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Amid the haute couture dresses, borrowed diamonds, red carpet interviews and an air conditioning system that seemed to be on the fritz, the 72nd annual Golden Globe Awards all but confirmed the arrival of animation as a serious cinematic art form.

DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon 2 took home the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film, rising above an unusually competitive field that included Big Hero 6, The Book of Life, The Boxtrolls, and The LEGO Movie.

Making History

The win was the studio’s first-ever in this category after six previous nominations since the Hollywood Foreign Press Association first started giving out animation awards. The Golden Globes have been around since 1944, but the specific category for animated feature films was created only in 2006.

This year’s Golden Globes marked the second consecutive year that a Pixar Animation production was not in the running. Pixar took home the hardware for the first five years of the category’s existence, between 2006 and 2010, when, in order, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up, and Toy Story 3 all topped the podium. Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin broke Pixar’s dominance in 2011 before the studio that Steve Jobs built won for Brave in 2012.

Where’s Pixar?

Pixar has been completely out of the running for the past two years, a result of a significant shift in scheduling for its next two releases. The Good Dinosaur, originally set for release last May, was fundamentally refocused last summer amid major layoffs at Pixar. In an almost unheard-of turn of events for the storied studio, director Bob Peterson was taken off the project, all voice work to-date was re-recorded, and the project’s release date was pushed to November 2015.

Inside Out, which chronicles the story of the emotions who live inside the head of an 11-year-old girl, hits theatres this June. The one-two Pixar punch sets Pixar up for an active awards season in 2016, but for now it’s up to parent company Disney to carry the torch.

A Canadian Connection

How to Train Your Dragon 2 was directed by Quebec-born Dean DeBlois, who told CBC Radio in an interview that he was “genuinely shocked” when the winner was announced.

“Every award pundit had The LEGO Movie winning,” he said.

DeBlois, who also wrote the script, hails from Aylmer, Quebec, and made a name for himself in the 1980s on homegrown Canadian productions including The Racoons, a CBC animation series. He later joined Walt Disney Feature Animation as a storyboard artist, where his credits included Mulan and Lilo & Stitch (2002). He co-wrote and co-directed How to Train Your Dragon in 2010 for DreamWorks before assuming both roles, solo, for the sequel.

Dragon 2’s win marks a vindication of sorts, as the first film lost out to Toy Story 3 in 2011. Doubtless the movie’s box office performance – it’s grossed over $618 million U.S. worldwide so far on a production budget of $145 million – means additions to the already-scheduled third entry to the franchise are all but guaranteed.

And Then There Were 3

After the first film topped the box office, DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg confirmed that the series would include a third entry. DeBlois was named both director and co-executive producer along with Chris Sanders.

The project has had its release date shuffled somewhat since then, however. In 2012, the original target of June 18, 2016 was slightly adjusted to June 17, 2016. Last September, the studio delayed it until June 9, 2017. While no reason for the move was provided at the time, DeBlois called it a normal process, and explained, “It’s just that these movies take three years. I think it was a little ambitious to say 2016. As is normally the case, they kind of throw darts out into the future and wherever they land they call that a release date until we start talking about it in practical terms, and then it’s like, ‘Uh yeah that’s not enough time.’”

Whenever it bows, expect fans to line up at theatres again, and expect it to once again compete for awards season hardware. Dragons, it seems, enjoy the red carpet.

There’s something to be said for the animated classics. For anyone who grew up on Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh, or even Charlie Brown, the animated worlds where these characters lived were more than mere settings for a story. To generations of children, these fictional places were extensions of home, landscapes where they could escape for the afternoon and hang out with characters who weren’t quite adults, and as a result were just young enough, soft enough, and approachable enough to become friends of a sort.

Add Paddington Bear to the list. First seen in Michael Bond’s beloved children’s book, A Bear Called Paddington, in 1958, this unassuming bear with a penchant for getting into hilarious yet ultimately benign trouble has spawned a generation’s worth of adventures. Bond ultimately penned two dozen books, selling 35 million around the world in over 40 languages.

More Than Books

Paddington’s appeal wasn’t limited to the page, either. He has starred in three separate television series spanning four decades: Paddington, the original British series, launched in 1975, and rather uniquely featured stop-motion animation against a simply-drawn backdrop. It was followed in 1989 by Paddington Bear, a distinctly American production from Hanna-Barbera that returned to traditional two-dimensional animation. Finally, Cinar, a Canadian production house, brought The Adventures of Paddington Bear to the small screen in 1997. The final series ended its run in 2002, a full 44 years after the first book was published.

