Funny Farm ready for business

Funny Farm Studios is a new 2D animation studio starting up in Atlanta, Georgia. The facility is headed by Donna Ervin, former manager and producer for DESIGNefx cel animation, and two animation directors, Jim Peebles and Jeff Fastner. "We have enormous talent, experience and speed to offer," states Ervin. The studio will target the national and regional commercial, interstitial programming and web development markets. "We're modeling ourselves on studios such as Film Roman, Klasky Csupo and Nelvana where they gradually grew into animation powerhouses by delivering top quality animation, consistently and reliably over several years," says Peebles. Peebles' previous credits include working at DESIGNefx and animating on shows such as "Tiny Toon Adventures," "Animaniacs" and "Tazmania." Fastner's experience includes working at Reelworks in Minnesota and Cartoon Network. Donna Ervin was a scene planner at Disney on "Beauty and the Beast," "Lion King" and "Aladdin" among others. A unique trait of Funny Farm is that they're located near the Crawford Communications post-production facilities which they believe will enable them to be faster and more competitively priced than many other cel animation studios.