With the integration in place, AWS has become a valued resource for Atomic Cartoons, especially for 2D work, which the studio plans to render almost entirely on AWS. The studio’s 2D animation is typically done on Windows-based workstations using Toon Boom Harmony, while 3D artists use Autodesk Maya, Foundry’s Katana and Nuke, and SideFX’s Houdini on Linux-based workstations. Now we’re working on expanding company wide.”Įlavia chose Vancouver as the testbed due to its higher render needs and because its artists create 2D and 3D animation, while Ottawa and Los Angeles primarily handle 2D work. We started with our largest studio, Vancouver, and they were so accommodating. “Bert and the team at DeadDrop Labs were very helpful in setting us up, and the implementation was seamless. “We use Tractor at all our sites and didn’t want to redo our entire pipeline to access the cloud,” explained Elavia. The setup allowed the studio to leverage Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) without a major overhaul. Looking to get the studio’s cloud implementation up and running as soon as possible, he enlisted solutions integrator DeadDrop Labs to create a custom interface between AWS and Pixar Tractor, which the studio uses for renderfarm management. Regardless of what we need, chances are that AWS will have the instances available because of its high capacity.”Īfter evaluating cloud providers, Elavia opted to move forward with AWS. “AWS provides us the flexibility to spin up in the cloud, use instances, and turn them back down. “If my local vendor doesn’t have nodes when I need them, I’m stuck, and not being able to scale puts our productions at risk,” shared Atomic Cartoons Director of IT Hanoz Elavia. To optimize and embrace the “cloud,” the studio has tapped DeadDrop Labs for custom cloud integration solutions to help scale its pipeline on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Unimaginable advances in cloud-based rendering are turning the tables on the entire production pipeline. But in the wake of old technology comes new.

However, with demand for content booming, the studio’s increased needs often extend beyond the resources of its traditional rendering technology. Since 1999, when the studio was founded, rendering was done using its own co-located infrastructure, scaling up with rented nodes from local vendors during production peaks. Atomic Cartoons brings to life animated tales with creatives scattered across multiple locations, including Vancouver, Ottawa, and Los Angeles.

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