Downtown Oregon City creative firm, SuperGenius, moves from incubation to independence.
Downtown Oregon City’s creative core of professionals and companies has grown over the last three years through new businesses relocating to the downtown marketplace. Another sizable addition to the mix of creative firms is the September relocation of SuperGenius to a new downtown Oregon City studio as an independent company.
Entrepreneurs Robb Crocker and Paul Culp spun off the video game asset creation and animation division of Funnelbox Production Studios into a new independent firm called SuperGenius Studios. SuperGenius was originally created as a project division of Funnelbox in 2008 with one employee. In 2012, SuperGenius became an independent operation with more than 40% growth in revenue and quadruple the team size from last year, working with video game developers such as Activision, Foundation 9, Gazillion, Telltale Games, and Dark Vale.
In September, SuperGenius – now led by Studio Director Paul Culp – will relocate to a new 5,000 sq ft studio at 818 Main Street. As one of the only studios of its kind in the country, SuperGenius has contributed to many well-known game titles including Jurassic Park, Marvel Super Hero Squad Online, Back to the Future, The Walking Dead, and Forge, to name a few recent titles.
The newest initiative of this creative company is an international project called Forge, a multiplayer game for the PC set to release sometime in late 2012. Forge is being co-developed with Southern California startup game developer, Dark Vale Games and New Zealand programming house, Digital Confectioners. SuperGenius may be best known for the company’s work on The Walking Dead video game which received rave reviews from top game critics and sold over a million copies within the first two weeks of release.
“Creative firms like SuperGenius and Funnelbox are proof that professionals like the authentic atmosphere of downtown Oregon City,” said Lloyd Purdy, director of the downtown revitalization efforts in Oregon City. “We’re seeing increased interest in downtown from creative companies.”
The largest competitor of SuperGenius is Liquid Development, which was founded by Paul Culp. Mr. Culp sold that company, and in 2008 took over leadership of the animation arm of Funnelbox Production Studios. Working with Bryan Provencher they grew the project team into a division and ultimately its own company.
Paul built the business by drawing from his many years of experience as a game developer where utilizing independent contractors and overseas studios is the norm, but causes many complications in the development pipeline. Shoddy art and missed deadlines have become a fact of life for most developers. Paul felt that this was unacceptable and believed the solution was to provide an experienced, well-managed art team in the US, where most of the team is under one roof. SuperGenius focuses on the five major disciplines of game art including Concepts, Animation, Characters, Environments, and Visual Effects and is quickly gaining a reputation for being the best in the business.
“Over the last three year’s we’ve earned our stripes on a range of projects,” said Studio Director Paul Culp “As an independent company we can focus on digital animation and Funnelbox can focus on video production and incubating new businesses.”
SuperGenius expects to do more than $1.3 million in business (in a $60 billion industry) in 2012 and grow to a team of 50 digital artists, animators and support staff to support their workload. The company’s current workforce is very self-directed and ranges from experts with 30 years of experience to new hires with 6 months of industry experience.
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