How it all started
With a season of animated show Rimba Racer under their belt, a Malaysian award, and currently a team of nearly 30 employees, Glue Studios seems to be doing pretty well for themselves. It wasn’t always the case though as the company initially started with just 5 people back in 2010. This initial team started small, practically “working out of a house together” and both Joe and Charukphong were part of that then nascent team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPrKIp-nLnM
The studio back then, worked on anything that came along. Small commercials, bit animation jobs here and there, but nothing the scope of a full animated series. That all changed when the idea for Rimba Racer eventually appeared.
The source of it was pretty unlikely though quite organic if you think of it; while brainstorming for a fast food chain client. According to Joe, they were commissioned by a fast food chain (which Joe says shall remain anonymous) that were looking for a potential series to promote their products. Ideas were being thrown around the table when on of their then interns said “”How about we have all the characters be animals and they’re racing and we can make it really cute.” Everyone thought it was a cool idea.
How cool? So cool that didn’t even bother to submit the idea to their client and decided they’d rather keep it to themselves. So now they had a rough idea that they believed in for an animated series. The problem though, was they didn’t have time and money to develop the series. That was where Multimedia Development Corporation (MDEC) and their annual Intellectual Property Creator’s Challenge (IPCC) came in.
The IPCC awards funding in various areas such as animation, comics and games, every year and Glue Studios decided to take part in their 2012 challenge. That paid off as the studio won the pitch and came away with enough funding to develop the basic concepts of the show, some visuals and some pitch scenes. With the funding in place, they were able to produce a one minute long “sizzle reel” trailer to show what the series was going to be all about and how it was going to look.
That was when it all started to come together. According to Joe The sizzle trailer brought them to places like Korea and more importantly, people were knocking on their door to inquire just what was it all about. The attention eventually allowed them to pitch for more funding and after that one thing came after another.
Eventually, Rimba Racer had its gala premier in November 2014 and on top of that, was commissioned for TV, with the debut of its first episode on TV3 on the January 10 2015.
Fast forward to today and Rimba Racer’s first 13 episode season has already been shown not only on Malaysia’s TV3 station but in other countries as well. This include’s Singapore’s MediaCorp Suria channel and on Nickelodeon India as well. That’s not all, on top of getting some international air time via the other two country’s channels, Rimba Racer’s success was further elevated when it won the Best Animated Series award at the Festival Filem Malaysia 2015.
With this success, Rimba Racer has managed to garner a decent amount of fans. There’s enough of them that they even have fans creating fan-art of the characters, some of which the team has been posting onto the Rimba Racer Instagram account.
In the words of Joe some of the fan’s art are cool while some are a bit disturbing. In the end “Fans are fans” as he would put it and Glue Studios appreciate whatever attention they getting from them. As Joe says “If they like it sure that’s cool already.
