| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Animation |
| Founded | 2003 |
| Headquarters | Adelaide, South Australia, Australia |
Key people | Eddie White (Creative Director) [1] Sam White (Managing Director) Hugh Nguyen (Head of Development) James Calvert (Head of Production) Brodie McCrossin (Animation Director) |
| Products | Film, TV Series, TV Commercials, Video Games |
The People's Republic of Animation (PRA) is an animation studio based in Adelaide, Australia. It began as a creator of music videos for Australian bands in 2003, and has since created award-winning short films and TV commercials, and developed feature films.
As 14-year-olds, in 1996, PRA founders Eddie White, James Calvert & Hugh Nguyen began experimenting with a Super 8 film camera under the name of ‘Dabble Animation’. Their first short film Natural Born Animators (1998) was made two years later and achieved some national and international festival success on the student film circuit, including a selection at the Student Animation Festival in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. In 2000 White renamed the team 'The People's Republic of Animation', a name coined after he flipped through an old Funk & Wagnall's encyclopedia looking for titles and saw the heading 'The People's Republic of China' and liked the empire-like and grand connotations it had. Animator and sculptor Brodie McCrossin joined in 2000, and producer Sam White in 2002, and the company was officially formed in 2003. The company received their first government grant for a stop motion TV pilot and computer animation for a music video in the same year. [2] [3]
The PRA has produced two Australian Film Institute (AFI) winning short films: Fritz gets Rich (2005) [4] and Carnivore Reflux (2006). [5] Carnivore Reflux was also voted best animated film by Australian audiences at the Inside Film Awards in 2006. [6] Other notable productions include the international short film co-production with the Shanghai Animation Film Studio of China, Sweet & Sour. [7]
White and Calvert directed the first of the Mitsubishi Lancer/Sony Tropfest 'supershort' films titled Safer in a wild world, a one-minute short that blends 2D animation and 3D animation in a pop-up storybook style. White and Ari Gibson of the PRA directed the short film The Cat Piano, with narration by Australian artist Nick Cave.
The PRA subsequently made two short films, I Was A Teenage Butterfly and The Ghastly Gourmet Cooking Show.
Ralph Bakshi is an American animator, filmmaker and painter. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1994, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, predominantly urban dramas and fantasy films, five of which he wrote. He has also been involved in numerous television projects as director, writer, producer and animator.
The National Film Board of Canada is a Canadian public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries.
A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film organizations may use different definitions, however; the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, for example, currently defines a short film as 45 minutes or less in the case of documentaries, and 59 minutes or less in the case of scripted narrative films.
Gabriel Luke Reid is a New Zealand director, screenwriter and producer working in television, film and theatre. His doctoral thesis examines the impact of digital technologies on film production.
The Inside Film Awards is an annual awards ceremony and broadcast platform for the Australian film industry, developed by the creators of Inside Film Magazine, Stephen Jenner and David Barda, and originally produced for television by Australian Producer Andrew Dillon. The awards are determined by a national audience poll, which differentiates it from the Australian AACTA Awards, which are judged by industry professionals.
Ronaldo del Carmen is a Filipino writer, director, storyboard artist, illustrator, and voice actor. He co-directed and co-wrote the story for the Pixar film Inside Out (2015), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the first Filipino to do so.
Yoram Jerzy Gross was a Polish-born, Australian film and television producer, animation director, and writer of children's and family entertainment. He founded the animation studio Flying Bark Productions.
Bernard Derriman is an Australian animator, director, and producer. He is known for working on the animated sitcom Bob's Burgers and co-directing its animated feature film. He began his career in animation at Walt Disney Studios in Sydney. He was an animator there until 2006, working on both television series and films.
The Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) is an Australian video games and computer animation school. Founded in 1996, it was one of the world's first institutions to offer qualifications in these industries. The AIE provides courses covering CGI, animation, video game asset creation and games programming. Campuses are located in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and an online campus. The Australian ABC has said that the AIE "is one of Australia's most awarded 3D animation, game design and visual FX educators".
Donald Paul Hahn is an American film producer who is credited with producing some of the most successful animated films in history, including Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
Nexus Studios is an animation, VFX, film and interactive production studio based in London and LA. It was founded in 2000 by Charlotte Bavasso and Christopher O'Reilly.
Edward Alexander White, known as Eddie White, is an Australian writer/director and co-founder of The People's Republic Of Animation. His short animated film The Cat Piano (2009) won an Australian Film Institute (AFI) Award for Short Animation, and was also shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Short Animated Film in 2010.
Marcell Jankovics was a Hungarian graphic artist, film director, animator and author. He is best known for the animated films Johnny Corncob and Son of the White Mare.
Damon Gameau is an Australian actor, director, and producer, known for his documentaries That Sugar Film and 2040. Gameau has also appeared in a number of award-winning TV shows and films, such as Love My Way, The Tracker and Balibo.
Istanbul Animation Festival is a festival of animated films founded in 2003 and held annually in November. Festival Director and Founder is Efe Efeoglu. The festival is organised by Alternatif Akım.
Sarah Aubrey is a British-born Australian actress. She has had guest roles in episodes of Pieces of Her, The Secret Life of Us, All Saints, Water Rats and Frayed, along with numerous animation series and TV commercials. She also won the Best Actress award at the 2002 Tropfest film festival and is one of Australia's top voice talents.
BENT IMAGE LAB is a production company and animation studio specializing in story development, television, commercials, visual effects, music videos, short films, experimental techniques and tech development in augmented reality (AR). Located in Portland, Oregon, the company was founded in 2002 by partners David Daniels, Ray Di Carlo, and Chel White.
Thomas "Tomm" Moore is an Irish filmmaker, animator, illustrator and comics artist. He co-founded Cartoon Saloon with Nora Twomey and Paul Young, an animation studio and production company based in Kilkenny, Ireland. His first three feature films, The Secret of Kells (2009), co-directed with Nora Twomey, Song of the Sea (2014) and Wolfwalkers (2020), co-directed with Ross Stewart, have received critical acclaim and were all nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
The Thief and the Cobbler is an animated fantasy film co-written and directed by Richard Williams, who intended it to be his masterpiece and a milestone in the animated medium. Originally devised in the 1960s, the film was in and out of production for nearly three decades due to independent funding and ambitiously complex animation. It was finally placed into full production in 1989 when Warner Bros. agreed to finance and distribute the film after his successful animation direction for Who Framed Roger Rabbit. When production went over budget and behind schedule, and Disney's similarly-themed Aladdin loomed as imminent competition, Williams was forced out and the film was heavily re-edited and cheaply finished by producer Fred Calvert as a mainstream Disney-style musical. It was eventually released by Allied Filmmakers in 1993 with the title The Princess and the Cobbler. Two years later, Miramax Films, which was owned by Disney at the time, released another re-edit titled Arabian Knight. Both versions performed poorly at the box office and received mixed reviews.
Sophie Byrne is an Australian film and TV producer, best known for the Academy Award winning animated short The Lost Thing.
