Welcome to the first of a weekly series focussing on newer and lesser-known studios and companies. Besides increasing the opportunities for networking, the series is also intended to highlight opportunities for freelance work and collaborations. If you have a company you would like to highlight, please email liezel.vermeulen @ gmail.com

1. What is your company name, geographic location and website

I'm Hennie Blaauw and we're Blablabla Studios. We're in the Old Castle Brewery in Woodstock, Cape Town. Visit us at www.blablablastudios.blogspot.com

2. How many staff do you have currently? 

At the moment Blablabla Studios consists just of myself, and my wife, Stephanie LeBlanc, who's an Canadian artist and animator in her own right. We handle most of the projects and make use of freelance artists when the need arises.

3 Briefly explain the history of your company

I have been in the animation industry for almost 20 years, worked on everything from TV commercials, animated TV series to games... I just reached a point where I wanted to do my own thing, and not work for anyone else....The timing was just right and I started Blablabla Studios 5 months ago.

4 Who's the boss (owners)?

I own the company with my wife ;-)

5. What do you mainly do?

We specialise in 2D Animation and digital Illustration, storyboards, comic books, mobile games and character design. We share office space with Wicked Pixels, so we have access to some of the best 3D animators in the country.

6. Please highlight a recent project that you worked on in the past year and please tell us what was cool/ challenging/ exciting about it?

In our first week as Blablabla Studios we signed a long term contract with a company in the UK. We're illustrating a 25 page comic book every month.

Everything's done digitally, the pencils, inks and colouring. We basically finish a page a day, so that's been quite challenging, but doing everything digitally makes us faster than most comic book companies out there... Its pretty cool when it all comes together at the end of the day. On top of that we handle a range of other projects that gets sent our way...

7. What work or projects do you have planned for 2012?

We will be working on more comic book projects, and a studio in New York will be using us as their official design studio for a range of mobile games.

The advertising industry keeps us busy with storyboards for TV commercials and various animation and character design projects. So 2012 looks like it will be a busy year for sure!

8. Any job openings or collaborations people can chat to you about? If so, who can they contact?

We are always on the lookout for cool projects and awesome artists, specifically experienced comic book artists and colorists can contact me at hmblaauw@gmail.com