Nimble Collective has recently closed a round of funding that raked in $8.5 million. This funding was led by venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates. $1 million of this funding comes from individual investors.

With this funding, New Enterprise Associates Partner Greg Papadopoulos joins the board at Nimble Collective. Three executives were from the animated film industry were also named. These executives are Mark Walsh (former director at Pixar), Eric Darnell (previously with DreamWorks), and Peter Ramsey (previously with DreamWorks). The leaders of this startup have a plethora of experience with the animation industry.

The startup aims to develop a platform that could help an estimated 10 million professional and amateur animation artists. The platform will allow artists to create and collaborate and gives them the ability to distribute their work.

The platform will require licenses for existing animation software, but provides artists with a secure cloud environment to work. It will establish a community that allows artists to communicate with ease.

While pricing for this service has not been announced, the startup wants to lower the cost of animation to give as many people possible access to this service.

A beta launch is expected in the second half of 2016.

Comments:

Nimble CCO Rex Grignon, former head of character animation on DreamWorks’ Madagascar, commented, “Nimble is delivering studio caliber tools and collaboration capabilities–all in the cloud–that free-up animators to do what they do best — create. Our goal is to enable a new generation of creatives to create, collaborate and prosper by building their own unique, modern content to reach huge audiences

Howse said: “The animation content market generates $90 billion annually, yet millions of talented animators simply do not have access to the expensive studio-quality technology tools and big budgets currently required to bring high-quality creative projects to fruition. Nimble will change that by democratizing the market with the world’s first collaborative, cloud-based platform for generating content that animators can distribute and profit from in exciting new ways.”

 

 

About the Startup:

Based in Palo Alto, the startup was founded in November of 2014. The company was cofounded By Rex Grignon, Scott LaFleur, Michael Howse, and Jason Schleifer. Grignon is Nimble’s president and chief executive officer. He was previously he founding head of character animation at DreamWorks animation. Michael Howse is an entrepreneur who worked at 3dfx and was the CEO  of startup Bigfoot Networks.

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