The character was one of the first to embrace the now-commonly accepted strategy of cross-promotion across multiple product lines. Kids who were tucked in to stories from his books could also curl up with an actual stuffed Paddington while wearing themed pyjamas under properly branded posters. I think my older sister may have an ancient, much-dented Paddington Bear lunch pail buried in an old box she liberated from my parents’ basement before they sold the house.

Throwback Bear

If it all seemed to be a softer sell than today’s kid-targeted franchises, that’s because it actually was. Beyond the patently obvious ability to walk, talk and reason, Paddington had no superpowers. He did not fly or run quickly – if at all. He didn’t take on evil villains or initiate massive, screen-filling explosions. He got into the kind of trouble most kids could relate to. And he did so with charm and somewhat stilted, non-threatening grace. He taught them the basic virtues of politeness – his origin story of being found in the middle of bustling London by his eventual-adoptive family, the Browns, with a label around his neck, “Please look after this bear. Thank you.”

Fully 57 years after he first saw the light of literary day, Paddington Bear is back, this time on the big screen. Simply named Paddington, the new movie places a CGI-animated bear in the middle of a live action world. The animation is subtle enough to register the emotive raised eyebrows of this red-hat-wearing, well-meaning bear, and convincing enough to erase any distinctions between the computer-generated animal and his very real surroundings.

Star-Studded Cast

Paddington is voiced by Ben Whishaw, who in another very different acting life plays Q in the current (aka Daniel Craig) series of James Bond movies. Colin Firth was originally set to voice the bear, but he withdrew because he said he didn’t feel his voice sounded right for the role. His departure from the project prompted a midstream reboot akin to Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur. Other voice actors in the film include Imelda Staunton, who plays the benevolent Aunt Lucy, and Michael Gambon (Uncle Pastuzo), who first launch Paddington on his epic journey from his homeland in Peru to London.

Paddington is also surrounded by a who’s who of live-action talent, including Downton Abbey’s lead, Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, and Peter Capaldi. Nicole Kidman plays against type as the  movie’s wicked witch-like nemesis.

Keeping It British

The movie’s release schedule reinforces its very British legacy, and the lengths to which its production team, led by director Paul King and producer David Heyman, went to ensure Paddington properly honored his heritage. Paddington made its global debut in the UK on November 28, 2014, fully six weeks before it hit North American screens, on January 16, 2015. The movie further respected its history by including Paddington author Michael Bond in a small on-camera role.

In an interview with The Telegraph last year, Bond worried that he would somehow fall short of the mark.

“Before, there was a certain amount of trepidation, he said. “I was worrying I’d be lying awake thinking: ‘I’ve let Paddington down.’”

Critics, who have showered the film with praise since it first hit British theatres, confirm that Bond need not have worried. A sequel is already in the planning stages, and Paddington Bear’s almost-six-decade run shows no signs of slowing down. Bond seems incapable of letting his beloved bear down, and generations of children and no-longer-children are the better for it.

It’s the end of an era for the animators who brought Shrek to life.

DreamWorks Animation (DWA) this week announced plans to close its PDI studio by the end of the year as part of a cost-saving campaign that will save $30 million this year and $60 million by 2017. The budget-cutting will also see DreamWorks slash 500 jobs, or 18% of its current workforce.

PDI, which was founded in 1980 as the Pacific Data Images visual effects studio, quickly made a name for itself as a leading-edge producer of computer-generated imagery at a time when the industry was still figuring out what CGI was and how it could be used to advance the filmmaking state-of-the-art.

Early Wins in TV

The company, which was founded by Carl Rosendahl, set the tone for CGI producers by developing its own 3D software and getting major networks – including ABC, CBS, NBC, HBO and MTV – to outsource the production of broadcast graphics to the fledgling company. It differentiated itself from competing CGI houses by eschewing expensive mainframes and supercomputers and instead using cheaper, commodity hardware. The strategy paid off by keeping overhead low and giving animators the flexibility to tweak the environment as they saw fit. It was a model later adopted by other animation houses like Pixar.

PDI’s work on The Last Halloween television special in 1991 netted an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Special Visual Effects, and put the company on Hollywood producers’ radar just as new computer technologies were beginning to drive CGI into the filmmaking mainstream. Followup CGI partnerships with Warner Brothers (Daffy Duck) and Fox (an animated Homer and Bart in 1995’s Simpsons Halloween episode) vaulted PDI squarely into the big leagues, and by 1995 DreamWorks SKG signed a deal with PDI to produce Antz, its first feature-length computer-animated film.

