‘Trampires and Animortal Studios brings new blood to Bridgend with Chuck Steel – Night of the Trampires’

First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones will today visit a new, modern, high tech animation studio in Bridgend. Shooting has begun on a new stop motion animated feature film, entitled ‘Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires’ creating up to 90 new jobs.

The comedy, action animation, aimed at a teen and young adult audience, is the creation of Mike Mort, a Bafta award winning producer, director and writer, who heads up Bridgend based Animortal Studios where the Film is being made using traditional stop motion animation techniques.

It is anticipated the 90-minute length feature film, which includes 500 puppets which have been painstakingly created in-house, will take nearly three years to complete.

The production by Trampires Ltd is backed by business finance from the Welsh Government which provides gap funding to ensure that virtually the entire budget will be spent in Wales.

The support will not only create a significant number of jobs over a two year period, but will ensure the highly specialist skills base is retained in Wales and provide training and work experience opportunities for the next generation of animators.

Randhir Singh, the executive producer, has considerable experience in establishing businesses and financial management, set up the company to raise the necessary funding and to bring the creative and management teams together to produce the feature film.

He said:

“We are a new production company launching a new studio with a modest budget. The Studio and Production has created tremendous amount of interest within the industry, mainstream studios would need budget of tens of millions of pounds to produce a feature film of this quality and nature.”

Randhir added:

“One of the most important aspects for us are the Staff and the creative skills they bring, every individual working on the film is passionate about the project which is not only bringing new talent to Wales, but preserving existing skill sets and providing a raft of training opportunities and invaluable experience for interns and local college students who are helping on a regular basis.

“I want the studio to be maintained on a permanent basis so all future sequels and other animation projects will be produced in Bridgend for the foreseeable future.”

First Minister Carwyn Jones said:

“We have a vibrant creative industry sector in Wales and considerable talent and I am delighted we are supporting this exciting project.

“It will help promote animation expertise within Wales to an international audience, create and sustain highly-skilled jobs and career opportunities with the real potential to produce future sequels in Bridgend.”

Night of the Trampires film follows the highly successful animation short – Chuck Steel, Raging Balls of Steel Justice which has been winning awards at film festivals around the world and attaining cult status.

Mike, who is the producer, writer, director and the main voice artist of Chuck Steel Night of the Trampires, said:

“After many years of trying to get this project off the ground it is fantastic to finally be realizing it virtually on my doorstep!

“Having always been based in Wales I have been keen to create a situation like this for years and it is finally happening thanks to Animatrix and the generous support of the Welsh Government.

“The short film was created in my basement with a crew of six people over eighteen months. The challenge now is to make a bigger and better feature film in virtually the same time frame but with a much bigger crew and bespoke facility.

“The quality of the work being produced so far is of a very high standard, and although we don’t have the same level of budget that many studio films have we are making a film that will compete on the same playing field.”