The History of Steamroller Animation
In 2014, three friends (Adam Meyer, Jalil Sadool and Keith Lackey) decided to leave their dream jobs in the animation industry to form Steamroller Animation. The trio united to create an original game called Curse of the Deadwood. The unique twin-stick zombie survival game came to life in 2021 and is now available to play on Steam.
Having completed a successful Kickstarter campaign, Keith, Adam, and Jalil started production on Curse of the Deadwood, a unique twin-stick zombie survival game where you control two unlikely friends to save the Kingdom of Knottington. The three founders then settled into their first studio, a rented space at a local T-shirt shop in Eustis, FL called Tip Tops in 2014, and they hired the first two employees of Steamroller Studios: Amanda Renfroe, who would eventually become the Head of Animation, and James Mashock, who would help build up the studio and become a Lead Environment Artist on Steamroller’s original projects.
As the money from Kickstarter began to run low, the team turned to a new way to fund their game without relinquishing ownership and control over the studio’s creative vision to outside parties. The three founders wanted to stay true to their goal of telling their own stories, so instead of taking on investors, they leveraged their experiences, credibility, and strong relationships in the industry. They began offering animation, art, and programming services to clients that were familiar with the founders' hard work in their prior careers and were confident in their ability to deliver. The services provided to clients would bring more attention to Steamroller Studios’ brand, making the company synonymous with high-quality work. The increased amount of work from clients led to more employees, or Steammates as they are affectionately called, and the crew soon outgrew their first home.
In 2016, the team moved to the top of the Bank of America in downtown Eustis, FL. After accruing enough revenue, Steamroller could turn their focus from bringing in more client projects to resuming work on Curse of the Deadwood. Game developers, animators, and community managers came on to help bring the game to life. The time in the Bank of America location was short-lived as the team size continued to increase, and the group went on to look for an even bigger home.
At the end of 2016, Steamroller relocated to a decommissioned chapel and converted the space into a functional animation studio. Progress on Curse of the Deadwood would once again come to a pause as the studio had to seek more funding from client services, and the balance between doing service work and developing the game would tilt back and forth. This seesaw would draw out the production of the video game for an additional 6 years.
During this time, the studio was taking on more notable service projects such as Phoenix Labs’ Dauntless, and Steamroller continued to gain traction as a respected partner in the animation industry. Bigger client projects allowed the team to continue pursuing their own stories. Towards the end of 2017, Steamroller started to develop the seed of their second I.P. It would be an animated short film called Spice Frontier. The short centered around a human named Kentucky Williams living centuries after Earth’s destruction and searching for the last remaining spices from Earth with his companion cyborg C-LA. The work on the new story started with an idea from one of the owners, Jalil, and then very quickly grew to a small pre-production team. Soon enough, it turned into a huge project for the studio with production lasting over a year and resulting in Steamroller’s largest I.P. investment to date.
Steamroller continued to grow its service side clients working with notable studios such as BioWare and Epic Games. Now a team of seventy, they would quickly outgrow the chapel space and eventually move to their fourth location in downtown Mount Dora, FL in 2018. With a diverse set of clients and projects, the company decided to split in 2019 to set distinct focuses. Steamroller Technologies opened up to work on developing AR and VR experiences and to offer conceptual design and software development for attractions and physical spaces. Steamroller Animation continued to focus on animation for games, film, TV, and cinematics, and in that same year, they completed work on the 8-minute short called Spice Frontier. All of its development was completed in-house and was a major milestone for the company. The short was shown at 35 film festivals upon its release and won several awards such as Best Animated Film at Dragon Con Independent Short Film Festival.
Then, in March 2020, COVID-19 struck. Prior to the pandemic, the studio’s members had been mainly working in person with only a handful of remote individuals as contractors. However, as the pandemic required everyone to work from home, the studio opened its arms to more and more international contractors to become part of the team. Steammates began to join from a variety of countries in Europe, Asia, South America, and Oceania. Soon the studio was looking to establish a new second home, and the team decided on a small island in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Madagascar, where Jalil is from. Steamroller Studios opened its second studio in Moka, Mauritius in August 2020. The in-person team at the Mauritius studio currently has grown to over 20 people.
During the pandemic, the studio flourished. Audiences had to quarantine, causing a demand for in-home content and entertainment, and more clients sought out the excellent work done by Steamroller Animation. As Steamroller worked on more projects, the growth of the studio was exponential. Partnering with notable companies such as WetaFX, Guerilla Games, NetherRealm Studios, and Blizzard Entertainment, the team got to work on tremendous projects like Avatar: The Way of Water, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Horizon: Forbidden West, Mortal Kombat 11, and Overwatch 2. Due to the vast range of projects, Steamroller's team expanded their skillset into a variety of animation types, including VFX, realistic character animation, as well as heavily stylized feature work. Setting their sights beyond just animation, Steamroller began to grow in other departments as well. As the I.P. division continued to develop, the studio now offered services in storyboarding, rigging, modeling, concept art, layout, and 2D FX.
Throughout these 8 years, Steamroller was still working on its first I.P., Curse of the Deadwood. After many changes in scope and project goals, the game development team led by Jorge Verea, would eventually complete production and release the couch co-op video game to Steam in the summer of 2022.
Then, Steamroller would turn its eyes to its next big I.P. project. By this time, the team had come up with a large library of ideas through its newly established division, the Creative Command Center (CCC). After the success of the animated short Spice Frontier, the studio would then turn its attention to an episodic pilot for Spice Frontier. For this project, Steamroller began to develop a real-time pipeline with Epic Games' Unreal Engine at its core. In addition, Steamroller’s Marketing Team has produced and released a series of behind-the-scenes production diaries to discuss this effective workflow. Steamroller became the recipient of an Epic MegaGrant in 2022 to support the Unreal-based production workflow on the pilot. Episode one of Spice Frontier is currently in production and is expected to wrap in early 2024.
Now, Steamroller Animation is working on a variety of service projects ranging from gameplay to VFX to feature animation. The Creative Command Center continues to develop Steamroller's slate of I.P. projects, ranging from short films to episodic and feature animation. In 2021, the studio welcomed Aaron Gilman, a long-time animation veteran who would eventually take on the reigns of Chief Executive Officer. Aaron and Jalil work closely together at the helm of Steamroller, ensuring a strong balance between the service and creative I.P. sides of the business. Through the continued production of the pilot of Spice Frontier, Steamroller has developed a full in-house production pipeline and is now able to bring its stories from concept to completion. Additionally, more and more people join the studio, and there are now 220 Steammates all around the world in 14 U.S. states and over 39 different countries. Steamroller has been successful in adapting its internal operations to a hybrid remote and in-person working culture. Through the adoption of its Talent and Culture Department under its head, Sonata Brown, Steamroller has managed to create an exceptional work experience for its staff that seeks to develop relationships across all levels of its hierarchy. Steamroller is never complacent in its adoption of new practices and policies that seek to enforce communication, transparency, collaboration, and creativity through healthy and fulfilling relationships at all levels. The team shows no sign of slowing down and is working hard to achieve its goal of telling its own stories on a large scale.
