The latest addition to Vancouver, Canada’s busy animation scene is Atomic Cartoons Inc., a collaboration of four principals including Rob Davies (who was nominated for a 1999 Emmy for his directing work on Steven Spielberg Presents: Pinky, Elmyra and the Brain), Trevor Bentley, Olaf Miller and Mauro Casalese.

Casalese is a former Ren and Stimpy animator and Universal Cartoons director, and Miller has worked on projects including Sony’s Little Witch, Nickelodeon’s CatDog and Nelvana’s Ned’s Newt at Vancouver’s Studio B Productions.

According to Davies, Atomic Cartoons will specialize in animation preproduction-storyboards and the design of backgrounds, props and characters. Miller says the goal of the shop is to move into the proprietary production arena, developing shows for other studios, as well as developing its own concepts.

Founded in March, Atomic Cartoons is presently under contract with Korea-based Sunwoo Entertainment to design 26 half-hour episodes of Milo’s Great Adventure, a story about a bug that protects its realm from an evil empire. The company is also involved in the design of Ed, Edd n Eddy for Vancouver-based AKA Cartoon, as well as doing layout work on a new experimental shorts program from Film Roman called Capbusters. Atomic recently undertook some storyboard work for New York’s Stretch Films series Courage the Cowardly Dog.