For most of us who live in Adelaide, The People’s Republic of Animation are ‘those guys who did that Rundle Mall ad’. (We’re talking about ‘Four Seasons’, the animated telly spot featuring sexy CGI babe ‘Ginger’ – you’ve seen it a hundred thousand times already and love it a little more each time). If you’ve got yourself a little more cultcha, you’ll know that the PRA are the bunch behind the award-winning animated shorts Carnivore Reflux and The Cat Piano. PRA Creative Director Eddie White is the bundle of super-charged creative energy responsible for pulling all this stuff together.

So, apparently you founded your first animation studio when you were fourteen. God, you make me feel as though I’ve been wasting my life away. What’s your background? 
Well [gesturing around the studio], none of us actually studied animation. I studied drama at Flinders Uni from 2001 til 2004. I started making animations with both James [Calvert], and Hugh [Nguyen] when we were about 14. Before this I had drawn cartoons and illustrations and written stories my whole life. We made some animation tests on Super 8 and then our first short film in 1998. I also did work experience at high school at an animation studio here called Anifex and that was also really good experience. I never formally studied animation and I am not an ‘animator’ now but a writer-slash-director-slash-designer, so I was constantly honing those skills while I was studying another subject (acting) at uni. It was more about lots of little steps to my goals as opposed to a huge leap in one or two years.

What’s a regular day at the office?
For me, as Creative Director, most of my daily work involves our feature film development side of things. This includes coming up with concepts for films, writing the scripts, designing characters and researching the subjects of the films I am writing. I am also constantly on the look out and actively hunting down storybooks, graphic novels, comics, plays etcetera that we can actively seek to option to adapt into a screenplay. Aside from this I also offer my creative direction on service work we do such as advertising work.

What got you interested in animation back when you were a kid?
Around 1993 there was this fresh crop of new animation – flicks like Wallace and Grommit and Toy Story. It was really difficult not to get swept up in the excitement of it. Particularly seeing as the 1980s were really bad for feature animation – that was a really uninspiring and super conservative era.

So the 80s sucked, but the 90s were ace. What’s the state of feature animation right now?
Kids’ animation is better right now than it’s ever been – the writing is clever and funny, and the animation is top quality. And I think it’s going to get even better – kids today are going to grow up thinking this [quality animation] is the norm.

The PRA’s new offices [on Pirie Street] are real purdy. I’m assuming you guys aren’t secretly planning to ship off interstate or overseas anytime soon?
Yeah, the move to the CBD has been really good for public perception. The great thing is that, with animation, you don’t need to be where the ‘action’ is. We don’t want to just stay here, but Adelaide will always be our base.

What’s the PRA’s grand plan?
Last year was the People’s Republic most prolific year. All of us have our eye on the goal of making a feature film. At the moment we’re working on a trailer for it. We want to tell stories that are a bit more directed towards teenagers and twenty-somethings. Right now, most 3D animation is very kid-oriented. But the generation who grew up with Toy Story are older don’t want Toy Story now.

Totally true.
The hardest audience to get is in their twenties – you have to make sure you can capture their attention. We’re working on making sure the script has punch, so they can’t avoid it.

Can you divulge any top-secret info about the plot for the film?
It’s about five cosmonauts in the Soviet Union in 1980, training in the middle of freezing cold Russia, who find out about a Eurovision-style pop competition and decide to form a pop group. It’s a ‘Russian pop road movie’ – The Popevich Five. Think of it like an animated Wes Anderson movie. I’ve also got this other idea for a film about a black kid who lives in 80s Brooklyn who befriends a robot used for testing sneakers.

How do you go about developing your ideas into fully-fledged scripts?
I think the most important thing is just to get something down on paper. The first draft is what I call the ‘vomit pass’ – you’ve just gotta vomit out a hundred pages so that you have something to work with.  It doesn’t matter how imperfect the first draft is – it’s not supposed to be perfect. In the case of Popevich Five, I’ve written three completely different versions, and maybe ten different drafts. I’m really glad I didn’t send out the original script because I feel as though it’s much more polished now – there’s a lot more depth to the story, and that just comes through developing what you’ve got.

So developing the stories is not a hugely visual process?
My primary interest is always in the idea. And of course, that always come with some kind of visual element. But in terms of directing the visual style of the production, Ari [Gibson] and I sit down, and then he generally takes my general idea and runs with it. He brings that sense of visual polish, whereas I’m a bit more scribbly and scrawly.

Looking at your own personal interest in art, which artists do you respect?
I respect all kinds of artists, not just in animation but in music, visual art and performing arts. I guess the artists that I really idolise are the ones who have gone against the norm and done something that is different and really pushed it. In animation people like Hayao Miyazaki [director of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke] have really pushed the artform and storytelling of animation to other realms. And my favourite live action director is Wes Anderson [director of Darjeeling Limited and the Royal Tennenbaums] – I love how he creates really visually compelling stories that have equally compelling stories and characters. They are a couple of artists whom I look up to. I really admire their works.

You know, Wes Anderson really should make an animated film.
He is! He’s directing Fantastic Mr Fox, based on the Roald Dahl novel, and it’s going to be in claymation! There are a lot of live action directors helming animation projects right now. I think we’ll begin seeing a lot of crossover, a lot of mixtures of the two [live action and animation]. There are so many things you can do in animation that you can’t do in live action, it’s actually scary as well as exciting. You can create things here that would normally cost billions of dollars.

For all the animation geeks reading this, what’s the technical set-up like at PRA?
Well, I’m really the least technical one here, so maybe you should ask one of the others! There’s a huge amount of technical stuff that goes into animation. We actually used Photoshop for The Cat Piano, which is not really typical – most 2D stuff is done using Flash. Apart from that, we use Wacoms tablets, and Maya [software] for 3D.

Talking about The Cat Piano [the most recent animated short concocted by the PRA], how did that come about?
It’s started out as a short poem I wrote two or so years ago. I had Nick Cave in mind the whole time to be the narrator, and so we just took a shot and asked him, and to our huge surprise he was really receptive.

And how’s The Cat Piano going now? You released it at this year’s Adelaide Film Festival – are you taking it to any other film fests?
Oh, The Cat Piano’s going really well. It won the Audience Choice award at the Adelaide Film Festival, which was fantastic. It’s been picked up by a couple of international film festivals – we’re not allowed to reveal the details yet, but it’s pretty exciting. And it’s been selected as a part of the Annecy International Animation Festival. A bunch of us will be heading over there [Annecy, in Southeastern France] this June. It’s the first time one of our films has been featured in the main category of short films at Annecy – it’s going to be competing directly against Nick Park’s new Wallace and Gromit!

About the PRA’s Rundle Mall commercial, The Advertiser complained that the girl looked too unrealistic and might lead girls to develop ‘body image issues’. What did you think about all that?
We don’t mind a bit of controversy. If she looked like a normal girl, there wouldn’t have been any point! Are there people out there complaining that Marge Simpson or Spongebob Squarepants don’t look realistic enough?

Thanks, Eddie. I’ll let you get back to what seems like the most awesome job ever.