GamesBizWire recently had the opportunity to speak with The People's Republic of Animation's (PRA) Managing Director, Sam White, about the company's entrance into the video game industry and the successes it has seen since then.
GamesBizWire (GBW): How and when did you join the company? Describe your role.
Sam White (SW): The People's Republic of Animation was formed from a blend of passion for creating original animated ideas and a drive to see those ideas realized. I joined the team in 2002 after I saw the co-founders really making a go of forming a studio but clearly in need of a producer. They were young, naive and just desperately wanted to make animation. They rented studio space while trying to pay the rent by working other jobs. I just couldn't stand to see the talent and passion these guys had go to waste. I really just fell into it and eventually realized what I was doing was producing and I loved it. I had no more experience in producing than they had in filmmaking but working together we managed to win some project funding, entered a few competitions for emerging filmmakers and gradually built a portfolio. Two years later we had all quit our day jobs and were working full time at the studio.
My role now is less of a producing role and more a CEO role. You could say I'm producing a company rather than individual projects now.
GBW: Give us some insight on how PRA became known as a producer of such top quality character animation, storytelling skills and bold styles across the board.
SW: From the start we were idea driven. We either wanted to make animation that we thought was funny or create artwork and animation that was highly original. The upside of starting without any customers is that we could experiment and do whatever style we wanted. We were originally a purely in-house IP (Intellectual Property) studio. Stop-motion, 2D, 3D and 2.5D were all part of our early palette. We also had the chance to write our own film ideas, TV series ideas or music video treatments rather than being handed a script.
I think this instilled in us a love of creating something bold and original in style. We always like to take the riskier path creatively; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But when it works, people really notice.
GBW: PRA has grown into a highly prolific studio that creates international award-winning short films, TV commercials and developing feature films. Discuss the progression from the early stages of PRA to the current status of the company with more recent incorporation of video game animation.
SW: While we started the studio purely creating our own IP, we quickly realized we needed to create an income stream in order for us to dedicate to our craft. We have always known that to tell the stories we want to tell, we need to have the freedom to do just that. We were often lucky enough or adamant enough to combine a paid gig with the chance to do something we wanted to do anyway. For example, we could apply to state and federal funding agencies for finance to produce short films. So while they weren't lucrative projects, they allowed us to experiment and at least provided some financial support that allowed us not to have to work elsewhere.
Over the past three years, feature film development and working in video games have both grown to become important parts of our business. Feature film development is a longer-term goal of ours, and resonates most ideally with our original vision of building a studio that creates original animated ideas.
Our work in video games is proving to be both a great chance to constantly push our character performance work as well as leverage our passion for storytelling into an exciting, and importantly, commercially viable industry. Video games work has proven to be a great fit for PRA – there is a continued and growing demand for stylized character performance and storytelling.
GBW:PRA was founded at the beginning of the global technology wave in 2003. Describe some of the challenges that the company faced, and how they were overcome.
SW: Our main challenge when we started was just finding the opportunities, the clients and building trust for them to give us a shot. Music videos allowed us to do this especially. With lower budgets, clients would usually be more open in letting us run with an idea and experiment, which was a great learning opportunity for us.
The challenges were too numerous to mention but as long as we were busy creating good work we knew we were on the right track.
GBW: When dealing with video games that typically appear on several different consoles from Playstation to Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii, how does PRA ensure the promise to developers about the quality of animation in its games withstanding the ever-changing expectations of the "next-generation" consoles?
SW: Good animation is good animation no matter what your polygon limit or engine limitations. Whether we're animating for in-game or pre-rendered cinematics, we always ensure the character performance is the highest priority. We uphold our promise by being specialists in what we do. Many of our developer clients have a very high standard of in-house animators already, so we always need to equal or exceed that. We have to make sure we always bring to the table the best character performance we can, therefore adding entertainment value to the game or promo movie. That is the ultimate goal.
GBW: Working with producers such as Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), THQ Studio Australia, Blue Tongue Entertainment and Torus Games, PRA tends to target younger audiences with the majority of its animation projects like Scooby Doo! First Frights and de Blob. Is there an effort to reach out to a more broad audience with future projects?
SW: It comes back to what we do best--that is, stylized character animation and storytelling. Our effort is put toward serving those games better than any other studio and not necessarily in broadening the style of games we contribute to. This will happen anyway as the talents we utilize are applicable across many genres.
We are more client-focused than game-focused. All of the games we have worked on have come through clients we want to work with rather than specific games we want to work on. Building strong relationships with our developer and publisher clients is where it starts. As long as they know what we specialize in, they will make the ultimate decision on which games they would like us to work.
As far as audience goes, I wouldn't necessarily say that the audience for the games we've worked on are strictly of a younger age. Games such as de Blob have a broad age appeal and likewise, the latest project we have worked on with SCEA (we produced the promo movie) will have a broad age appeal as well.
GBW: We've heard bits and pieces about PRA's recent work on The Last Airbender with THQ. How does PRA land animation service contracts with such world-renowned developers/producers?
SW: Through providing what our clients need and by delivering when they need it. It sounds simple but it isn't in practice. Standards are high, schedules are tight and budgets are limited. We have been able to work within those limitations and deliver a great result for our clients. This is demonstrated by the fact that all of our past clients have come back to work with us again. They wouldn't do this if we didn't deliver. It is a very close-knit industry so we will only continue to win the work if we uphold this reputation.
GBW: Are there any plans for PRA to develop games or animations for an original IP, or does the business model lean more toward outsourcing for development studios and publishers?
SW:As many of the independent game developers would know, balancing the development of original IP with a service model is tough. Day to day, it is most important to meet our commitments to our clients and continue to improve our service. But for PRA as an animation studio, it is in our company DNA to create original IP so it is something we will always do. The tough part is really finding the time and resources to develop IP effectively, however, there are investment opportunities out there that can assist with this.
Our IP development is progressing well, with our first feature film on the cards and a number of screenplays in development, but the service model is here to stay. As long as we can continue to add entertainment value to games and continue to enjoy the work as much as we do we will continue to work in games.
Longer term, I am very much looking forward to licensing IP into game development. This may well come from our feature film projects. That would of course depend on the success of the film and the particular IP involved. It would be great to be working with the publishers on that level though. We may well be producing cinematics for a game based on one of our films one day - that's an exciting thought.
GBW: What upcoming projects are currently in development that you can tell us about?
SW:In games, we are looking forward to the release of a new promo movie that we produced with SCEA. It was a huge opportunity to work with Sony and they were a great team to work with. I'm looking forward to playing the game too.
Also, keep an eye out for the cinematics we produced for The Last Airbender (Wii) with THQ Studio Australia, another great team to work with. We created these cinematics with 2D layered artwork as opposed to 3D and I'm looking forward to seeing them in context. We would love the opportunity to do some more 2D illustrative animation work in video games.
GBW: Is there any additional information that you would like to share with our readers?
SW:For sure, if you'd like to stay up to date with some of our latest work, please sign up for our e-newsletter, PRAVDA, that we send out monthly.
Also, our website.
Also, check out our most recent short, The Cat Piano, which made the Oscar shortlist for Best Animated Short earlier this year.
HD version and our general blog, PRA Declassified.
Enjoy!
