Wallace and Gromit get a makeover.
That's one way to describe the kind of computer animation former Salt Lake resident Miles Romney and friends are poised to pitch to the likes of Warner Bros., Dreamworks, Disney and UPN later this month.
Romney — along with Jeremy Miner, Jeremy Thomas and Matthew Armstrong, also formerly of Salt Lake City — form the aptly titled Dream Seeker Animation Studios, a group of young animators (ages range from 22 to 24 years old) transplanted to Los Angeles, who claim to be the first ever to create shorts using computer-animated claymation or "digiclaymation." The end product is, essentially, Wallace and Gromit-type claymation, only simulated on the computer.
After seeing how well claymation shorts did at festivals, the group of friends decided to try it out themselves, using computers instead of shapable clay. They were all fascinated with claymation but knew it to be very expensive and time-consuming, so they tried cutting some corners financially. Armstrong, who'd previously developed video games as a 3-D modeler, developed computer-rendered models to look like clay models.
"(We) just tried to simulate everything you see in regular claymation, from the speed of the camera to the grain of the film to the movement of the characters, down to the stereotypical jerkiness that adds to its charm," Romney said in an interview with the Deseret News. (The jerkiness stems from using only 12 frames per second rather than the standard 24, allowing the animators to make a feature in half the time it takes to create a typical cartoon.)
"We're excited about this process because we can literally offer the studio a feature film in six months with a budget of $10 million. Who else can offer that? Using actual clay will take two years and a budget that's going to be substantially higher, and using a sleek, polished computer animation like what's used in 'Toy Story 2' (also increases the costs involved). In creating clay-like models, we're able to meet in between."
Just four months ago, the four friends quit their jobs and moved to Los Angeles in hopes of marketing their digiclaymation in any way possible. In that time, Romney said, they have created a film, caught the eye of a big name executive producer and attracted a growing fan base thanks to the Internet and the interest of four major studios — Warner Bros., Dreamworks, Disney and UPN. They hope to turn what they have into a feature film, a TV series or seven-minute episodes distributed via the Web.
"I think we will go as far as we want to go with this," producer George Palelei said.
It is through Palelei that Dream Seeker has been able to get a foot in many of the studio doors so far.
"I feel this is a teaser of what's to come for claymation, and I feel very strongly about the project going forth to the screen, but when is the question. It takes the right ear and the right eye to see the project before being commissioned to go all the way with it. The process is very slow — when they say they'll get back to you, sometimes it takes two to three to four weeks."
None in the four friends expected to achieve the kind of success they have thus far, limited as it has been. In order to help pay the bills, they've been doing corporate Web solutions and Web site design for companies, and they expected to be doing only that for quite some time, especially considering their young age and being largely unknowns in such a competitive field.
"Age has been a concern, and frankly I didn't expect this much business so soon, so we had other plans in place. We've all put a pretty large amount of faith into it."
Although no commitments have been made by any of the four studios, their hopes remain high. They start visiting studios later this month, possibly into February and even March.
Dream Seeker's cast of animated characters, called The Hyde Park Troupe, is a group of actors who live in London in a neighborhood of the same name. Having lived in both Spain and Guatemala, Romney felt having Americans living outside their element lent an obvious comedic slant to things.
Offering a preview of what they hope will develop into something larger, "Therapy," the company's first short, is available for download at: http://hydepark.romney.net.