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Animation Nation: How We Built A Cartoon Empire
In 1978, an obscure animated TV show produced by an upstart Toronto firm caught the eye of the world’s hottest filmmaker, George Lucas.
He was looking for someone to produce an animated short for a CBS Star Wars television special. The ensuing collaboration not only put Nelvana on its path to becoming the world’s leading independent animation company but kickstarted Canada’s most successful creative industry—children’s animated entertainment.
Born in Belgium, raised in Toronto and New York, Michael Hirsh was a co-founder and CEO of Nelvana and the driving force behind Canada’s animation dominance. Animation Nation is his behind-the-scenes account of working with such famous cartoon franchises as Babar, The Adventures of Tintin, Berenstain Bears, Franklin, The Magic School Bus, and Beetlejuice, and larger-than-life personalities including Roseanne Barr, Mr. T., Deborah Harry, and Tim Burton.
Packed with humour and hard-won wisdom, Animation Nation is a frame-by-frame account of how creative talent and entrepreneurial zeal built a global cartoon empire.
He was looking for someone to produce an animated short for a CBS Star Wars television special. The ensuing collaboration not only put Nelvana on its path to becoming the world’s leading independent animation company but kickstarted Canada’s most successful creative industry—children’s animated entertainment.
Born in Belgium, raised in Toronto and New York, Michael Hirsh was a co-founder and CEO of Nelvana and the driving force behind Canada’s animation dominance. Animation Nation is his behind-the-scenes account of working with such famous cartoon franchises as Babar, The Adventures of Tintin, Berenstain Bears, Franklin, The Magic School Bus, and Beetlejuice, and larger-than-life personalities including Roseanne Barr, Mr. T., Deborah Harry, and Tim Burton.
Packed with humour and hard-won wisdom, Animation Nation is a frame-by-frame account of how creative talent and entrepreneurial zeal built a global cartoon empire.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published July 23, 2024
About the author
Michael Hirsh
18 books11 followersMichael Hirsh is the author of numerous books. During a 40-year career in broadcasting, he produced documentaries and specials for PBS, CBS, ABC and HBO, receiving multiple awards, including the Peabody.
He lives and writes in Punta Gorda, Florida
He lives and writes in Punta Gorda, Florida
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August 8, 2024Incredible story of how animation was born out of a college dorm's toilet. Hirsh is a trail blazer in animation and television, revolutionary in childrens media. A child of Holocaust survivors, Hirsh is the definition of resilience and the power of a positive mindset.
July 28, 2025
NOTES ON MICHAEL HIRSH’S ANIMATION NATION
I will not apologize for the length of this email.
I am sorry for the delay in responding to your generous willingness to talk to our film and contemporary art students at Etobicoke School of the Arts in the Spring of 2024 and to speak to us about your career and Animation Nation. (I’ve shown page references in square parentheses.)
When you wrote, “In thinking about my career, I have enjoyed my relationship with books . . . using them as the underlying material to adapt into TV series and movies,” [179] it is my own passion for reading (mostly nonfiction and narrative non-fiction, and currently reading 23 books simultaneously, one of which was Animation Nation I finished two weeks ago) that attracted me so much to your personal story. Having finished your book so recently and loving it is the reason for the delay of this email.
Below are a few of the things I learned from your book.
Your first company was called Nelvana after the name of the Canadian female superhero, Nelvana of the Northern Lights, an Inuit goddess who guarded her people to save them from evil white men. [54] Right from the start you were embedded in Canadian indigenous mythology embracing indigenous culture long before it became fashionable.
“An important breakthrough for us was Energy Conservation for the Future, a large educational project with the National Film Board for which we recruited some of the best graduating students from the Sheridan College animation program.” [61] It is remarkable that your first major project not only involved education and the hiring of animation students, but also the idea of energy conservation was far and away ahead of its time.
“For music I approached Sylvia Tyson, . . . and Daniel Lanois . . . [who] . . . became famous as one of the of the top music producers in the world, producing albums for such artists as Peter Gabriel and Bob Dylan.” [63] Also, from the beginning you tapped into iconic musicians and immediately identified with your audience by employing the music of their lives.
