Cyber Group Breaks Down Animation Boundaries, International Borders

Chairman and CEO Pierre Sissmann talks about pushing creative limits in the animation genre and plans for international expansion.

Over the last 11 years since opening its doors, Cyber Group Studios has been working tirelessly to expand in all areas of animation. It began with preschool-targeted content and has progressed to cover all age groups, from the littlest TV viewers to school-aged kids to preteens and families. It has also enlarged its scope in terms of technology used in an effort to deliver the best possible entertainment offering.

“We started with CGI, then we moved to a mix of 2D and 3D,” explains Pierre Sissmann, the chairman and CEO of Cyber Group Studios. “We wanted to have the fluidity of CGI and the variety of 2D, especially for creating backgrounds and scenes.”

As an example, Cyber Group’s new series The Pirates Next Door is a mix of 2D and 3D. “It enables us to have a wide variety of backgrounds and also the strong action and movements of CGI, while remaining in a decent television budget,” Sissmann notes. “For the show we are the executive producer for TF1 Production, with whom we co-produce, Mini Ninjas, we painted around 685 [backgrounds] representing Japan, but all the characters are in 3D.”

Now, Cyber Group is aiming to delve deeper into 2D animation. It is working with The Jim Henson Company on Enchanted Sisters, a new co-pro, which will be done in traditional 2D. Mirette Investigates, meanwhile, is done in another type of 2D, more in the style of cutouts. For the musical show Rock Angels, Cyber Group is planning to use motion capture and CGI and potentially a mix of 2D and 3D backgrounds.

Sissmann says that the company does a lot of technological research and talks to a range of studios in an effort to find the best techniques to get the most impressive end results. “We want to figure out the best way to deliver an image that fits the stories and makes it the best piece of entertainment possible,” he says.

In terms of which animation style he prefers, Sissmann says that he has “no opinion” and just wants to deliver “the best possible look for a show according to what a story is about. If it’s better to do it in 2D, let’s do it in 2D. If it’s better to do it in stop-motion, let’s do stop-motion. If we need to improve the technology on CGI because we’re on a [smaller] budget, then let’s have our engineers do some research and work with the software to deliver better lighting, smoother movements or more characters. For example, on Zorro the Chronicles we have about 110 different characters per episode, which is unheard of! That was made possible because of technology.”

This year the company will have six series in production and about 12 series in development. Sissmann stresses that each offers something different artistically from what’s already in the catalogue. He also notes that Cyber Group is working with creators from all over the world, which is part of its efforts to be a “truly global company.”

“Animation is a global business,” says Sissmann. “However, there are some areas in the world where producers are better at [certain types of kids’ programming] than others. For instance, British preschool programming is great. Cartoon comedy originates from the U.S. and people there are quite good at it. France, which is the second animation market in the world, has fantastic adventure shows [for kids]. So, what we decided to do at the development level is to work in a triangle between France, the U.K. and North America to share cultures.”

He adds, “If you want to have a truly global reach, you have to have a truly international team. We are looking right now at setting up [a base] in China. It’s something that I’m really looking forward to doing because it is very interesting for me to understand what this part of the world can bring in terms of creation to the global business of animation. We’ve also developed a lot of links with Latin America and with Russia.”

Sissmann says that in the next five or ten years he would like Cyber Group to grow to become a “truly global company with

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in different places in the world bringing their creative expertise to this business, which in and of itself is global.”

The first step was to get a strong foundation in its home country of France and then the rest of the European continent. “We have now established development [connections] on several continents to get creative input,” says Sissmann. “We have to go further than that. We have to become a truly international group, without losing our roots. For a medium-sized company it is not necessarily easy to do, it takes time.” But Cyber Group is on its way.