Brisbane-based studio Fika Entertainment has produced over 260 hours of animated digital-first content, which includes Teletubbies Let’s Go! and two digital first series for American Girl in the past year. We had a chance to chat with CEO Jordan Vincent and head of VFX/CG Pete Divers about the studio’s recent projects and achievements.
Animation Magazine: Congrats on your very productive and high-profile year! Can you tell us a bit about the beginnings of Fika Entertainment?
Jordan Vincent: Fika has deep roots in research and development and has its origin at the Deakin Motion Lab, a commercial grade, full-service motion-capture facility where we were doing a range of projects from live performance to games to commercials. We developed an in-house toolset for real-time animation (which we now call ‘virtual production’) that enabled us to do things like stream motion capture into the game engine, synchronize things on a timeline, trigger real-time FX and manage data, long before those things were available to anybody but the biggest players in the market like Wētā, much less part of the game engines themselves.
From our vantage point as an R&D facility, we were able to pour resources into re-engineering production workflows and automating processes across both Unity and Unreal Engine. Eventually, our work was commercialized by the University and we were spun out as Fika Entertainment. We’re now part of the Eternus Group, and continue to keep that pioneering spirit of R&D at the core of what we do.
What was the history behind the ‘Cartoon in a Day’ project and how that goal impacted your evolution?
Pete Divers: When we were still at Deakin Motion Lab we were doing a bunch of commercial projects for TV, film and games. Some of these were quite abstract, like the motion capture of dogs to animate loaves of bread. All these characters had to be visualized as dots on a screen, which is clearly very hard to direct, so we wrote our own data streaming plugin to allow us to visualize this performance in real time. We were able to see the potential that as the technologies evolved, we could potentially shoot animated content like a sitcom.
Jordan: The desire to create a ‘Cartoon in a Day’ came from our belief that virtual production — specifically integrating motion capture with game engines — could shortcut traditional animation processes, which are slow and expensive to make. By bringing real-time previz, virtual cameras, interactive FX and smart approaches to things like editing, storyboarding and directing, we felt that we could craft animation as though we were putting together a theatre show, minimizing the impact of post-production workflows and bringing the creatives together for collaborative decision-making.
As the company grew and we started animating for global studios, this has enabled us to created broadcast quality content at speed.
How many people work at the company and which animation and VFX tools do you use to create your projects?
Jordan: Fika scales up and down as required for projects, but at a time when we were producing three animated shows simultaneously, we topped out at about 50 staff. That was creating more than 300 minutes of completed animation in a single year, including 260 minutes of content for Teletubbies Let’s Go!
Our pipeline starts and finishes with Unreal — we have engineered a storyboarding process that syncs rehearsal footage with camera moves, allowing for informed, up-front decision making. Along the way, we use Maya for animation tidy ups, but importantly, we have automated the processes of bringing data in and out of different programs. Our render system, which automates from Maya to Unreal to dispersed renders, is something that we’re planning on making publicly available this year, to help other animation studios bridge the gap between traditional animation methods and integrating UE into their pipelines.
Pete: Our team is predominantly Maya and Unreal Engine artists, which has driven us to develop and create so many of our proprietary in-house pipeline tools to bridge the gap and translate our data between the two software packages. As UE is still a game engine, there are many features still missing to make it a production-ready animation toolset. As a development team, we are working to change this and in the future to open these tools up to the wider public. We are constantly striving to pioneer new technology to progress the creation of animated content.
What are some of the projects you are working on today?
Jordan: We are still working on Teletubbies Let’s Go! with WildBrain Spark — that project is 52 x 5-minute episodes, plus a range of additional ancillary material. We have a number of other projects in development/ preproduction as well that we’re very excited about, including a VR project. We’re also working on making some of our in-house tools and systems available to other animation companies who are looking for a fast and safe way to begin integrating virtual production into their pipelines, and we offer consultancy services across motion capture and Unreal Engine as well.
What are your biggest challenges in 2023-2024?
