CAT provides support to our students after graduation and through our Student Success Department, we assist them in landing some pretty sweet jobs. With a number of animation studios in Kelowna, many of our animation graduates are able to find employment locally and one such studio is Bardel Entertainment.

Bardel is the studio behind a slew of awesome titles; Rick and Morty, Bob’s Burgers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to name a few, but in this post, we’re going to highlight two more. Recently both 44 Cats and the Netflix title, The Dragon Prince have been in the news receiving a lot of praise.

With Season 3 of The Dragon Prince having just completed, fans are eagerly awaiting the next installment of this well developed, original series. Bardel and CAT animation grads were instrumental in upping the ante for the latest season. Show Co-creator Justin Richmond mentioned Bardel in a recent interview with CBR.com; “… Bardel Entertainment, who’s our co-production partner and helped us make the show, went crazy and were like, “What if we got all this awesome new software to render new armies?” and all this huge stuff that we got to do. So we got to tell it in a way that was even more exciting than I think I was even anticipating when we started writing. The team at Bardel really went all in and hired extra people to work with the armies and all that kind of stuff. Even in the when we were doing it, it was like holy crap, this is going to be amazing. And it came out even better! I was really, really excited that we were able to do it the way that we did.”

CAT’s Animation Department Head, Sean Ridgway is thrilled at the success his students have found after grad; “I am extremely proud of and excited for our CAT animation alumni to have contributed to such a well-received and beautiful show”. Notably, alumni that worked on The Dragon Prince include: Chris Butikofer, Cassidy Lieu-Dang, Erica Kim, Braxton McCluskie, Chevon Porsnuk, Disney Beauchamp, Dana Lapointe, Cameron Furgason and Michael Walker.

As if that wasn’t enough amazing news to share, Bardel’s 44 Cats, produced in collaboration with Antoniano Bologna and Rai Ragazzi, has been awarded the Golden Dolphin for Best Animated Series in the overseas category at the Cyber Sousa Competition as part of the 12th edition of Xiamen International Animation Festival, China’s most influential festival for animation and comics! Fans quickly fell in love with the quirky feline characters, promoting a can-do attitude for kids, through a dynamic mix of original songs and comedy.

Again, Sean Ridgway had this to share, “More awards and recognition for our young CAT animation alumni.  So very proud of the work they do”. Alumni who have worked on 44 Cats include: Emily Nobbs, Tyson Haeh, Ammie Lieu-Dang, Justin Miller, Sarah Fletcher, Jett Walts, Tarik McDougall and Erica Kim.

Congratulations to all involved!

And just because we’re feeling pretty proud today, a few more shows and companies CAT animation graduates have worked with include:

• Industrial Light & Magic
• Detective Pikachu
• Lego Spiderman
• Deadpool
• Rick & Morty
• Cirque Du Soleil
• All Hail King Julien
• Beat Bugs
• The Emoji Movie
• The Royal Canadian Mint
• Hot Wheels
• Max & Ruby
• Monster High
• Monsters vs. Aliens
• Mysticons
• Purge 3
• The Adventures of Puss in Boots
• Rocket Monkeys
• The Adams Family
• Gears of War 5
• League of Legends
• The Humanity Bureau
• Mass Effect Andromeda