Bardel pulls in plenty of interesting and fun projects, and the salary is generally fair for standard work. The environment is fun and many of Management are approachable. Where the studio falters is the inability to secure reasonable schedules and project scopes, usually ending up causing project employees to have little to no work/life balance. At times too, it feels like the different departments in the pipelines are not communicating with each other, causing plenty of delay and headache

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Avoid if possible

Character animator for Puss in Boots (TV series) (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 4 February 2020

Unpaid overtime was the norm. 7 day work weeks were not uncommon. Management knew but was not overly concerned. They were trying for "Feature" quality on a TV budget to impress clients.

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Insights into Bardel Entertainment

Based on 1 survey responses

Areas for improvement

Fair pay for job
Ability to meet personal goals
Energizing work tasks

Good to start your Career.

3D Animator (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 2 September 2019

Bardel Entertainment has very good projects for kid animation which has high quality base on good storyline. Good people and culture. Casual work time. Good location for walk around. Learning many skills and self time management.

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Great for new artists

LEAD VISUAL FX ARTIST (Former Employee) - Kelowna, BC - 29 July 2019

It was a great way to get experience when starting off in the industry. However the hours were very intense and there was very little way to maintain the work life balance with such high demands.

Pros

beer fridays

Cons

long hours for no extra pay

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Boss is a belittling tyrant

animator (Former Employee) - vancouver - 5 June 2019

My experience with this company has given me nothing but traumatizing memories due to the poor management and threatening behaviour from my superiors. When I was hired as a junior animator, I was still learning my position and was called in and was essentially interrogated, belittled, asked if I had a learning disability by my former boss. The worst part about it was HR was in the meeting, and my boss had one eye on me and one eye on the HR assistant... and I felt I had no power to report any mismanagement by my boss other wise I felt I was going to be fired. I felt used, and felt like this company didn't care about their employees and are only interested in intimidating them for their own sick power egos. TERRIBLE

Cons

awful management

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Great place to start a career

Junior technical artist (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 12 May 2019

Fun projects to work on, friendly people, positive company culture, great location in downtown. I think I enjoyed my career the most, in my days at Bardel.

Pros

Positive company culture

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Its a headake to work there.

LRC (Former Employee) - Kelowna, BC - 1 May 2019

Its a mess of management. no one knows what they are doing. when they do no one follows the instructions correctly. during my time there we lost 3-4 production coordinators, our contract fell through due to the lack of structured leadership. the leads for individual teams were good but the communication from bottom to top would take weeks and easily preventable things happened because of it. The people there are super nice, helpful, and always there for you. until they don't respond to your emails for a month and take on to much work to stay productive.

Pros

there were fun events every once and awhile

Cons

lack of management

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Can have some fun projects and its a good environment.

VFX Artist (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 15 April 2019

Typically I found that most days would be 9-5 hours but some departments would get swamped and be would be doing 10 - 12 hour days on a regular basis. This usually only happened on unorganized productions otherwise hours are good. The pay is average for the industry but they have some good perks like sick days and benefits. In general the culture is good and the environment is positive. One other downside is that on the first floor the temperature can get pretty low in the winter.

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good people, good productions

Surfacing Supervisor (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 5 October 2018

-Learned new shading techniques and tools -Worked with great people -Worked on an exciting project -Great pay -Great benefits -Hardest part: working with limiting software -Most enjoyable part: working with other supervisors

Pros

Great art team

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Fair management, with good salary and benefits

2D Animator (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 25 September 2018

Every work environment has it's problems, the worst one was that the company would let the clients walk all over them and we the workers would be left with the consequences.

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Jobs at Bardel Entertainment

PRODUCTION ASSISTANT - MOTION PICTURES AND BROADCASTING

production assistant - motion pictures and broadcasting

Kelowna, BC

17 days ago

Toxic and Unsupportive environment

2D FX Animator (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 23 August 2018

You HAVE to know the software. The supervisors do not have time to teach you. No mentorship. Is NOT supportive of individuals with mental health concerns. Worked overtime every weekend and went above and beyond what was required of me and then got let go. They don't care about work life balance. All the care about is the quota. DO NOT WORK HERE.

Pros

free dinner if working late evenings. good culture.

Cons

unpaid overtime, toxic environment, no mentorship

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Excellent

Desktop Support Technician (Current Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 26 June 2018

Bardel Entertainment Inc. is an excellent place to start and grow your career. The people and culture are great and there is a strong sense of community.

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terrible management

animator (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 25 December 2017

The management at this company dont care about their contracters. They cut you down and keep a lazy eye on their projects even though there is a very heavy load under their belt they blame their workers instead of themselves. The office is a sweat shop and the management is disorganized and has fallen apart several times through out he companies recent history

Cons

too much work for individuals - labour laws breached

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Great coworkers and a relaxed work environment

Lighting Artist (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 23 October 2017

The project was very disorganized and had to be treated by patching areas every time a fire erupted. I got payed for all my hours of work included OT. I had excellent co-workers who have moved on to various endeavors.

Pros

payed OT (depending on project)

Cons

disorganized project

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fewer long term employees than other animation studios

Line Producer (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 4 September 2017

Bardel's HR management has room for improvement. Its turnover rate is very high and not sure if the past employee information is well kept or not. They don't contact the good past employees to come back to work when they post jobs. However it is lack of a management, each production LP or PM can motivate his or her team freely.

Pros

Less corporate, more freedom

Cons

lack of fair management

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Great Company to Work For

Lighter/Compositor (Current Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 21 August 2017

Great Company to work for, not enough positions available within the company at the moment. They don't have enough employee evaluations so there is never a time to discuss salary raises.

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False Advertisement

2d animator (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 15 August 2017

Bardel falsley advertises their pay for 2d animators. They pretend to encourage work/life balance on one hand yet create a system that assumes you will work overtime by making it impossible to reach quota without doing so. Do not trust this company.

Pros

Co-workers are great! Good IT team.

Cons

Long hours. Low pay. Blames animators.

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Really Stressful

3D Animator (Former Employee) - Kelowna, BC - 7 October 2016

For managing work for junior animators was extremely stressful and almost near impossible quotas. Mainly working almost every weekend and very low wages.

Cons

Very long hours

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Unbalanced teams

Harmony Build Artist (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 15 February 2016

The team I was on was pretty ok, but there were many problems with many of the other productions. I had many friends working insanely excessive hours for months with very little compensation. Not only was it the entire team, but it took many months and a complete overhaul before things got fixed and work and schedules were normalized. I still don't think the people were compensated for the 6 day work week and the 10+ hour days. Also pay from each team was not balanced. My team was paid much more for less work than the aforementioned team. I also was given no notice of the studio "losing the show" I worked on and no chance to move to another team or another production.

Cons

Long hours, unbalanced work

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Fun, Relaxed Workplace with Self Motivated Workers.

Background Paint/Layout Artist (Former Employee) - Vancouver, BC - 20 March 2015

Great Place to work. They are growing fast so there is lots of opportunity to move around. The company has two locations in Vancouver very close to downtown.