Animated success.

It's been called the Great White North's version of South Park. Blue-collar Sudbury, a city best known for its mining headframes and scoop trams, has staked out new ground in providing the drawing hands behind a new CBC animated comedy series.

"This is the perfect ying to the yang of a mining town," says Sudbury native Dan Hawes, the producer of Chilly Beach and president of March Entertainment. "If you want to challenge the traditions and perceptions of being a mining town, there's no better tool to do that than with arts and entertainment."

Chilly Beach began in 1998 as a cartoon demonstration tool for Hawes's media business, Infopreneur, that evolved into a cult Internet craze with close to 100,000 visitors a month.

After winning the international Real Networks Streamer Award, Hawes and his business partner Doug Sinclair, the show's head writer, formed March Entertainment, a Toron-to-based media company with operations in Sudbury. The pair produced a CBC pilot based on their Web parody cartoon of Canadian life.

Today, Chilly Beach occupies a floor in the City of Greater Sudbury's Technology Centre, wired into the municipality's broadband network, and employs between 35 and 40 people, many in swing positions alternating between Toronto and Sudbury.

All the writing, audio and pre-production work begins in Toronto. The digital blueprinting, story boarding, animation and post-production processes are done in the Sudbury studio.

With the first season's 26 episodes in the can and another 26 on order, Hawes estimates Chilly Beach will generate between $3 million to $5 million in revenue when their fiscal year ends April 30. For the second season, he projects $5 million to $7 million.

Raised in Coniston, Hawes always maintained an affinity for his hometown and overcame the challenges of project financing by approaching the city, Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. (NOHFC) and FedNor for help.

Some innovative software development elements in their digital animation processes allowed the government agencies to work out some complex funding formulas to make the project viable for the North.

Now he has high hopes Chilly Beach will find a greater audience internationally.

The CBC, which serves as their global distributor, has sold the series into Australia and in the process of closing a deal with Sweden.

And while Chilly Beach may eventually run its course, Hawes intends to hire more people and develop a "whole stable of projects" in Sudbury.

"We have a dozen other projects lined up and now broad-casters are after us. We definitely have the intent to doing more projects up there ... and it is our hope that within a year we will have hundreds (in Sudbury) working on multiple projects."

www.marchentertainment.com

www.chillybeach.com

By IAN ROSS

Northern Ontario Business