Regarding A Cosmic Christmas: “The idea of dissolving between key animation drawings of spacemen which saved us the work of animation inbetweening and saved money in ink and print as well,” [63] just illustrates your ability to take risks and experiment, yet showed the power of animation even in its most fundamental forms.
With Intergalactic Thanksgiving you got Sid Ceasar to do voice over for the character King Goochi. At the same time, as in A Cosmic Christmas, you made popular holidays less political, less religious, and more universal, idealized holidays.
Rome-O and Julie-8 was clearly based on the Shakespearean play. Again, from the beginning the source of your ideas was iconic, popular books, ensuring you had captive audiences. Even more, animation of popular children’s books like Franklin, The Care Bears, and Arthur, is a beautiful, democratic method of storytelling, that shares literature with the masses in voice and animation, not just with the empathetic literary, but especially with the empathetic non-literary masses. [69]
Take me Up to the Ball Game is an intergalactic romp based on the so-called “Great American Game,” and de-politicizes it with humour and with the voice of Phil Silvers as the intergalactic promoter and the music of Rick Danko of the iconic group The Band, again using iconic personalities of the time anyone could identify with. [69]
Your association with George Lucas and making the Star Wars animated short and your inclusion of humour and slapstick, yes reaches a larger audience, but also adds to your increasing rolodex. As my wife always says, it’s good to have many people out there thinking well of you. Adding George Lucus and Steven Spielberg to that rolodex list is awesome.
Your first animated feature was a rock opera called Rock & Rule based on The Pied Piper of Hamlin with characters represented as rats — so funny — and you talk about the whole production being a team effort beginning with storyboarding and a fluid script that evolves as the story evolves and as character development evolves. [71] Of course, this is a roadmap for, not only young professional animators, but also my Communication Technology students who have really enjoyed my stop-frame animation project this year, absolutely inspired by you and your book Animation Nation.
Securing Debbie Harry as the voice of Angel and Lou Reed as the villain Mok, in your rock opera showed the importance of involving pop culture icons, and it only increased accessibility of your animations to the public domain. [72]
Regarding The Care Bears Movie and watching children hugging the Care Bears they brought along with them, only celebrates how you masterfully understood the empathetic tendencies of children making their beloved stuffed animals come alive. [75]
Actually, what happens to beloved but forgotten stuffed animals? is the premise of my middle grade trilogy, Chronicles of Greenwood (self published) and its concluding trilogy (complete but unpublished).
I love your interest in Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey, the monomyth, and the universality of mythology, of which I became an early student of mythology having read his Masks of God series. In your storytelling, there is always an underlying universality of mythological themes, of a simple truth, we are human beings, grounded in life, humour and loving-kindness. [87]
Writing about working with Tim Burton on Beetlejuice, you said, what I most enjoyed about working with Tim was his artistic eccentricity and his encouragement to experiment. [120] Yet, it seems to me, Michael, that from the very beginning your artistic eccentricity, experimentation, and risk-taking were part of your DNA and why you do what you do so well.
Growing up under the darkness of the Holocaust with your parents’ overwhelmingly sad experience, your father in Auschwitz and your mother hidden by nuns in those darkest of dark days, it seems you have spent your life seeking brightness and humour and happiness as an antidote to the horrors that they may have found too difficult to articulate.
The incredible risk-taking of your father in creating one-legged pants for German soldiers on the Russian front would speak to your father’s beautifully perverse sense of humour if it was not conceived under the harshest of conditions. [191] And it certainly informed your own risk-taking and sense of humour as you embraced in your animated stories both positivity and hope.
Your father’s lessons should be read to all students:
1) Don’t hold grudges.
2) Know what you want when you see it and make up your mind fast.
3) There’s a place for everything, and everything in its place.
4) Solve the puzzle.
5) Money is not everything in life.
