Meet the Sheffield software designer whose animation firm Cavalry has just been bought by global giant Canva
The ambitions of a pioneering animation company with Yorkshire roots have been given “rocket fuel” by its recent acquisition by global graphic design giant Canva.
Canva, which has 260 million users and recorded revenues of $3.5bn last year, recently announced it was acquiring motion design company Cavalry, which had its first office in Sheffield and whose chief technology officer Ian Waters is still based in the city.
Cavalry’s 2D animation software is used by motion designers to create everything from magazine covers to moving billboards and graphics for YouTube videos, with major global companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon and Netflix making use of it.
Canva has said that Cavalry will benefit from “bigger investment and scale” under its ownership, with its existing team continuing to shape the product’s direction as they join the wider company.
Mr Waters told The Yorkshire Post that Canva’s involvement will be transformational for the company.
"‘Rocket fuel’ is the way that my business partner put it,” he said. "One thing we’d like to achieve is much bigger scale. We have got a small percentage of the market as an independent but we really hope we can take it over using Canva’s resources, integrations, knowledge and skill set. We can really disrupt the motion graphics industry and the professional creative tool market at large.”
Mr Waters, who is originally from Cumbria and attended Hull School of Art and Design, previously worked for leading motion graphics business Mainframe where he created a 3D tool called MASH which ended up being used in blockbuster films including Frozen 2, Jurassic World and Mary Poppins Returns.
The technology was nominated in 2017 for a Scientific and Technical Awards Oscar which celebrates innovations that support filmmaking.
He said: “I got to go to the academy in LA and was sit behind the inventors of Photoshop – for me, that’s royalty!
"After all this happened, I thought I could do a good job of designing some 2D animation software from scratch. That’s what we set out to do. We’d been using motion graphic software at Mainframe for years and hit lots of things we thought could be done better.
"Myself and a very talented developer called Martin Vejdarski worked on the idea that we could do a better job than the existing technology. It proved good enough that Mainframe span it out to become a separate company and that’s when I moved to Sheffield. We opened our first office here in around 2021.
"Cavalry coming from a motion graphics studio was something that really helped us in those early days because we had credibility immediately. It was by animators for animators.
"At heart I’m software designer and one of the things I love doing is complex problem-solving. I like taking complex problems and trying to deal with them in a way that makes them more efficient to solve. You take an activity like animating, you look at all of the different aspects involved and you see what can be combined, optimised and distilled and present it to users in a way that allows them to work faster.”
The company’s team was initally based in the Barclays’ backed Kollider digital and tech incubator in Sheffield’s Castle House building but the team now works remotely.
Mr Waters said the firm’s software is typically used by motion designers on visual communication projects requiring the animation of images, texts and shapes.
He said: “That can be everything from an explainer video on YouTube talking about a mathematical concept or the perils of climate change or it can literally be how someones name appears when they are being interviewed on a TV show.
"It is everywhere these days, with things like animated billboards. There are thousands of animators doing that and that is who we are aimed at. We found more and more as Cavalry got older that brand agencies were interested. One of the things it is really good at is producing creative [work] at scale.
"You can hook a spreadsheet up and ask it to spit out hundreds or thousands of different renders in different languages, all with bespoke content and different designs. It is really quite powerful. It has creative flexibility on one side but it also solves a business problem on the other side.
"Nothing has been purpose-built from the ground up for motion design before. We were basically creating a set of workflows and an optimal way of working that made the job a lot easier and solving the problem of scale.
"You have generative artists to create art and we’ve even had people creating games assets with it. Magazine covers is another big thing – Fortune, Time, The Economist have all had artwork made with Cavalry.”
He said the deal had come about from Canva staff making use of Cavalry.
"Canva’s motion graphics team who make all their animations for their presentations and marketing started using Cavalry because they like it. This bubbled up and surfaced to management.
"When their motion designers started using Cavalry, they realised there was a natural fit. At the end of last year, Canva came to us and said ‘would you like to join the party?’
"There’s a great positivity and energy about Canva and we were pretty enthused and excited.
"One thing we’d struggled to do is raise money to take Cavalry to the next level. It’s not that easy in the north of England to get VC financing. We were profitable but we were growing slowly and we were managing it very carefully.
"Canva has great resources and they promised to invest in Cavalry and grow our team, which is something we have already set in motion. It is just very exciting. They can help us fulfil the vision we set out to achieve."
‘Incredible opportunity’
The CEO of Cavalry has said the Canva deal represents “an incredible opportunity to redefine motion design”.
Chris Hardcastle said: "We built Cavalry to give motion designers a faster, more flexible creative playground suitable for the demands of modern production.
“Canva's platform and long-term vision make it a natural next chapter for our technology. Together, we have an incredible opportunity to redefine motion design, bringing smarter workflows that make animation more powerful, and far more accessible, to a new generation of creatives."
Canva co-founder and chief operating officer, Cliff Obrecht, said: “We have always believed creative tools should be accessible to everyone, and we are seeing that reflected in how the design community is responding.
“Now, with Cavalry joining Canva, we’re taking another big step toward helping professional designers break free from bloated and expensive tools.”