is a boutique Canadian animation studio founded in 2004 by animation veteran Ricardo Curtis and finance expert Wes Lui. The studio was originally founded as just a pre-production studio, specializing in designing and storyboarding of films, TV series and commercials. Today, they are a full service production house with capabilities ranging from story and design to screen-ready animation for entertainment, print and commercial projects. The company has a staff of over 65 artists. They have also worked with several companies such as Disney, Fox, Blue Sky Studios, DreamWorks, Laika, Warner Bros., Nelvana, Universal, Pixar, Reel FX Creative Studios, Paramount, Sony Pictures Animation, WildBrain, HIT Entertainment, Teletoon and Nickelodeon. The studio uses Toon Boom Storyboard Pro to create storyboards for several projects.In 2008, the company acquired Red Rover Studios, an accomplished full-service animation studio, after its well-loved founder, Andy Knight (creator of Ned's Newt, Pig City, Get Ed, and Bolts & Blip), passed away. The acquisition was to add the studio to the company's list of clients, to facilitate the development of their pipeline and to accommodate the growth of their commercial business.
In 2014, House of Cool made a splash in mobile technology with the launch of Get Massively, a platform that powers interactive stories on chat for millions of users.
In 2023, the company was purchased by WildBrain.
They also have a blog, which you can visit here (old one here).
Works by House of Cool include:
NOTE: Works by Red Rover Studios do not belong here; see this page for their filmography.- The Incredibles comics for Dark Horse Comics (2004)
- Horton Hears a Who! (2008) (film) - Including the Animesque ninja sequence, in particular.
- Ollie & the Baked Halibut (2009) (short) - Originally meant as a pitch for a feature film called Ollie the Otter.
- Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009) (film)
- 9 (2009) (film)
- Ninjamaica (2009) (series)
- Despicable Me (2010) (film)
- Jonah Hex (2010) (film)
- The LeBrons (2011) (series) (Season 1)
- Rio (2011) (film)
- Hugo (2011) (film)
- Ice Age: A Mammoth Christtmas (2011) (short)
- Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) (film)
- Gravity Falls (2012) (TV series, early development)
- Escape from Planet Earth (2013) (film)
- Epic (2013) (film)
- Free Birds (2013) (film)
- The Nut Job (2014) (film)
- Rio 2 (2014) (film)
- The Book of Life (2014) (film)
- The Peanuts Movie (2015) (film)
- DreamWorks Dragons (2015) (TV series)
- Ice Age: The Great Egg-Scapade (2016) (short)
- Nova Seed (2016) (film)
- The Angry Birds Movie (2016) (film)
- Ice Age: Collision Course (2016) (film)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Pizza Friday! (2016) (short)
- Trollhunters (2016) (TV series, storyboards only)
- Rock Dog (2016) (film)
- The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature (2017) (film)
- Ferdinand (2017) (film)
- 3Below (2018) (TV series, storyboards only)
- The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019) (film)
- Spies in Disguise (2019) (film)
- He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2021) (TV series)
Tropes associated with House of Cool and its works
- All-CGI Cartoon: Horton Hears a Who, Ollie & the Baked Halibut/Ollie the Otter, Despicable Me, Rio, and most of their Red Rover productions.
- Animation Bump: Really, they do a fantastic job on their storyboards, which result in very smooth animation.
- Animesque: Some of their 2D animated scenes may result in this, including the ninja scene in Horton Hears a Who and the dog chase scene in the first The LeBrons episode. Well, minus looking like anime character designs.
- Not to mention, the shading they added on their character designs makes it look even more like anime.
- Disney School of Acting and Mime: A storyboarding example, though.
- Nice Guys: Ricardo, Wes and the rest of the crew.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Some of their character designs look either geometric, cartoony or ultra stylized, as opposed to the rest of their character designs.
- Shout-Out: Most of their character designs look like they took inspiration from either The Iron Giant or Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights. This is because most of the people who worked for the studio also worked on both of these films, as well as The Incredibles.