And then, of course, you finish with two of your own lessons: one, try something for the first time and nail it; and two, listen to your colleagues. [201-203]
When I examine your risk-taking, experimentation, love of music, humour, storytelling, it is a source of inspiration for my own writing, but especially as I continue to explore stop-frame animation in my Grade 11 Com Tech class. Under the latest pedagogy, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), risk-taking, solving challenging design problems, experimentation, and communication of one’s personal passions are front and centre in any new curricula.
Having examined your incredible career, I am reminded of Famous People Players founded in 1975 by Diane Dupuy as a kind of school for young adults with sever mental disabilities (Diane would say different mental abilities). She rebelled against labels such as stupid and retarded and dumb through her own personal experience as a child labelled in school from kindergarten to Grade 9 when she threw up her hands and told her mother, I failed for the last time. I can’t do this anymore! With her mothers help she made puppets and performed for children and the aged. Then, in 1975 she hired mentally challenged people and trained them to perform with puppets of famous people like Liberace. When Liberace saw her black light theatre, her Famous People Players performance, he hired her as all of his opening acts in Las Vegas and around the world for the next ten years.
Her beautiful unseen perform with puppets in black light theatre to pop as well as rock and roll music until after the show the lights go on and those lovely childlike adults are revealed. She taught them to serve food and drinks in a dine & theatre environment prior to performing. In fact, she gives these, les enfants du paradis, life skills, purpose, confidence, positivity, and hope. And she opens her theatre to high school co-op students. She teaches them puppetry and how a simple act of loving-kindness and the performing arts can liberate the least among us and even serve as a bridge across the healing stream.
I mention Diane and her incredible rolodex of famous people who have supported her charitable endeavour, including The Rolling Stones, Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, the people of Japan, China, and Singapore, and Broadway, and so many more, only to draw a comparison with your own journey embracing risk-taking, the arts, experimentation, music, humour, positivity, and hope, not to mention your own rolodex of musicians, artists, and actors you have gathered around you in a circle of artistry, trust, and friendship.
I will not apologize for the length of this email.
I am sorry for the delay in responding to your generous willingness to talk to our film and contemporary art students at Etobicoke School of the Arts in the Spring of 2024 and to speak to us about your career and Animation Nation. (I’ve shown page references in square parentheses.)
When you wrote, “In thinking about my career, I have enjoyed my relationship with books . . . using them as the underlying material to adapt into TV series and movies,” [179] it is my own passion for reading (mostly nonfiction and narrative non-fiction, and currently reading 23 books simultaneously, one of which was Animation Nation I finished two weeks ago) that attracted me so much to your personal story. Having finished your book so recently and loving it is the reason for the delay of this email.
Below are a few of the things I learned from your book.
Your first company was called Nelvana after the name of the Canadian female superhero, Nelvana of the Northern Lights, an Inuit goddess who guarded her people to save them from evil white men. [54] Right from the start you were embedded in Canadian indigenous mythology embracing indigenous culture long before it became fashionable.
“An important breakthrough for us was Energy Conservation for the Future, a large educational project with the National Film Board for which we recruited some of the best graduating students from the Sheridan College animation program.” [61] It is remarkable that your first major project not only involved education and the hiring of animation students, but also the idea of energy conservation was far and away ahead of its time.
“For music I approached Sylvia Tyson, . . . and Daniel Lanois . . . [who] . . . became famous as one of the of the top music producers in the world, producing albums for such artists as Peter Gabriel and Bob Dylan.” [63] Also, from the beginning you tapped into iconic musicians and immediately identified with your audience by employing the music of their lives.
Regarding A Cosmic Christmas: “The idea of dissolving between key animation drawings of spacemen which saved us the work of animation inbetweening and saved money in ink and print as well,” [63] just illustrates your ability to take risks and experiment, yet showed the power of animation even in its most fundamental forms.
With Intergalactic Thanksgiving you got Sid Ceasar to do voice over for the character King Goochi. At the same time, as in A Cosmic Christmas, you made popular holidays less political, less religious, and more universal, idealized holidays.
