Peppa Pig Sells for £140m

Peppa Pig - global hit

The three animators who created Peppa Pig have sold a 70% stake in their company to Entertainment One (better known as "E1") for £140m.

Peppa Pig is a very British success story - a piece of home-grown animation that has been sold successfully all over the world.  The creators of Peppa, Mark Baker, Neville Astley and Phil Davies, are now very rich indeed.

The trio, who graduated from Middlesex Poly in the 1980s, are living proof that if an animator can create a hit character, and hang on to the rights for long enough - the world is their oyster.

Here at Escape we teach the art of computer animation, but we also teach the skills necesary for animation artists to become successful entrepreneurs. We don't just want our students to be employees - we want them to develop their own content, and set up their own companies.

And why not? Many of the UK's biggest success stories in animation and visual effects are companies which were originally founded by animation students.

Take Nick Park, an animation student who graduated from the National Film and Television School (NFTS) and founded Aardman animation, now the biggest animation studio in the UK.

And consider Tom Box and Adam Shaw, who graduated from Bournemouth University and founded Blue Zoo, one of the leading producers of TV animation in the UK.

Can we teach entrepreneurship here at Escape? Why not? Being an entrepreneur is about managing risk, and having something great to sell. If our students are talented enough, and properly trained (leave that to us), there is no reason they can't get out there and start the next generation of successful animation studios.

All our students need is the right blend of skills, the motivation, and the tools to succeed.

----Alex











http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/sep/30/entertainment-one-peppa-pig-creator-astley-baker-davies?CMP=share_btn_tw