Making Its Movie Mark

In 1996, DreamWorks bought a 40% stake in PDI. Antz hit theatres in 1998, and two years later, DreamWorks bought out the rest of the company and renamed it PDI/DreamWorks. By then the team was deep into production of Shrek, which made its debut in 2001. It also contributed groundbreaking CGI work in Terminator 2 and Batman Forever.

While it contributed to both movies in the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, it was not the lead production unit for either. How to Train Your Dragon 2 recently won top animation honors at the Golden Globe Awards, and was nominated in the animation category for next month’s Oscars.

PDI/DreamWorks currently employs about 450 people, and is scheduled to go dark by the end of this year. While parent company DreamWorks has been mum about specific numbers, it has confirmed that some of them will be able to transfer to jobs at the DreamWorks studio in Glendale, California.

A Stretch Too Far

In announcing the restructuring, DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said the parent company simply tried to do too much.

“Making three films a year was too ambitious,” he told analysts as he announced the cutbacks. “I don’t think we ever attained the creative capacity to maintain the highest level of quality while we went for the quantity. We achieved the production capacity but not the creative capacity to do it. We have fallen short on the creative side of it.”

DWA has reduced its film pipeline to two full-length animation movies per year – one original and one sequel – and is taking steps to cap the budgets for each project from the $145 million to $150 million of recent projects to $120 million.

String of Failures

PDI’s fate was sealed after its two most recent projects, Mr. Peabody & Sherman and Penguins of Madagascar, tanked at the box office. Coupled with tepid audience response to earlier projects like Turbo and Rise of the Guardians, PDI-related films were responsible for $290 million in writedowns.

Katzenberg tried to put a positive spin on the shrunken animation house’s future prospects.

“The No. 1 priority for DreamWorks Animation’s core film business is to deliver consistent creative and financial success,” he said. “I am confident that this strategic plan will deliver great films, better box office results and growing profitability across our complementary businesses.”

Every industry has its mega-trade show. In the electronics space, it’s the Consumer Electronics Show. The National Association of Broadcasters has its NAB Show. The car industry’s top draw is Detroit’s North American International Auto Show. The music sector – and by extension the voice industry – is no different, and the just-completed Winter NAMM Show once again set the tone for professionals looking to raise their game and gain a competitive edge.

The numbers were huge. Almost 100,000 attendees came to Anaheim, California to see approximately 1,600 companies display and demonstrate over 5,000 brands of industry-related products and services, including musical instruments, audio equipment, and even apps. The Winter NAMM Show is the world’s largest trade-only event for music products vendors, and is the second-largest music products show in the world, trailing only Musikmesse Frankfurt. A smaller show, known as Summer NAMM, is held each year in Nashville, Tennessee. As impressive as all this sounds, it’s the bottom-line number that puts it all into perspective: In 2013, members of the National Association of Music Merchants earned a total of $6.8 billion in the U.S.

Selected Attendees Only

The Winter NAMM Show’s numbers are even more impressive considering who is and is not  allowed on the show floor. Members of the public are not permitted to attend: Instead, only employees and guests of the member companies – typically manufacturers, distributors, and retailers – and pre-approved members of the media are authorized to participate. The show is designed to allow vendors to actively display and demonstrate their latest wares. Distributors and retailers then negotiate terms and plan their product roadmaps for the rest of the year, often right from the conference center floor. For anyone looking for guidance on where the music, audio and voice industries are headed over the next 12 or so months, NAMM is the only place they need to be.

Electronic dance music (EDM) stalwart Moby set the tone for the show as the keynote speaker at the NAMM Foundation’s Generation Next event. He spoke to a room filled with college-level music students, and inspired them with a self deprecating view of how he rose to the top of the emerging EDM scene. His message: You’re only as good as the people you surround yourself with, so choose carefully.

Giving Back

Stewart Copeland, best known as a longtime member of The Police, also spoke at NAMM, sharing snippets of the band’s early days before taking questions from the audience. The legendary drummer and songwriter wasn’t the only major name on the show’s agenda. Actress Alfre Woodard talked about her involvement in the Turnaround Arts program, which introduced intensive arts education into eight of the lowest-performing public schools in the U.S. The goal of the program, which is supported by the NAMM Foundation, was to drive improvements in academic performance – including math, science and reading – by introducing a comprehensive arts curriculum.