Rome-O and Julie-8 was clearly based on the Shakespearean play. Again, from the beginning the source of your ideas was iconic, popular books, ensuring you had captive audiences. Even more, animation of popular children’s books like Franklin, The Care Bears, and Arthur, is a beautiful, democratic method of storytelling, that shares literature with the masses in voice and animation, not just with the empathetic literary, but especially with the empathetic non-literary masses. [69]
Take me Up to the Ball Game is an intergalactic romp based on the so-called “Great American Game,” and de-politicizes it with humour and with the voice of Phil Silvers as the intergalactic promoter and the music of Rick Danko of the iconic group The Band, again using iconic personalities of the time anyone could identify with. [69]
Your association with George Lucas and making the Star Wars animated short and your inclusion of humour and slapstick, yes reaches a larger audience, but also adds to your increasing rolodex. As my wife always says, it’s good to have many people out there thinking well of you. Adding George Lucus and Steven Spielberg to that rolodex list is awesome.
Your first animated feature was a rock opera called Rock & Rule based on The Pied Piper of Hamlin with characters represented as rats — so funny — and you talk about the whole production being a team effort beginning with storyboarding and a fluid script that evolves as the story evolves and as character development evolves. [71] Of course, this is a roadmap for, not only young professional animators, but also my Communication Technology students who have really enjoyed my stop-frame animation project this year, absolutely inspired by you and your book Animation Nation.
Securing Debbie Harry as the voice of Angel and Lou Reed as the villain Mok, in your rock opera showed the importance of involving pop culture icons, and it only increased accessibility of your animations to the public domain. [72]
Regarding The Care Bears Movie and watching children hugging the Care Bears they brought along with them, only celebrates how you masterfully understood the empathetic tendencies of children making their beloved stuffed animals come alive. [75]
Actually, what happens to beloved but forgotten stuffed animals? is the premise of my middle grade trilogy, Chronicles of Greenwood (self published) and its concluding trilogy (complete but unpublished).
I love your interest in Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey, the monomyth, and the universality of mythology, of which I became an early student of mythology having read his Masks of God series. In your storytelling, there is always an underlying universality of mythological themes, of a simple truth, we are human beings, grounded in life, humour and loving-kindness. [87]
Writing about working with Tim Burton on Beetlejuice, you said, what I most enjoyed about working with Tim was his artistic eccentricity and his encouragement to experiment. [120] Yet, it seems to me, Michael, that from the very beginning your artistic eccentricity, experimentation, and risk-taking were part of your DNA and why you do what you do so well.
Growing up under the darkness of the Holocaust with your parents’ overwhelmingly sad experience, your father in Auschwitz and your mother hidden by nuns in those darkest of dark days, it seems you have spent your life seeking brightness and humour and happiness as an antidote to the horrors that they may have found too difficult to articulate.
The incredible risk-taking of your father in creating one-legged pants for German soldiers on the Russian front would speak to your father’s beautifully perverse sense of humour if it was not conceived under the harshest of conditions. [191] And it certainly informed your own risk-taking and sense of humour as you embraced in your animated stories both positivity and hope.
Your father’s lessons should be read to all students:
1) Don’t hold grudges.
2) Know what you want when you see it and make up your mind fast.
3) There’s a place for everything, and everything in its place.
4) Solve the puzzle.
5) Money is not everything in life.
And then, of course, you finish with two of your own lessons: one, try something for the first time and nail it; and two, listen to your colleagues. [201-203]
When I examine your risk-taking, experimentation, love of music, humour, storytelling, it is a source of inspiration for my own writing, but especially as I continue to explore stop-frame animation in my Grade 11 Com Tech class. Under the latest pedagogy, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), risk-taking, solving challenging design problems, experimentation, and communication of one’s personal passions are front and centre in any new curricula.
Having examined your incredible career, I am reminded of Famous People Players founded in 1975 by Diane Dupuy as a kind of school for young adults with sever mental disabilities (Diane would say different mental abilities). She rebelled against labels such as stupid and retarded and dumb through her own personal experience as a child labelled in school from kindergarten to Grade 9 when she threw up her hands and told her mother, I failed for the last time. I can’t do this anymore! With her mothers help she made puppets and performed for children and the aged. Then, in 1975 she hired mentally challenged people and trained them to perform with puppets of famous people like Liberace. When Liberace saw her black light theatre, her Famous People Players performance, he hired her as all of his opening acts in Las Vegas and around the world for the next ten years.
