Press release: New York Weekly
Creativity and Animation are the pillars of the entertainment industry, the demand of which is always on the rise since it falls close to children’s hearts. This is where Shoguns Studios does the magic, a London-based 3D animation studio that helps brands come to life through CGI. It is renowned for developing and building enduring character brands across all media including Mr Monopoly, Chichi Love, Shimajiro, Fartist Club to name a few. The studio works with advertising agencies and brands in all territories to create characters for the children’s entertainment sector, toy brands in particular. Their 360° approach to children’s entertainment delves deeper into characters to make them richer and more expansive.
Established in 2013, Shoguns has worked with the world’s leading children’s brands, telling their stories across a wide array of media, including webisodes, long-form animations, toy figures and mobile games. It is a highly specialized team of 3D animators, modelers, traditional artists and character designers. Having worked with the likes of Disney, Hasbro and ITV, they have been instrumental in developing animated nursery rhymes for the Japanese powerhouse Benesess Studios. It has also been developing animated shorts on Youtube for the last three years, which so far has received over 65 million views worldwide.
Now Shoguns Studios is set to venture into creating animation for the metaverse in which stories will be told in Virtual Reality format to connect more deeply to people’s hearts and find new ways to tell stories. Realizing the role Virtual Reality plays in the history of mediums, Shoguns Creative Director, Willard Appiah talks of ‘suspension of disbelief’ and how Virtual Reality can bridge the gap between the reality of the story and its interpretation into reality. He asserts that while for all other mediums, your consciousness interprets the medium, in Virtual Reality your consciousness is the medium, and hence its potential is enormous. Willard adds that “Unlike traditional film, where every shot is composed, in Virtual Reality, the world moves around you. We can also see the changing role of the close-up in virtual reality, bringing the character inside of your personal space and developing an emotional connection to it.” According to him, the music and the spatialized sound plays a crucial role in Virtual Reality making the viewers feel as if they are part of something.
Shoguns Studio continues to develop new series for audiences of all ages. The future that the studio envisions isn’t complete yet and aims to work towards VR, AI and MX to be able to touch and smell providing the viewers with a thrilling experience at the crossroads of imagination and reality.