In just its second year in operation, Mighty Nice is making headway as an animation studio that delivers the goods. This year it emerged as the 2009 Hotshop Animation category winner, as CREATIVE reports.

Admittedly, last year started slowly for the new Sydney-based animation company Mighty Nice, which was busy finding its feet locally. The global financial crisis and the studio’s lack of local clients saw the team with some time on their hands.

But those long studio nights paid off, and it wasn’t long before Mighty Nice picked up the pace, rolling through the rest of the year at break-neck pace.

Co-founded by Nexus Productions in London and Darren Price, the company’s one-time head of 3D, the company works with illustrators, CG and traditional animators, designers and photographers.

Price brings with him a wealth of animation experience and his collaborations with directors Smith and Foulkes include Coke's ‘Video Game’, the 2005 D&AD Black Pencil winner ‘Grrr’ for Honda and Motorola's ‘Grand Classics’.

The same team at Nexus also created the title sequences for films such as Thunderbirds, Lemony Snicket and alternative titles for The Pink Panther.

In 2009, Mighty Nice launched SBS2 with a live-action, stop-frame spectacle. Its work for SBS, ident 'African Song', went on to win a Silver Promax for Best 2D Animation Design. The studio also completed type animation for a cinema spot for the Melbourne Writer’s Festival.

JWT Melbourne executive creative director Richard Muntz said he had a fantastic experience working alongside the animators on the festival job.

“With a complex script and very short time-frame, the team at Mighty Nice showed great creativity and brilliance to bring our script to life with a lot of passion, enthusiasm and commitment to the work,” Muntz said.

The company worked alongside global agencies including Wieden & Kennedy Portland (on ‘Avatar’ Coca-Cola), and Ogilvy Dublin, for client Lucozade.

While the team took a breather after working solidly with local agencies US Sydney on campaigns for Rabobank and SBS, along with Publicis Mojo on readyrooms.com, it was announced that a film the team worked on, This Way Up, was nominated at the Oscars for Best Short Film.

The studio’s first short film, Potapych: The Bear Who Loved Vodka, has also recently won a BAFTA for Best Animation.

This year’s Hotshop judges confirmed Mighty Nice’s ability to impress, with comments including “great design and animation”, and “the studio is taking chances and using animation for all of its qualities”.

On the studio website, Price writes: ‘I reckon that animation is like beer ... or sunshine. With enough of it, everything starts to look good. Technically brilliant, strong in narrative, and beautiful to watch – its similarities to beer quickly end, but animation does add charm, wit and sophistication to any project.”

FINALISTS:

Sixty40

XYZ Studios