pool from the video game, television and film industries and voilà—the choice seemed obvious.

For O’Brien, it was easy to pick Allied Properties REIT’s Nordelec building, nestled among the vibrant neighbourhoods of Griffintown and Pointe-Saint-Charles and the Lachine Canal. From bicycle stations and indoor bike parking to gym amenities, shops and restaurants, Nordelec and its surroundings are, he says, a “self-contained ecosystem” that perfectly reflects Montreal’s cultural diversity and history, as well as Reel FX’s own aspirations. The company plans to hire several hundred more employees in the coming years. “Montreal is the birthplace of a whole new crop of emerging artists,” Bruneau says. “They come from all over the world, and they find here an incubator that allows them to explore freely, to meet and inspire each other. And it’s infectious.”

BY DAVIEL LAZURE VIEIRA

PHOTOS BY RICHMOND LAM