Tangent Animation

Tangent Animation was a Canadian computer-animation and visual-effects production company founded in 2014. Working across animated features and episodic television, it provided full-service CG production, from pre-production through final delivery. Its capabilities included character modeling and rigging, environment art, surfacing, look development, lighting, rendering and compositing, supported by production engineering and asset-management integration.

The studio operated in Toronto and Winnipeg, bringing together complementary production teams for international co-productions and streaming projects. Its work combined animation production with the development of technical infrastructure suited to large CG projects.

Feature and streaming production

Tangent made its feature debut with Ozzy in 2016, co-producing the animated dog adventure with Spain’s Arcadia Motion Pictures and Capitán Araña. It subsequently co-produced Next Gen, the 2018 Netflix animated feature, with China’s Baozou. These productions established an international collaboration model connecting its Canadian production facilities with overseas partners.

The studio also completed the animation production for Jorge R. Gutiérrez’s Netflix limited series Maya and the Three. Before its closure, Tangent undertook initial animation production on The Monkey King and pre-production work on High in the Clouds. Those engagements should be understood in their historical context: The Monkey King was subsequently completed by Reel FX, while Tangent’s involvement in High in the Clouds ended with the cancellation of its contract.

Production approach and closure

A defining feature of Tangent’s production approach was its extensive use of Blender and the Cycles rendering engine. The studio built an enterprise production pipeline largely around open-source software, combining those tools with cloud rendering and virtual-workstation infrastructure to support demanding feature-animation workloads.

Tangent shut down production across both facilities in August 2021 following the termination of major Netflix feature contracts. The closure ended the studio’s animation operations, and the company remained defunct as of November 2026.