As Connecticut mulls ways to draw entrepreneurs out of its most innovative companies, one of its most successful transplants is expanding in Greenwich ”“ without yet producing offshoot startups here.
Digital animator Blue Sky Studios is adding more than 40,000 square feet of additional space on American Lane in Greenwich, according to Cushman & Wakefield, four years after the News Corp. subsidiary relocated there from White Plains, N.Y. Blue Sky”™s relocation here remains perhaps the most significant win for Connecticut”™s tax credit for film and digital production, along with NBC”™s decision to tape several talk shows in Stamford.
With Blue Sky”™s existing headcount of some 400 workers in more than 100,000 square feet of space, that represents sufficient space for an additional 150 workers. At deadline a Blue Sky spokeswoman had not made an executive available to provide details on the expansion.
In an industry dominated by Walt Disney Co.”™s Pixar Animation Studios and Dreamworks Animation, Blue Sky Studios can lay credible claim to the next best of the bunch of digital animation studios, with Sony Pictures Animation (“The Smurfs”) perhaps quibbling with that.
Illumination Entertainment, which had a monster hit last year in “Despicable Me,” reportedly outsources its animation to other companies. Fairfield-based General Electric Co. ceded control of Illumination Entertainment last year to Comcast Corp. as part of its divestiture of a majority stake in NBC Universal.
“Ice Age: Continental Drift,” Blue Sky”™s next release, is not scheduled until next summer ”“ by then, a series of digitally animated hits will be out from other studios, including “Puss in Boots” and “Madagascar 3” from Dreamworks Animation, “The Adventures of TinTin” animated by Peter Jackson”™s New Zealand studio Weta Digital and directed by Steven Spielberg, and “Dr. Seuss”™ The Lorax” from Illumination Entertainment.
While California-based Illumination is run by the former CEO of 20th Century Fox Animation, the News Corp. entity that oversees Blue Sky, no Blue Sky visionary has left to launch a local animation venture to take advantage of Connecticut”™s tax credits for digital production.
At a jobs summit in Hartford this month organized by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, a consultant with Battelle Memorial Institute suggested the state is not doing enough to mine startups from entrepreneurial-minded innovators working at local companies.
“Entrepreneurs are not just born,” said Mitch Horowitz, managing director for Battelle, who is consulting to the state of Connecticut on cluster development. “They”™re developed. They get good advice. They get training. And then you”™ve got to give them the capital to succeed ”¦ It all comes back down eventually to talent.”
Blue Sky does not just boast a big-bucks backer in News Corp. and good story lines from founder Christopher Wedge and other executive producers in house. Pete Paquette, an animator who recently left the company to join the Providence, R.I.-based 38 Studios L.L.C. game designer backed by Curt Schilling, marveled at what transpired after he attempted to interest Blue Sky in a software program to quickly render animated bits during the production process.
“A (Blue Sky) R&D genius named Hugo Ayala created an in-house software that is much more intuitive than anything available on the market to this day,” Paquette wrote in his blog in August. “If Blue Sky ever decided to market his software to the public, I”™d be first in line.”
Blue Sky has done its part to help spur the industry in Connecticut. In 2009, it donated the same computers and software used to create “Ice Age” to the University of Connecticut ”“ at the time, UConn said the resulting “render farm” ranked among the best of any university in the country.
Kevin Segalla, CEO of the Connecticut Film Center L.L.C., which has soundstages in Stamford and Norwalk, said he believes that germination process will occur as Stamford gets a new incubator up and running that will attempt to spur the development of digital technology startups, possibly to include those in entertainment.
“It will happen,” Segalla said. “It”™s happening right now.”
