Bangkok animation studio wins major jobs from Lego
Operation established under BOI privileges is 80% Thai-staffed
A start-up animation studio, Picture This Studio, set up a couple years ago in Bangkok under Board of Investment privileges is producing animated TV series for Lego Friends.
Picture This Studio chief executive officer Nicolai Bartels Thomsen said there were plenty of animation studios working on productions for Lego Friends. His company takes care of Lego TV series and Web content.
“Lego is our main client, which we got through our parent company, the M2 family. We work closely with Lego’s team from the script to the final works,” Thomsen said.
He said Picture This Studio was an animation house staffed 80 per cent by Thais and 20 per cent by foreigners, resulting in a rare coupling of Eastern and Western sensibilities, creativity and performance.
“We have 80 hard-working, clever-minded artists and producers, 80 per cent [of whom] are Thais.”
The company’s main services are cartoon TV series, TV commercials, social media (YouTube) and Web content (short-form animation) in both two- and three-dimensional animation.
Next year, the company plans to have 80 per cent of its business in TV series, 5 per cent TV commercials, and the rest in different kinds of animations such as short movies and social-media videos.
Examples of animations produced by Picture This Studio are Lego Friends Episode 4, “Mia’s Ranch Romance” (2013 clip), Lego commercial “Guardians of the Galaxy – The Milano”, commercial for the Lego movie “Emmet’s Mech”, and Lego mini-movie “Catch the Crooks”.
“We specialise in a multi-faceted production facility that focuses primarily on high-spec computer graphics and 2D animation for episodic series, TVC [television commercials] and short film formats,” Thomsen said.
Picture This is able to deliver three major fronts: conceptual pre-production (art, design, storyboard, edit); animation production (model, rig, texture, layout, and animation); and final output (lighting, FX, render, and composite).
“Our studio was approved by the Thai government via the Board of Investment programme, which allows us to attract some of the best talent from within Thailand and around the globe. We are in the right location to be able to bring ‘Southeast Asia meets Europe meets North America’ to bring international quality with affordability,” Thomsen said.
Most of its clients are large corporates and advertising and media agencies from abroad that require international-standard animations.
“We position ourselves as the animation studio for international clients. Our key clients are the large companies and pure advertisers,” Thomsen said.
He said there was demand for animations from Thailand and nearby markets, but its priorities were clients from the West where its parent company, Denmark’s M2 family, is located.
Thomsen said Thailand’s animation industry seemed to be professional. Many animation talents are out there in the market. Animation in any form, whether movies, TV series, TV commercials, or short films, combined many skills and talents.