Her beautiful unseen perform with puppets in black light theatre to pop as well as rock and roll music until after the show the lights go on and those lovely childlike adults are revealed. She taught them to serve food and drinks in a dine & theatre environment prior to performing. In fact, she gives these, les enfants du paradis, life skills, purpose, confidence, positivity, and hope. And she opens her theatre to high school co-op students. She teaches them puppetry and how a simple act of loving-kindness and the performing arts can liberate the least among us and even serve as a bridge across the healing stream.
I mention Diane and her incredible rolodex of famous people who have supported her charitable endeavour, including The Rolling Stones, Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, the people of Japan, China, and Singapore, and Broadway, and so many more, only to draw a comparison with your own journey embracing risk-taking, the arts, experimentation, music, humour, positivity, and hope, not to mention your own rolodex of musicians, artists, and actors you have gathered around you in a circle of artistry, trust, and friendship.
February 23, 2026
Reading Animation Nation was: Honest, generous, and quietly profound.
The book is far more than a memoir about building one of the most influential animation companies in the world. It’s a deeply human story about identity, rolling with change and challenges, curiosity, and collaboration in the arts. His life's choices posed risks, and occasionally hard-earned lessons. He is the independent outsider who became a builder of culture. Throughout, the writing is earnest and genuine and with a spirit to serve.
My favorite aspect of his book is his writing style. CEO’s are usually succinct, and he writes in a cogent, yet quick style that takes us through the decisions he made in life without drilling down on the details of how things came to be. In essence, each paragraph could be its own chapter, and that impressed me the most. He kept his story moving and interesting and I read it quickly, without ever feeling things dragged.
After his immigration to Canada, Michael embarked on an ambitious path to becoming an independent filmmaker. He has many funny anecdotes about what that looked like, even when it was never pretty at first. As an independent filmmaker myself, it felt so reassuring to hear about one’s struggles early on and know I wasn’t alone.
Toward the end of the book, he wrote the chapter “Scenes of the Crime,” where Hirsh reveals about growing up with parents who survived the Holocaust. I was so moved that I had to reflect on my own hardships growing up; his lens on life, shaped by his parents' experience, was extremely helpful to understand. He frames survival as a form of inherited wisdom that shapes values, urgency, and moral clarity. His parents come through the pages as remarkable people, and their influence is unmistakable.
For anyone interested in animation, literary adaptation, independent production, or the building of lasting IP, Animation Nation is essential reading. But even beyond the industry, it’s a book about how stories--personal, cultural, and imagined--can bring joy to life.
Bruce Chapnick
The book is far more than a memoir about building one of the most influential animation companies in the world. It’s a deeply human story about identity, rolling with change and challenges, curiosity, and collaboration in the arts. His life's choices posed risks, and occasionally hard-earned lessons. He is the independent outsider who became a builder of culture. Throughout, the writing is earnest and genuine and with a spirit to serve.
My favorite aspect of his book is his writing style. CEO’s are usually succinct, and he writes in a cogent, yet quick style that takes us through the decisions he made in life without drilling down on the details of how things came to be. In essence, each paragraph could be its own chapter, and that impressed me the most. He kept his story moving and interesting and I read it quickly, without ever feeling things dragged.
After his immigration to Canada, Michael embarked on an ambitious path to becoming an independent filmmaker. He has many funny anecdotes about what that looked like, even when it was never pretty at first. As an independent filmmaker myself, it felt so reassuring to hear about one’s struggles early on and know I wasn’t alone.
Toward the end of the book, he wrote the chapter “Scenes of the Crime,” where Hirsh reveals about growing up with parents who survived the Holocaust. I was so moved that I had to reflect on my own hardships growing up; his lens on life, shaped by his parents' experience, was extremely helpful to understand. He frames survival as a form of inherited wisdom that shapes values, urgency, and moral clarity. His parents come through the pages as remarkable people, and their influence is unmistakable.
