Matt McCullough is one of the directors of Steamfish - an animation studio based in St Kilda. His background is in independent animated film making - starting out with stop motion and now solely digital. Steamfish does a lot of 3d character work, some 2d Flash work, some visual effects and compositing…and now mobile content.

mo:life
What kinds of projects are you working on, and where would you like Steamfish to be positioned in the world of mobile media in five years?

Matt McCullough
Within the mobile space we’re currently developing a couple of short animated series. Each episode will run at around 40 seconds and be deliverable to any Java enabled handset. In five years I’d like to see the experience of becoming involved in this space now paying off. Obviously the ground will be unrecognizable by then and I’m planning that five years experience of adapting and taking up new opportunities in this area will put us in a strong position. Currently it represents the possibility of us moving away from service provision and into production of our own material and that’s very attractive.

mo:life
Do you know of anyone actually turning a dollar from mobile animation? Have you seen any interesting mobile animations?

Matt McCullough
Certainly there are people making money out of more standard animated mobile content - there’s a lot of three frame MMS and animated wallpaper out there.

Beyond this, there is some animated content on the 3 network but most has been repurposed from other media rather than produced specifically for mobile platforms. I have to say I haven’t seen anything ground breaking as so much of the content is established brand based - that is not to say there’s not stuff out there and certainly we’re endeavoring to produce interesting material made specifically for mobile - so it’s in the mail, so to speak.

mo:life
In trying to produce quality work for mobile screens, what are the most inhibiting constraints you are facing at the moment?

Matt McCullough
For us and the market we are targeting it is not so much the screen size or character that is inhibiting. We design our material to use that space as effectively as possible and we’re film makers so we have some experience there. The killer for the lo-spec phones is the file size they can handle and the lateral thinking game that’s involved in telling an engaging story within that.

That being said - it demands efficiency in the use of design and screen language and working within those constraints has, to some degree, been quite liberating. As the take up of later generation hand sets develops the widened parameters that we can then work within will seem luxurious.

mo:life
What kinds of animation do you think will lead us in to the small screen animated era?

Matt McCullough
The same is true of any medium regardless of the resolution or delivery. If the idea is good, you can do it with stick figures and it will work - conversely millions of dollars and a huge screen won’t make a crap idea good. With mobile platforms, in particular, an important consideration is that the content is designed for the medium. Beyond being designed for the small screen and differing aspect ratio, ‘content’ that attends to the intimacy and personal nature of mobile devices will ultimately, I’d expect, be more successful than repurposed content from other media or content produced with out these considerations.

mo:life
Do you have a preferred platform, and from an animators perspective, how would you like to see audio visual content delivered over mobile devices?

Matt McCullough
As far as delivery platforms go we’re still to discover where the problems will lie. We want to have a broad a user base as possible so we foresee there being some sticking or sticky points. For a development platform, Rich Motion, from ND ware - who you spoke to a few weeks back - is the tool that is facilitating our current development. We’d like to see audio visual content delivered in a way that makes it as easy and attractive to the users as possible. This would ultimately entail streamed content with minimal or capped carriage charges and the possibility of delivering sponsored content to remove the cost to the user completely.

mo:life
How would you rate the chances of independent producers like yourself finding a space in what seems to be a big-brand focused environment? What’s the strategy?

Matt McCullough
It is a big brand focused environment when viewed from the industry side. From the user side I’d say its driven by far more complex equations than simply providing the same old material in a smaller format. Since personalisation of a device is so central to many mobile users I’d say unique and targeted content can find a strong place in the market and in doing so establish smaller brands in an organic way. I rate our chances very promising for establishing a place in this industry. Our endless adaptability is a huge advantage, we like what we do and we’re enjoying the development of material for this medium. As far as strategy goes - I’ll let you know once we’ve implemented it