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Editor\u2019s Note:<\/strong><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n This Studio Story was reported the way most of our lives now happen: on a screen, between New York and Montreal. One long conversation over Zoom at the end of August, recorded, followed by a written questionnaire that Stefanie Bitton answered in her own voice and at her own pace over the weeks that followed. I had cancelled on her twice. When we finally spoke I was running on cold medicine, she was running a studio, and neither of us was willing to cancel a third time.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n I am glad we did not, because what came through that screen was not a pitch. It was a partner who has spent twenty years inside a studio twice that old, talking about drawings, phone calls, a beaver, a penguin-powered Santa and the people at the desks, with the same steadiness whether the subject was an Oscar or a spreadsheet.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n What I did not expect was the candor. Twice in that hour she corrected my premise without apology: no, this is a refresh, not a rebrand, and no, 2D never went anywhere, so there is nothing to bring back. When she did not have an answer she said so, and when we reached the film that still makes her cry she let the pause do the talking. A partner with four decades of studio history behind her and nothing to oversell is a rare interview, and it made this piece a pleasure to write.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n We held the story until Tonic\u2019s new website went live. The refresh is the doorway into this piece, and a doorway needs a house behind it. What follows is not a profile of a studio. It is an argument that a company can change its tools, its model and even its name, and remain unmistakably itself, as long as it protects two things: the people and the standard.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n It arrives in the month Motionographer turns twenty, about a studio that has been at this for twice as long. I find that comforting. Someone has already walked the road ahead, and they are still walking.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n This month, Tonic DNA turned on a new website. The wordmark is spare: TONIC in wide, quiet capitals, dna underneath in lowercase, warm cream on near black, with a jolt of sage green where the studio wants your eye. It is the kind of change a company might be tempted to call a rebrand. Stefanie Bitton will not.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n \u201cI call it a refresh more than a rebrand. A rebrand is when a company is changing more than the visual of their logo and their website. They are becoming something new, something different. We are not changing how we operate. We are not changing our model. This is a refresh of our visual guidelines.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n The distinction matters to her because Tonic DNA has already lived through the other kind, and the difference between the two is the whole story of the studio. Tonic DNA is a Montreal studio with roots reaching back about forty years, three or four buildings ago, always downtown. In that time it has been a traditional animation house, an IMAX pioneer, a 3D and hybrid shop, a director-led creative studio, and now a company with an original property in production and an AI pipeline built by its own artists. The thread running through all of it is not a look.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the refusal to let animation stand still. That\u2019s been part of the studio from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Ask what people remembered about the studio for decades and the answer arrives quickly: an Academy Award. The Old Man and the Sea<\/em>, Alexander Petrov\u2019s adaptation of the Hemingway novella, was painted in oil on glass, frame by frame, and produced for IMAX, which had never been attempted with an animated film. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2000. \u201cThey had created this new kind of camera. Everything about that film was innovative,\u201d Bitton says.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n She was not there when the statue came home, but she has watched what it did to the studio\u2019s name ever since. \u201cWhen everybody would hear our name, they would remember that,\u201d she says. Bernard Lajoie, a founder who remains one of her two partners, is the through line. He produced the IMAX film, then brought 3D into a house built on drawing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s one of the pioneers when it comes to innovation and technology,\u201d Bitton says. \u201cHe\u2019s lived through these transitions, 2D technology, 3D technology. This is something he\u2019s proud of.\u201d The real rebrand came in 2017, when the studio took the Tonic DNA name and, more importantly, a new shape.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n \u201cBefore, we were a craft studio under one creative vision. Now we\u2019re going towards a director-led vision, where multiple directors lead the creative, and we\u2019re really putting the emphasis on the artists. That was a complete shift. It was a change from what we had been doing the previous twenty years to how we wanted to move forward for the following twenty.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n The name was chosen to sound like what it was for. Tonic, because the partners wanted something energizing and revitalizing, a fresh start with a new model. DNA, because it stood for directors and animators, the people the model was built around. It has since stretched to hold designers and artists, and lately developers and AI, three strands the studio is deliberately growing. The name is a job description that keeps getting longer.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n \u201cTonic DNA was built on a simple belief,\u201d Bitton says. \u201cAnimation is a storytelling medium, not a technique.\u201d The style comes from what the idea needs, which is why the studio\u2019s identity does not live in a signature look, and why its directors can sound nothing like one another.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n \u201cThe common thread is that the director leads the vision, the animators shape the performance, and everyone is working in service of the story. That\u2019s where the identity of the studio lives for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n It is also why the studio almost never changes technique mid-flight. Pre-production at Tonic is long on purpose, so that every stakeholder understands the designs, the characters and the story before a frame is animated. \u201cOnce we release it for production, it\u2019s no longer a surprise,\u201d Bitton says. \u201cThey already know what to expect.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Where the studio does switch techniques is on itself. Jump<\/em> is an internal research project built around a single character, remade year after year to test tools. One year it was 3D animation dressed in 2D textures and lighting. The next, the same character came back with hyper-realistic surfaces and a first round of AI tools. It is the refusal to be one thing, made literal.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Tonic\u2019s hand-drawn work has been part of 2D animation\u2019s renewed visibility on the big screen, from The Bob\u2019s Burgers Movie<\/em> to Disenchanted<\/em> to The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie<\/em>. Ask Bitton whether that amounts to a renaissance and she rejects the premise.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n \u201cA renaissance suggests 2D disappeared. It never did. It\u2019s the foundational form of animation, and there\u2019s something enduring about drawing and bringing those drawings to life that I think will always have a place. What has changed is everything around the craft.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n Animating a character the audience already knows by heart is its own discipline. \u201cFirst of all, the love of the character,\u201d she says. \u201cA clear understanding of who that character is, what is his personality, how he moves, his history, where he is going. When you say, please animate Bugs Bunny, we have a really good understanding of Bugs Bunny\u2019s character and how he moves and who he is. That is not a simple request for other animators.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The same care goes into work that never leaves Quebec. The IGA holiday tale is a local tradition now, written and produced entirely by Quebec talent with agency Sid Lee, and Tonic has animated three installments: The Meatloaf<\/em> in 2022, Mr. Beaver\u2019s Yule Log<\/em> in 2023 and Paulo\u2019s Wish<\/em> in 2024. For Mr. Beaver\u2019s Yule Log<\/em>, directors Kun Chang and Fabien Fulchiron built the story world out of plush children\u2019s toys, CG characters with touch-worn textures and a stop-motion feel, framed as a grandfather\u2019s bedtime tale about a grumpy beaver who learns to share. \u201cEvery year it\u2019s such a beautiful story, so beautifully crafted and animated,\u201d Bitton says. \u201cIt\u2019s very much part of our Quebec culture, and for us it was so exciting to get the opportunity to produce three of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/s35726.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Lobby.jpg\")
\n<\/figure>\nA name that is a job description<\/h2>\n
Story first, technique second<\/h2>\n
![\"Animators](\"https:\/\/s35726.pcdn.co\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/tonicdna_c.jpg\")
\n<\/figure>\nDrawing for people who already know the character<\/h2>\n