For anyone interested in animation, literary adaptation, independent production, or the building of lasting IP, Animation Nation is essential reading. But even beyond the industry, it’s a book about how stories--personal, cultural, and imagined--can bring joy to life.
Bruce Chapnick
February 2, 2025
I found out about this book purely by chance on Instagram when one of Hirsh's reels popped up. I was over the moon to have found the man who helmed the vast majority of my favourite childhood cartoons and his book about it flew to the top of my Christmas wishlist!
The book is Hirsh's biography and it's written well in a simple to read style. My disappointment came because I guess I got the wrong end of the stick in understanding what the book is really about, I had assumed it would cover how he learned to animate, animation techniques, deep secret revealing about each cartoon and stories on them being made, working with voice actors and his thoughts on everything, I thought it would basically be celebrating all the shows fans love. Instead it's all the business deals that were made for each cartoon, acquiring rights, selling ideas, buying out other companies and more business deals. He mentions names of cartoons but for the majority that's it, you don't come out knowing anything more than you did before reading the book. The clue was on the cover, saying it's about how they "built an animation empire" not "the stories behind your childhood favourites" so the problem was me not the book but I was still sad and found a lot of the content very dull.
However the parts about his life that aren't business transactions are still good and he has some passionate chapters at the end about visiting Auschwitz to see where his father had been kept and survived the Holocaust. I enjoyed reading it and I did love the little glimmers he did include such as Babar being one of his favourite book series as a child and how much he loved getting to animate the tv series which is one of my favourites.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good biography, I just went in with completely the wrong idea.
The book is Hirsh's biography and it's written well in a simple to read style. My disappointment came because I guess I got the wrong end of the stick in understanding what the book is really about, I had assumed it would cover how he learned to animate, animation techniques, deep secret revealing about each cartoon and stories on them being made, working with voice actors and his thoughts on everything, I thought it would basically be celebrating all the shows fans love. Instead it's all the business deals that were made for each cartoon, acquiring rights, selling ideas, buying out other companies and more business deals. He mentions names of cartoons but for the majority that's it, you don't come out knowing anything more than you did before reading the book. The clue was on the cover, saying it's about how they "built an animation empire" not "the stories behind your childhood favourites" so the problem was me not the book but I was still sad and found a lot of the content very dull.
However the parts about his life that aren't business transactions are still good and he has some passionate chapters at the end about visiting Auschwitz to see where his father had been kept and survived the Holocaust. I enjoyed reading it and I did love the little glimmers he did include such as Babar being one of his favourite book series as a child and how much he loved getting to animate the tv series which is one of my favourites.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good biography, I just went in with completely the wrong idea.
February 16, 2026
This book is a pleasant surprise! Granted, I am an artist/product designer so I was immediately drawn to Michael's book about his role in the Canadian animation industry. The truth is, that once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. He is a great storyteller who is not afraid to share the nitty-gritty about the animation industry and also shares his fascinating personal and professional life. This is obviously an honest blow-by-blow account from the very beginning of his career and his stumbling and bumbling through his personal and professional life all the way through to his retirement and sale of his businesses. He is obviously a high-level genius.
He most importantly humbly shares all the big breaks he has had along his life's journey. I feel that any creative person in any creative field will find this book fun, interesting, engaging and most of all, inspiring.
His last words and goal in the book are "Retire. Now that is a problem." I certainly agree.
Michael Hirsh, I bow to you.
He most importantly humbly shares all the big breaks he has had along his life's journey. I feel that any creative person in any creative field will find this book fun, interesting, engaging and most of all, inspiring.
His last words and goal in the book are "Retire. Now that is a problem." I certainly agree.
Michael Hirsh, I bow to you.
July 10, 2024
A fascinating behind the scenes look at the creation of an animation studio / company throughout the years. From college through several decades, it's a fascinating read about the man and the business behind some of your favorite animated shows. If you remember the polar bear logo at the end of your shows, you'll know it.
