REALTIME animation studio celebrates 25 years of CG creativity

The REALTIME animation studio celebrates its 25th birthday, a significant milestone for the independent computer graphics company which has two studios in the UK: in Manchester and on a refurbished farm in rural Lancashire. After meeting at Blackpool College of Art, founders Tony Prosser, Steve Kerswell and Jon Clayton launched REALTIME in 1996 from a rented home in nearby Lytham. Tony Prosser and Jon Clayton are still in key positions at the company today, as CEO and Lead Artist respectively.

The studio began with architectural visualization and CG imagery and animation for the automotive industry for clients including McLaren, Audi and Ford. An important date for the studio came in 2000, when REALTIME created an exceptional CG presentation for Ford for the Millennium Dome in London.

The studio quickly carved a niche for itself in creating award-winning video game trailers and game footage for clients around the world, including Rare, Codemasters, Disney Interactive, and Microsoft Game Studios. The studio's specialty in storytelling and character animation can be seen in viral trailers including SMITE: To hell and back, Game of Thrones: winter is coming and more recently Subnautica: below zero.

In recent years, the studio has moved into the broadcast industry, making photorealistic VFXs and animated characters for shows including the BBC War of the Worlds and Sky TV A discovery of witches. REALTIME has established a VFX TV department to further support this effort, expanding the studio size by 60% in 2021.

“This is an extremely exciting time to be in the computer graphics space, as we are seeing tremendous growth in demand for high-quality content in the automotive, gaming and broadcasting industries. As a local Northwestern company, we are extremely proud of our history and heritage, ”said CEO Tony Prosser.

“The goal for the next few years will be to nurture new talent who can benefit from the experienced experts we already have at REALTIME. Remote work is the key to making our team grow; during the pandemic we have shown, to ourselves and to our customers, that we can produce world-class productions when we are not all in the same room ”.

In their 25th year, REALTIME celebrates several awards and nominations. Their work on the second season of A discovery of witches is a finalist for Best VFX at the Broadcast Tech Innovation Awards and Unknown Entertainment's viral trailer Subnautica: below zero won the Vega Digital Award for Best Animation. Both projects also received "special credit" at the AEAF awards earlier this year.

www.realtimeuk.com