Artists from Disney’s Oscar winning animation studio Pixar, the studio behind Toy Story, Ratatouille, Monsters Inc, and many more amazing family friendly films, have started a game studio. This new game studio is called Steel Wool Games. Its executive team is Sequoia Blankenship, Joshua Qualtieri, Jonathan Hoffman, Andrew Lee Dayton, and Jason Peter Topolski; Steel Wool Games has nine other employees, too. The five current Pixar artists haven’t left the Disney animation studio. They in fact are working both jobs, making films by day and games by night. The first title, FlyHunter, created by Steel Wool Games should be released this summer and will be published by Ripstone. However no platforms were mentioned yet, although Steel Wool Games said they have plans to make multi-platform games. Andrew Dayton said this to Edge about Steel Wool Games‘ approach to game art, “We have an internal phrase that we use to describe our style: ‘Grimsical’. It’s our fundamental principle as a company. We create worlds that are funny and whimsical but dipped in gritty tones.”
I have thoroughly enjoyed all of Pixar’s films, so I look forward to the games a few of the artists create. I know I’ll definitely get myself a copy of FlyHunter, and see what these imaginative artists put together.