Nitrogen Studios

Cinesite Vancouver (formerly known as Nitrogen Studios Canada, Inc., commonly referred to as Nitrogen Studios) is a Canadian animation company founded by husband and wife duo Greg Tiernan and Nicole Stinn. The company was founded in October 2003, in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Cinesite Vancouver was best known for animating the long-running British television series Thomas & Friends, which first began in the 12th season in 2008. While still using models provided by Shepperton Studios until 2009, Nitrogen began animating the twelfth series by implementing CGI animation onto the models. The models had their faces removed for the tracking sensors. The humans, animals and other specific scenery were tracked and animated by Nitrogen. However, scenes without the CGI were present as the tracking was unable to be done in certain angles. In 2009, the full switch to computer-animation was made by HIT Entertainment, with Tiernan directing the thirteenth season, as well as the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth seasons until Arc Productions (now Jam Filled Toronto) took over. Through seasons 13 and 16 came four direct-to-video films: Hero of the Rails in 2009, Misty Island Rescue in 2010, Day of the Diesels in 2011, and Blue Mountain Mystery in 2012. Nitrogen had also provided CGI animation and concept art for a planned second theatrical Thomas & Friends film with the title The Adventures of Thomas, before it was cancelled by Mattel in 2012 after their acquisition of HIT Entertainment.

Before animating Thomas & Friends, the studio animated the 2006 CGI family comedy film Happily N'Ever After, distributed by Lionsgate, and co-produced with Odyssey Entertainment and Vanguard Animation, only for it to perform as a box office flop, earning $37 million on a $47 million budget. In 2016, Tiernan, along with Conrad Vernon, directed Sausage Party, a 2016 animated adult comedy film released by Sony Pictures Releasing under the Columbia Pictures label. Grossing $141.3 million on a $19 million budget, Vernon and Tiernan then produced and directed The Addams Family (2019) and The Addams Family 2 (2021). The Addams Family earned $203 million on a $24 million budget, and The Addams Family 2 earned $110 million on a $47 million budget.

For television, Nitrogen also produced Dan Vs., providing lip-sync for 27 episodes, spanning from February 26, 2011, to June 23, 2012. The studio animated two episodes of the Netflix series Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia, with the first airing on December 23, 2016, and the 2nd airing on May 25, 2018.

The company's other projects have included God of War, a 2005 action-adventure game developed by Santa Monica Studio, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, a 2008 role-playing game developed by BioWare, published by Sega for the Nintendo DS, and Kodee's Canoe, a 2010 interactive app series.

On March 7, 2017, Nitrogen was acquired by British visual effects and feature animation studio company Cinesite, becoming their Vancouver operations.

Controversy
Several days after the release of Sausage Party, allegations of poor treatment of Nitrogen Studios employees surfaced in the comments section of an interview with Tiernan and co-director Conrad Vernon, featured on the website Cartoon Brew. Various anonymous posters, purporting to be animators who worked on the film in question, made claims including that Nitrogen forced them to work overtime for free and that some employees were threatened with termination. Some animators who complained or left due to stress went uncredited in the film. One poster stated that Tiernan had developed a reputation for "disturbing behaviour and abusive management style". Publications such as the Washington Post the Los Angeles Times and /Film have picked up the story.