Animation boom in Moldova: “We don’t animate for school.”
Journo Birds
This story was written by Iurie Gandrabura (Journo Birds), a media team that works with nonprofits to tell human-centered stories. This story was supported by UMAEF.
The first global animation awards and recognition are coming to Moldova, where self-taught cutting-edge creators are paving the future.
At a creative and educational hub, Mediacor in the heart of Moldova, the stage lights were already set. Video creators from the award-winning American creative studio bully! entertainment adjusted tracking markers and camera angles.
They were preparing to film a teaser with the Moldovan National Opera dancers against a green screen. Even though the world already knows Moldovan talent, this Swan Lake ballet is their first large-scale project for the local audience.
“We’ve worked on over 300 projects across the world,” said Carlson Bull, bully!’s calm and confident founder, overseeing the production on the set. Founded in 2006, bully! worked with NASA, Adidas Japan, Disney, Volkswagen, Audi and the United Nations. “Now, we’re building from Moldova and for Moldova,” said Bull.
“It’s about proximity to quality talent, cost-efficiency and people who are ready to try things differently.”
He had flown in for a week-long work trip in Chișinău. “The fact that we’re here is not a fluke,” he added. “It’s about proximity to quality talent, cost-efficiency and people who are ready to try things differently.”
Oleg Condrea, one of bully!’s former employees, is the perfect example of this. He is an animation writer-director and a teacher at a local university, and has already made a name for himself far beyond Moldova’s borders.
Condrea has twice been awarded Best Short Drama Screenplay at the Cannes Art Awards: first in 2024 for Tangled Tails, then again in 2025 for Echoes of the Ringing Bells. The latter won top prizes at festivals in Berlin and London.
This year, he won first place at the New York Big Apple Fest. But it overlapped with Cannes. “Can you imagine refusing this?” he recalled the frustration.
Even though bully!’s team is multinational, their growing core is in Chișinău. Here, in Moldova, the company is testing real-time XR (Extended Reality) workflows, which means combining physical and digital elements in the same scene. They use Unreal Engine, a tool originally built for video games, to design rich, animated environments.
Part of what makes this shift possible is infrastructure like the Moldova Innovation Technology Park (MITP). Through a 7% flat tax and streamlined business registration, MITP has become a magnet for creative and tech companies alike. In a sector where agility defines success, Moldova’s digital-first policies are making a difference. Studios can benefit from the MITP’s simplified legal framework, which enables hybrid teams to work across borders without the usual bureaucratic drag.
Trained through trial and error
Before the accolades, Oleg Condrea was already shaping Moldova’s animation culture. A graduate of Ion Creangă University, where he now teaches visual storytelling and creative writing, Condrea is both a practitioner and a pedagogue.
Until recently, formal animation education in Moldova barely existed. “It was like the Wild West,” recalls Condrea. Even at art universities, students learned color theory and composition, but not animation. “There were no real technical foundations. You had to pirate books and patch together your own curriculum.”
Condrea and his peers trained through trial and error, working at early local studios like Simpals, where they learned by animating frame by frame during the day and reading theory at night. “We grew by necessity. We didn’t animate for school, we animated to survive.”
The landscape didn’t change overnight. According to Oleg Condrea, Moldova’s animation scene began to take shape around 2010–2012, when early studios like Frimu Films and Simpals started producing animation projects that would attract more international companies. “Most of today’s professionals trace their roots back to that period,” Oleg said.
Moldova now has four universities offering degrees in animation, game design, and multimedia. In 2025, Condrea´s department graduated its first cohort fully trained in both 2D and 3D animation. “We’re seeing the first real wave of professionals hit the market,” Condrea says, full of hope.
Part of this growth stems from development agencies from the US, Sweden, and the UK, which have supported the training of local animators. Through initiatives like Future Professions and Mediacor’s teacher-training schemes, Condrea not only taught students but also trained university faculty: “We were building a curriculum from scratch.” These efforts turned Moldova into a rare case where external aid aligned with internal momentum. “It wasn’t just about funding. The timing was right. We were ready.”
Even now, Moldova’s creative education system stands apart. “My students are already more advanced than my generation ever was,” Condrea says. He credits the internet, affordable tools, and cultural cross-pollination of the region, as well as multilingual talent. “They don’t just know how to draw. They understand engines, interaction, and aesthetics. That’s something we had to invent for ourselves.”
Between Condrea’s ascent and bully!’s investment, Moldova’s animation sector is no longer peripheral. It’s becoming a lab, a stage for global creative production.
Scaling without losing the plot
For Carlson Bull, working in Moldova isn’t about saving money. It’s about finding fresh ideas in a place that thinks differently. The Moldovan team often surprises him with ideas different from those in the US.
For NASA, bully! created an XR graphic novel that lets users walk on the Moon and explore space tech in AR. They also built a game-like platform where students help plan future moon missions by tackling challenges like recycling and resource use.
While bully! remains headquartered in Baltimore, USA, its growing Moldovan team develops layouts, UX, rigging, animation, tech art, compositing, and scene development. “The quality of people we’ve met here is exceptional,” Bull noted. “Many of them already have global experience or instincts, and if they don’t, we help build them.”
"The future of animation belongs to the endlessly curious, to the artists who fuse imagination with evolving technology, who treat every frame as a playground for learning and creativity, and whose greatest tool is the courage to keep exploring." says Chinnam Joy Martin from bully! who is teaching animation in a Moldovan Future Professions Project.
In the different parts of Moldova’s capital, but in the same field, Oleg Condrea and bully! represent two sides of the same evolution. It is a local-to-global shift that doesn’t ask Moldova to imitate anyone, but to expand its storytelling language.
Moldova’s creative potential must be cultivated with intention. “There’s no shortcut to building a scene,” Condrea warns. “You need mentorship, funding, and freedom to fail.” Bull echoes the sentiment: “What’s happening in Moldova is exciting. And it needs more infrastructure alongside the excitement.”
Moldova’s streaming outward, connecting talent, tools, and audiences across borders. While infrastructure is building up, the stories and the people telling them are already world-class.
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