Jordan: The biggest challenge we have found is helping IP owners and clients understand the opportunity of virtual production for their projects. It does function quite differently from traditional animation workflows, so what you approve and when you approve them looks slightly different than what many companies are used to, but the benefits are considerable. We believe very strongly that this way of working (particularly when you’re working with a company like Fika which has a lot of experience and successful track record in this area and has already done most of the R&D required to manage a large scale production) actually mitigates risk because you can see what you are creating really early in the process.
We can avoid that messy 2D-storyboard to 3D animation translation, and see right away if the story beats are working effectively. Our process is particularly geared towards the digital first market—and we say digital ‘first’ rather than ‘digital only’ because the work we are producing is of high enough quality to be sold to broadcast as well. It’s particularly suited to high volumes of content, anything that needs song, dance and physicality, productions that are looking to emphasize unique characterization in movement and personality in their CG cast, and fast spin-out material for socials.
Pete: Our biggest challenges have been streamlining and finding efficiencies across our pipeline. We are working in an industry of kids’ animation where we are tasked with outputting an enormous amount of data of minutes of animation a year. We’re also seeing increased expectations for higher quality alongside the high volume of content. Animated content for YouTube is now on par with a Netflix or broadcast release. We strive to create broadcast quality content at the volume and speed required of social media releases, and this means an incredible amount of development work towards efficiencies and streamlining our pipeline, removing human error and allowing the technology to really support the creative process.
What is your take on the current state of CG and VFX?
Jordan: Watching the industrial action overseas, and seeing the move of VFX artists to have secure work, good pay and safe working conditions really encourages us in what we’re trying to do. Fika continually strives to be an ethical workplace, and because we’ve always created our own tools and automation, we’ve been able to retain good work/life balance for our staff. Our focus on bringing the creative together onstage means that we’re able to include lots of voices and creative ideas, but we’re also really confident that the back-end data management of our virtual production workflows manage the risk. The rendering power of Unreal Engine in particular are really changing the game for the animation industry, and shifting required skillsets and workflows. We’re really excited about the opportunities in that space, and have always been at the forefront of this kind of work.
Pete: It’s a tough industry, and everyone is worried about the way technology is progressing, including whether AI or other forms of machine learning will take jobs away. However, all industries are benefiting from the evolution of technology, and it’s important to know when, where and how to implement these new emerging technologies to aid in the creative process. Like any tool, it needs guidance and human input to work effectively.
How do you feel about the potentials and possible threats of AI in the business?
Jordan: We get asked that a lot, and our stance on AI is really clear: We use AI components in our coding of our automated in-house toolset, but we would not use AI in the creative that we offer to clients, particularly in terms of things like concept or character design. There’s a big risk around ownership with that, and we understand that is a real risk that our partners are looking to manage.
What are your tips for CG professional and animators who want to prepare for the next stage of AI/CG?
Jordan: I think it’s really important for practitioners to be open-minded about different programs and toolsets, and to really embrace the fact that a lot of skills translate across really well into virtual production.
Pete: We are stepping back towards an older way of working. Back in the early days of visual effects, everyone was looking for solutions to problems and it took a wide range of technologies to solve them. In the early 2000s we became much more specialized. I feel we are now moving back to a generalized workflow and artists need a wider skillset to complete their work.
What would you like the animation and VFX community to know about Fika?
Jordan: We’re here to work with companies who are excited to embrace the potential of virtual production for animation, and we’ve been working in this space a long time with a successful track record which makes us a safe pair of hands as a partner. We come with a really strong backing of long-term R&D, and we’re very confident about working with people to help shape their project to leverage what this technology can do and bring their creative vision to life
Pete: We are battle-tested in a new industry and very experienced at creating content
For more information, visit fikaent.com.
using game engines and virtual production. We have already encountered all the problems this way of working will throw at a production and we’ve come up with creative and technical ways to resolve them. Fika is the only partner for animated virtual production– we have years’ head start on the competition and we are not slowing down.
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