Adelaide-based animation studio the People\u2019s Republic of Animation has been partially acquired by Halfbrick, the developer behind the popular Fruit Ninja iPhone game.<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n PRA said the details of the deal were confidential, but that its six-strong team wouldn\u2019t be fully subsumed into Halfbrick\u2019s offices.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n However, managing director Sam White says that PRA could leave South Australia in an attempt to grow the business.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNothing is planned at the moment, but it has always been a challenge here because of the size of the talent pool and the fact that a lot of clients aren\u2019t based here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe will spend a lot of time up there (Queensland) with Halfbrick and they will give us a lot of marketing help.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n White says that the partial takeover was designed to give PRA greater clout in the iPhone and iPad market.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThere will be a strategy change in that previously we focused on feature films,\u201d he says. \u201cThis can be very expensive and it can be a very long process and we didn\u2019t have the resources to keep doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cSo we have to change to take advantage of smaller opportunities around IP development. We\u2019ve always done IP work, we just have to do it more efficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHalfbrick are well positioned to provide those opportunities, while we can provide the narrative storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Halfbrick marketing chief Phil Larsen and CEO Shainiel Deo were both unavailable for comment on the deal at the time of publication.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PRA was launched in 2003 by six university students. However, a management re-jig in April means that only two of the original six directors, White and James Calvert, remain at the company.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Its major clients include Sony Computer Entertainment and THQ. The studio also created the Cat Piano, an award-winning short film narrated by Nick Cave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Adelaide-based animation studio the People\u2019s Republic of Animation has been partially acquired by Halfbrick, the developer behind the popular Fruit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,28,17,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}