We have been brought in twice to start a development studio from nothing, and both times we did it. Both were in Edinburgh. This is founding work rather than advice about founding: recruitment, technical direction, the early production decisions, and somewhere to sit while the studio finds its feet.
What setting up a studio involves
- Hiring and building the team. Finding, recruiting and training the people a new studio needs.
- Technical pre-production. The decisions about tools, pipeline and approach that are easier to get right at the outset than to correct later.
- Studio and project management. Running the studio day to day while its first projects are delivered.
- Working with the people behind it. A parent company elsewhere, incoming management, clients, and external production teams.
- Funding. Preparing grant applications to support the new studio, where they apply.
- Premises. A new studio can be based in our own offices until it needs its own.
Studios we have set up
Skymoons Edinburgh. From December 2016 to May 2017 we set up the first studio outside China for Skymoons Digital Entertainment, working with the company’s Chinese parent and the incoming Edinburgh management. That meant building the team through hiring, and the technical pre-production the studio needed before it could begin work. Skymoons was based in our own offices until it outgrew them and moved to its own premises.
VEEMEE. We helped found and set up a virtual world development studio in central Edinburgh, hiring and training a team of twenty. Our responsibilities included studio and project management, technical direction, client relationships and the coordination of external production teams. We also prepared multiple successful Scottish Enterprise grant applications on the studio’s behalf. The projects it went on to deliver for Audi, Billabong, Wrangler, Sega and Sony ran through that structure.
Square Slice Studios. A venture of our own, formed in 2016 with the author Grant Morrison to develop entertainment for mixed reality. We applied successfully to Scottish Enterprise’s High Growth Ventures on its behalf.
How an engagement runs
A studio set-up has a clear end: a working team, in its own premises, under its own management. Skymoons took six months, from a first meeting two months before the studio was announced to a handover with the studio open and its recruitment well advanced. Where it suits the client we stay on, as we did at VEEMEE, to manage the studio and the projects it delivers.
If you are planning a new studio or a new team, tell us about it. Our other services are described separately.