Just an astounding read on how the business started, evolved and changed with the times, including encounters with George Lucas, Mr. T, and so many others. If you've watched TV, the chances are high you've seen at least one of the shows mentioned in this book.
If you're a student of animation, film making, or business... I'd definitely recommend this book. It took about 7-8 hours to read.
(Note - I was provided an ARC, but was under no requirement / obligation for a review)
Just an astounding read on how the business started, evolved and changed with the times, including encounters with George Lucas, Mr. T, and so many others. If you've watched TV, the chances are high you've seen at least one of the shows mentioned in this book.
If you're a student of animation, film making, or business... I'd definitely recommend this book. It took about 7-8 hours to read.
(Note - I was provided an ARC, but was under no requirement / obligation for a review)
August 3, 2024
Michael combines the story of Canada's animation industry with insights into his life and influences. He captures the essence of creating a company (several times over) and the challenges along the way, with great stories and interesting (real) characters. He gives a balanced view of some talented people you will recognize and others you will not, sprinkled through his path to building world-class animation companies. Most of Canada's animation companies and talent can trace their path back to Michael and his partners. The book has a wonderful flow to the narrative and I can hear Michael's voice reciting each paragraph. His boundless energy comes through, especially in his reflections and thoughts at the end of the book. And his stories about the ups and downs along the way are highly entertaining. I highly recommend this book!
Read
June 10, 2024This is a great behind the scenes book about how an animation empire was born. My favorite shows to watch with my son when he was little are included in this book, including Franklin, Little Bear, Max & Ruby, Johnny Test...and so many more. It is fascinating to read how Michael Hirsh brought these book characters to life and into my living room for me and my son to enjoy.
It also is a book about successfully running a business and I was in awe of Michael's business intuition and perseverance at creating this animation nation. As a business owner myself, I learned a lot about deal-making, patience, and learning from my mistakes. It is a book everyone in the media business should have on their bookshelves.
It also is a book about successfully running a business and I was in awe of Michael's business intuition and perseverance at creating this animation nation. As a business owner myself, I learned a lot about deal-making, patience, and learning from my mistakes. It is a book everyone in the media business should have on their bookshelves.
August 3, 2024
You don't have to know anything about the world of animation to enjoy and learn from Michael Hirsh. This personal and compelling memoir is an intimate inside look at how a risk-taking Canadian animation pioneer built an empire in his own country and internationally. Told with honesty, humour and packed with stories about actors, artists, musicians, producers, tycoons and moguls, Animation Nation reflects Hirsh's generous nature, impressive deal-making skills, bold adventures and great gobs of wisdom. His remarkable legacy includes many of the best loved animated series of all time. Chances are you'll find some of your favorites on his impressive list of achievements. Animation Nation is a very good read!
September 17, 2024
Animation Nation is a great and insightful dive into the animation industry.
It acts as both a biography into the life of one of Canada's animation leaders as well as a documentary speaking about the animation industry and how one of the biggest animation companies of all time grew into the company it is today.
As someone who grew up watching many of Nelvana's shows, it was truly a treat to get a behind the scenes look at how many of my favorite kid series got made. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone with a passion for animation.
It acts as both a biography into the life of one of Canada's animation leaders as well as a documentary speaking about the animation industry and how one of the biggest animation companies of all time grew into the company it is today.
As someone who grew up watching many of Nelvana's shows, it was truly a treat to get a behind the scenes look at how many of my favorite kid series got made. I would strongly recommend this book for anyone with a passion for animation.
December 20, 2024
I highly recommend this book. I have spent 30+ years in the Canadian entertainment industry as a lawyer and I have watched with interest as Michael launched and built up a number of leading companies in the animation field. This book provides the true inside story on the successes and the struggles of these companies and their many projects, while sharing the values and common sense perspective Michael brings to his business dealings. Micheal also shares many personal stories from his family history that are both touching and revealing.
August 25, 2024
Fascinating insight into the the development of an iconic animation studio.
October 8, 2024
Very interesting read about the journey of Nelvana and all the IP’s it has created memorable animation for.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews