Becoming Renegade

(Music playing.) Darrell Van Citters: The name Renegade Animation came from my years in freelance. I would call myself Renegade Production because I left Disney and I've always been seen there as a bit of a renegade, although I never felt like I was a renegade. Ashley Postlewaite: So, we started Renegade in my spare bedroom and Darrell's garage, mostly his garage. He had converted it into a little studio for himself and it was little. It was like one car garage and I would set across from him at his desk and make phone calls and figure stuff out and we had freelance-- well, everybody except us was freelance at that point. Darrell Van Citters: The animators would come pick up from my garage and took drop off and we would send the stuff out to Camera, which was just down the street in Burbank, and it was a very smooth operation. But at a certain point, actually the point when I decide I was going to get married, we had to figure out something else besides my garage, because that just wasn't going to cut it anymore. Ashley Postlewaite: And we're like rather than move again with the offices, I think it is time to get our first office and of course, promptly at that moment business just completely dried up. Darrell Van Citters: And we'd started in a downturn in the commercial business, but we were going to do it either way and we have managed to survive and thrive in spite of the downturn and we did real well for a while. Ashley Postlewaite: A good number of years there was only commercials. There wasn't really internet stuff going on. So, commercials were the best way for us to get open and stay open and grow and really kind of solidify our reputation as a high-end boutique house. Darrell Van Citters: We still occasionally dip our toes back in entertainment, and that was part of the original business plan was to get back in the entertainment and long-form storytelling because that was really where my heart was. Ashley Postlewaite: We had learned sort of the landscape of advertising agencies and clients and so we thought that would be the way to really get ourselves started and get cash flow in the door, generally speaking, and it's still this way. When you are awarded a commercial contract, there is a payment upfront, which helped us a lot, because we didn't-- Darrell and I didn't have any money. We didn't raise money to start the company and we didn't have a lot of money to start the company. So, it wasn't like we went out, bought a lot of equipment, rented a big place and then figured out what to do. It was more like the jobs had to help us build the company.