Preymaker
Blue
- Design
- Original Content
Preymaker is widely recognized as a trusted creative partner for world class production, the studio is equally defined by its directors, technologists, and storytellers each driven by original ideas and untold narratives. Rather than simply interpreting an existing concept, the team chose to craft a story entirely of their own. The result was BLUE, an award winning short film that highlights Preymaker’s depth of storytelling, creative ambition, and technical innovation.
Directed by Robert Petrie and executive produced by Angus Kneale—both members of Preymaker—BLUE tells the story of Jules, a young girl enchanted by the night sky.
Funded in part by an Epic MegaGrant, the film was conceived entirely in-house.
“The world needs young, enquiring minds to tackle tomorrow’s big challenges,” Kneale explains. “We hope our story of Jules’ adventures inspires underrepresented young people and we hope that BLUE helps drive interest not just in animation and filmmaking but in space and all the STEM disciplines. Representation in these fields really matters.”
The film is an immersive ride into the evening, through the awestruck eyes of a child. And a testament to Preymaker’s capacity to create provocative, original stories.
New Processes for New Worlds
“Ever since Toy Story, animation has followed the same workflow,” says writer and director Rob Petrie. “Modeling, texturing, rendering, exporting.” But for BLUE, the Preymaker team was drawn to the unexplored potential of Unreal Engine—especially as a way to rethink conventional production processes. Unreal allowed the team to bypass traditional rendering and compositing steps. Blue was built by an impressively lean team that gained creative flexibility from the new workflow designed for Unreal Engine.
“Just because something has been done the same way for 30 years doesn’t mean that it should be that way anymore,” says Petrie. For someone with more than two decades in visual effects, the shift was rewarding. “It felt the closest to a real-world live-action environment that I have ever seen in VFX,” he confides. “I moved lights around in real time, changed lenses, set the focal distance and f-stops. That was a game changer.”
Rather than waiting hours for test renders, the team was able to view sets in real-time. Every light change, every blocking change — the impact of each creative decision was immediately visible to the entire team. This expanded the potential for experimentation. The team could play with variables and see the impact of those changes in the scene, without disrupting the production process. And because the edit is also constructed inside Unreal, the Preymaker team were reviewing full sequences—not just isolated shots — in the game engine itself. This made collaboration, and the artistry of creating within the engine, so much more tangible than it had ever been in the traditional VFX workflows before.
“The combination of real-time engines and artists collaborating entirely in the cloud is revolutionizing the media and entertainment industry,” says EP Angus Kneale.
A Studio in the Cloud
This new workflow was not just nimble—it was communal. Rune Månsson, Head of 3D at Preymaker, describes it like a digital library system: “You take the asset you’re working on, and when you’re done, you check it back in.”
Over eight focused months, BLUE was created by just 20 people—animators, modelers, FX and Unreal artists working in a shared virtual space. Of those, five were Unreal artists, and just three of them lit and laid out more than 200 shots. Compared to traditional VFX productions, this was a remarkably tight team—and thanks to the vision of the Preymaker studio, the tool reshaped the potential for creative collaboration in the company.
Beyond the Frame: Unreal as Creative Multiplier
As a team of boundary-breaking creatives do, Preymaker started to ask what other innovations the production of Blue could lead them to. Typically, films are made in one type of studio, and games in another. But creating an asset in Unreal, those categories collapse. The world of BLUE wasn’t built to live in just one format—it was designed to expand.
“Once an asset like Jules exists in the engine, it can be experienced in multiple ways,” says Petrie. “As a game, an interactive mobile story, an immersive VR world... In Unreal Engine, BLUE became the foundation for a truly transmedia experience.”
BLUE is currently presented as a short film. But it’s built in a game engine. It’s clear that by leveraging all of the BLUE assets in Unreal, BLUE can easily become a Metaverse experience, a game, an immersive VR world, or even a live animation series. Now that the asset exists, the interactivity with that asset can be redefined endlessly within Unreal Engine. When Preymaker builds in Unreal, all of those experiences can be born from the same foundational parts. “I see BLUE as a series of chapters,” says Petrie. “Each can be viewed, played, or experienced in many ways. The story stays central, but I imagine people really getting to form complex empathy with these characters as they navigate new experiences with them.”
An Award-Winning Experiment
What began as a creative experiment has already earned critical acclaim. BLUE has picked up awards from the London International Web & Shorts Film Festival, Venice Shorts, Sweden Film Awards, and Independent Shorts Awards.
With BLUE, Preymaker didn’t just launch an original story. They launched a world in which the experiential possibilities are endless. BLUE is just the beginning. For Jules. For Preymaker. And for a new generation of stories that live across worlds.