Woodard was joined by Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith and singer-songwriter Clarence Greenwood (better known as Citizen Cope) who shared their experiences, as well. Each star “adopted” one school, and worked closely to bring arts education to the children. Smith, for example, brought a carload of donated instruments to his school in California’s Central Valley. Greenwood worked with children on a rural Montana Native American reservation, and used art education to bring hope where there had previously been none.

Woodard told attendees that the program, introduced in 2012 as an initiative of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, and developed in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education and the White House Domestic Policy Council, is already returning huge dividends. Students in the eight target schools have seen their math proficiency increase by 22.6%, and their reading proficiency go up by 12.6%. Beyond the numbers, participating students report fewer suspensions and expulsions, and lower rates of disciplinary issues.

The educational community was also well represented. There were approximately 1,800 music students at the show, most of them in music business programs, and the College Music Society and the NAMM Foundation hosted GenNext sessions for them. Betty Anne Younker, CMS President and Dean of the Don Wright Faculty of Music at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada, visited NAMM for the first time, and came away with a strong sense of the potential for educational possibilities.

As the respective futures of the music, audio and voice industries were being played out on the show floor, the NAMM Foundation’s involvement in community-building investments like the Turnaround Arts program was building an entirely different – but no less critical – future for the next generation of artists. In an industry built on the concept of giving back, NAMM continues to set the tone for others to follow.

While mobile technology has revolutionized the way most of us work, play, connect and live, its impact has been particularly strong in the voice-over community.

On-the-go technologies give voice professionals the edge in connecting with clients, finding new work and auditioning for it, recording, editing and producing audio content, and growing their careers in a fast-evolving market.

But how do you know which technologies to use? What questions should you ask? And what answers are you looking for? For all the promise that mobile technology offers the voice professional – and let’s be clear that it is a hugely positive enabler of opportunity and growth for the entire industry – it isn’t always easy to decide what to buy, who to involve, and what direction you need to take to get the most out of it.

Finding the Answers You Need

The Mobile Innovation Summit, scheduled to be held in New York on March 19 and 20, is the only answer you need. Organized by Innovation Enterprise, this leading event will feature presentations by some of the companies who are making the biggest waves in mobile today. Executives from organizations as diverse as The Weather Channel, BuzzFeed, AccuWeather, Warner Bros, Quartz, Sirius XM Radio and others will share their insight into how they’ve used mobile to transform their businesses and gain competitive advantage in their respective industries.

Attendees to the Mobile Innovation Summit will get firsthand guidance into how some of today’s top companies and brands are managing to build and maintain effective mobile strategies as new products, technologies and services continually swirl around them. Presenters will share their experiences in designing compelling mobile experiences, engaging audiences, driving brand, analyzing the data and using metrics to further guide mobile strategy evolution.

The Why of Mobile

Mobile matters as much as it does because audiences themselves are changing. Smartphones and tablets have evolved from feature-limited devices to full-on, high-bandwidth platforms that rival desktop and laptop computers in their ability to deliver rich, immersive user experiences. Consumers no longer “wait until they get home” to interact with a brand online. If your mobile experience can’t deliver the goods right now, competing apps and services are only a tap away.

BuzzFeed, one of the most well-known sources of viral online content, will be on-hand to discuss how it has raised the user engagement state-of-the-art. Ryan Johnson, Vice President of Mobile Engineering, will walk the audience through how BuzzFeed is using innovative mobile products and strategies to drive its brand straight to the heart of an increasingly content-hungry audience.

AccuWeather’s Vice President of Emerging Platforms, David Mitchell, will explain how one of the most talked-about trends in tech, the Internet of Things (IoT), is impacting the delivery of personalized, customized weather content to an increasingly diverse range of devices, including smartphones, smart homes, connected cars and even wearables. As IoT takes its place as an important driver of next-generation business, you won’t want to miss hearing from the companies that are making it happen today.

Growing the Voice Universe

All of this has tremendous implications for the voice community. The rapid expansion in the sheer number and capability of mobile platforms and their penetration into new markets is already opening up tremendous new opportunities for projects that require vocal content. For content producers with a focus on innovation, the landscape continues to grow. For voice talent looking to stand out from the crowd, mobile platforms open up new avenues to establish unique career paths that didn’t exist a few short years ago.

Whatever side of the voice equation you happen to be on, the Mobile Innovation Summit will open your eyes and help you focus your mobile efforts.