Former Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks Creatives Join Spire Animation Team to Drive Storytelling

Former Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks Creatives Join Spire Animation Team to Drive Storytelling

Newly formed Spire Animation Studio has tapped former creatives from Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Blue Sky, and Warner Animation to join its team. According to Variety, the studio formed by Oscar-nominated producer Brad Lewis (Ratatouille, How to Train Your Dragon) and entrepreneur P.J. Gunsagar has hired Shawn Krause, Creative Director of Animation and Story, Michael Surrey, Creative Director, Story and Animation, Ted Mathot, Creative Director of Development and Karen Disher, Creative Director of Development.

Spire Animation hopes to spearhead original and culturally relevant stories that resonate with audiences worldwide, rather than offer reboots. For Lewis, that means partnering with both best-in-class talent and emerging creatives to tell those stories.

Gunsagar understands the “playing it safe” pull in animation and movies. “The idea is to reset that a bit and breakthrough with more innovative ways to tell stories and what a next-generation studio could look like, without all of the encumbrances of legacy infrastructure.”

Gunsagar added, “The idea is to breakthrough with more innovative ways to tell stories and what a next-generation studio could look like, without all the encumbrances of legacy infrastructure.

The new studio aims to produce animated movies more seamlessly and leaner with its proprietary, real-time workflow platform built on a popular, state-of-the-art game engine. Spire Animation Studios seems to empower its collaborators on a digital format within the same environment, saving valuable production time and allowing more time for changes and improvements.

Among the projects in development at Spire are Danny McBride’s Trouble, a feature about a 13-year-old who is swept into a parallel universe known as World of Trouble (Lewis created the story with Kevin Barnett and Chris Pappas) and

Century Goddess about a woman who learns that she’s a once-in-a-century musical goddess (led by Lewis, Diane Paulus, Starrah and Bisha K. Ali)

Gunsagar says, “Brad came from worlds where everyone was under one roof and that’s how some of the best studios have been built, but now, it’s about empowering this global workforce and coming up with new patterns around that.”

Krause who worked on “Inside Out” added, “Spire is an opportunity for me to take the best of what I learned about filmmaking at Pixar and adapt it to cutting edge technology. It’s a chance to get back to being a leaner, scrappier team of artists which is something I miss. We are building a new way of collaborating from the ground up.”

Added Disher, “I met Brad a few years ago and admired his vision and positive energy. I was thrilled when he invited me to be part of Spire – it’s a rare and special opportunity to help build a new studio from the ground up. Our team has years of experience at the big studios to draw on, but now we can be more nimble and push beyond the usual way of doing things, find new and surprising ways to tell stories.”