Exit 73 Studios: Drawn back home
Nestled in the heart of downtown Riverhead lies a colorful secret: a high-tech, boutique animation studio producing frame-by-frame videos for industry heavy hitters and independents alike. From big names including Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and Disney to DIY passion projects released on Twitch, Exit 73 Studios is on the cutting edge of today’s animation scene.
Christopher Burns, co-owner and director of Exit 73, runs the studio with his business and creative partner, Bob Fox. The two have been close friends since childhood growing up in Riverhead. Burns has always been interested in art. “I drew a lot as a kid,” he said. “I would have a blank piece of paper and just doodle on it all day.”
Burns cites long-time Riverhead High School art teacher Vinny Nasta, who died in an air show accident in 2008, as a mentor. “He was a big inspiration,” he said. “When I saw how good he was, I wanted to follow in his footsteps.” Burns’ original plan was to become an illustrator, but a visit to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where he met an animation student, Hansel Perez, inspired him to switch gears and pursue animation as a career.
When he graduated from SVA in the early 2000s, there were essentially two hubs for a career in animation: one in Los Angeles and the other in New York. The animation industry in New York City was robust, home to cable giants like Comedy Central and MTV. Each locale had its own vibe, and Burns decided to stick with New York, landing a job at Comedy Central on a show called “Shorties Watching Shorties.” From there he went to Disney, then MTV and eventually Augenblick Studios in Brooklyn.
“We did some awesome projects,” Burns said. “There was a lot of Adult Swim stuff, Comedy Central stuff, more adult-oriented animation, which really fascinated me. It wasn’t just for kids. I gathered seven years of experience at that studio, and with my four years of prior work, I was more than 10 years into the field. I felt confident that we could probably start something on our own.”
Burns enlisted Fox, who also studied at SVA and ran in the same social and creative circles, as his partner and the duo began deliberating where best to set up shop. Coming back to their hometown seemed an appealing option, but their industry peers were skeptical.
“This was around 2012. It was not the world it is now, with everything so globalized,” Burns recalled. “So it was perceived as risky coming out to the East End of Long Island. We’re far away enough from the city where we could be considered obsolete from the scene. So there was definitely some hesitancy.”
Riverhead was familiar and inexpensive, allowing the partners to get a solid foothold and begin establishing themselves. “We were just ready to get serious and settle down with our fiancées,” Burns said. “We were just thinking about the future and how we grew up in the Riverhead area. That was kind of the main decision: why don’t we try to go back to our hometown and see if we can make this animation thing work.” The partners’ future wives were also from the area, making it a four-way decision, but in then end, the support they knew they could rely on by moving back home was the key factor. “That’s what let us take that risk.”
Once Burns and Fox took the leap, they were able to quickly capitalize on their contacts from years of working in the city and started building a client base. “The rest is sort of history,” Burns said. “We were able to stay afloat and we celebrate our 13th anniversary in March.”
After some time working out of Fox’s basement studio, Exit 73 moved to an open office in a 100-year old brick building on East Main Street, where they occupy the corner office. The space boasts a bank of windows and a minimalist design. Their Wacom Cintiq displays allow the animators to draw right on the screen, and are powered by custom-built computers. The animation is created using the Adobe suite of products, while they use the Unity engine to develop video games.
One frame at a time
While a significant sector of today’s industry is focused on 3D, Exit 73’s strategy of sticking with traditional, frame-by-frame animation is part form, part function. “There is definitely a risk there,” Burns said. “Every movie that’s considered animation definitely leans heavily into the 3D. I always was a paper-pencil kind of guy. Technology was not my strong suit. Honestly, learning a third dimension to draw or act out these scenes didn’t really click with me right away.”
Another obstacle was that the 3D animation technology of the early 2000s required large teams of artists to effectively create. “I like small teams,” Burns said. “I find it nice to wear a lot of hats. Being on a small team, and still competing with bigger companies, you kind of get creative with how you can stay ahead in the same field.”
Exit 73’s production process typically begins when clients come to the studio with an idea. Often they will have the audio recorded already and have an overall style in mind. From there, the team will draw a simple plan called a storyboard which allows them to figure out the pacing of the action, what the key plot points are and when to hit them. Once complete, these drawings are put into an animatic, essentially a storyboard synchronized with a soundtrack. This is followed by layout, which creates a smoother, cleaner version of the sequence. Next comes “in-betweening,” essentially filling in the gaps from still images to full animation, followed by post-production, which adds all the artistic nuances to create the final product.
The whole process can take anywhere from days to months, depending on the project and how much back and forth is required with the clients. “Something that is three minutes can take anywhere from three weeks to, like, two months,” Burns said, which is typical when dealing with larger clients like Nickelodeon. “Then there’s projects where it’s a little more intimate, and you’re talking directly with one person. That we can get done in [around] eight days.”
While Burns and Fox will jump in anywhere as the need arises, Burns typically handles more of the character animation while Fox crafts the backgrounds. “I probably focused more on my character animation, since I’m more specialized in that skill, where Bob is like a jack of all trades,” Burns said. “We both share the workload. If I’m falling behind, he’ll jump on and vice versa.”
Well-positioned
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Exit 73 was well-positioned. In fact, many of the restrictions imposed at the time actually boosted the business. Since producers were not able to gather to shoot live action content, animation was in demand.
“Anyone who looks behind the scenes at live action stuff, it’s not just actors,” said Burns. “There’s lighting people, cameramen, gaffers and all that. What goes into making a television show involves upwards of 60 people in one place. When the pandemic hit and there was these restrictions, all of a sudden, live action was put on hiatus, where animation is something that could continue production, since we didn’t run the risk of running into a lot of people.”
Working in their own “pod,” Burns and Fox continued producing commercially viable work. “There’s just two of us at the studio, and we’re very comfortable with each other,” said Burns. “But to manage just two people, when we live in the same zip code, it seemed reasonable to continue production.”
“This was around 2012. It was not the world it is now, with everything so globalized,” Burns recalled. “So it was perceived as risky coming out to the East End of Long Island. We’re far away enough from the city where we could be considered obsolete from the scene. So there was definitely some hesitancy.”
Exit 73 takes on a variety of projects, but their mainstay is short-form content that is optimized for viewing on a smartphone. The clips and shorts are relatively simple to produce and can be turned around quickly. “Most of our bread-and-butter is between ten seconds and three minutes, which is perfect for the internet age,” Burns said. “Social media is a huge thing; people like 10 second clips now. All the formats have changed, everyone’s looking at content vertically. What’s nice about that is, you see the light at the end of the tunnel. You’re not worried about movies that take six years to make.”
The partners recently completed an in-house passion project, a video game called “#blud,” which is available on all consoles and on PC via the Steam platform. They also produced the new intro for the “Baby Shark” series and 10 shorts to coincide with the roll out of the new season. They are also working on a project for a new three-on-three women’s basketball league.
Exit 73 also gets a lot of repeat business from bigger networks who have been impressed with their past work.
“The industry is tiny by most metrics,” Burns said. “So if you kind of establish yourself as being reliable, you can find work fairly easily.”
