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When Chris and Shannon Prynoski, co-owners of the independent animation studio Titmouse, moved from New York City to Los Angeles in 2000, things were looking a bit uncertain. Shannon (BFA 1994 Film and Video) had quit her job as a photo editor; Downtown, the animated series that Chris (BFA 1994 Animation) had created for MTV, had been canceled; and their landlord had sold the house in Williamsburg where they had been living.

Things look a lot better now. Titmouse, the company that the couple originally established to sell their T-shirt designs online, is a thriving animation studio with 1,200 employees staffing offices in Los Angeles, New York and Vancouver. The studio partners with streaming powerhouses like Amazon, Apple, Disney and Netflix to produce animated series as varied as the raunchy coming-of-age comedy Big Mouth and Harriet the Spy, based on the classic children’s book by Louise Fitzhugh. And it provides animated and digital content for an ever-growing list of films, music videos, commercials and video games.

In short, the Prynoskis have become moguls. And no one is more surprised about it than they are.

“It’s very surreal. I don’t really believe it,” says Shannon, who is responsible for supervising everything from the studio’s COVID-19 protocols to the preparation of a new, 95,000-square-foot office space in Burbank.

In retrospect, the duo’s timing was impeccable. They arrived in Los Angeles at the beginning of an animation boom enabled by Flash, a software platform that greatly streamlined the production process, and just as the Cartoon Network cable channel was about to launch Adult Swim, its adult-oriented programming block. The result was a steady stream of projects for the pair, including such iconic series as Metalocalypse and The Venture Bros. Shannon focused on production, while Chris concentrated on animation. 

As their workload grew, the Prynoskis reorganized their company, took on additional staff and built a reputation as a studio with a facility for adventurous, left-of-center material. In addition to Downtown, Chris (who has also taught animation at SVA) had previously worked on MTV’s Daria and Beavis and Butt-Head; an early Titmouse calling card was their animated sequence for comedian Tom Green’s directorial debut Freddy Got Fingered (2001), an initial critical and commercial flop that has since acquired a cult following.

More recently, the explosive growth of digital streaming platforms has driven a massive increase in demand for animation. “They all want content, and they want it fast,” Shannon says.

“We have something like 20 series in production,” Chris says. “Twenty years ago, that would have been almost the whole animation industry.”

For many years, Titmouse handled everything from editing to sound recording in-house. But the increase in volume has led to more collaboration and outsourcing. Disney, for example, might handle pre-production on a project that will ultimately be animated at Titmouse’s Vancouver operation, while the studio’s Hollywood office might handle pre-production on a project before handing it off to animators in South Korea. Last year, the studio worked with 80 artists in 10 countries to produce a series of animated videos for the electronic music duo AREA21.

As the number of projects has increased, so too has the variety of roles that Titmouse plays in the development and production process.

“Sometimes they come with hardly anything, and sometimes they come with a lot,” Chris says of the clients who hire Titmouse to turn their ideas into reality. (These clients often get help from SVA alumni, dozens of whom work, or have worked, for the studio—no doubt in part because the company’s sole recruiter, BFA 2013 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects alumnus Ellen Su, also teaches at the College.) Sometimes Titmouse produces projects for animator–creators such as Pendleton Ward (The Midnight Gospel, on Netflix) or Brad Neely (The Harper House, on Paramount+), who come packing their own concepts and visual styles. 

“Then we have a lighter touch; we’re the facilitators of their vision,” Chris says.

The studio’s growth has had other consequences as well.

“I feel like I’m way less connected to the creative than I used to be,” Chris says. “I end up getting pulled into the projects that have problems or issues, as opposed to just getting invited to the fun stuff.” 

All the same, the Prynoskis strive to maintain a fun-loving and supportive workplace environment. Early on, Shannon established an annual “5-Second Animation Day” at the studio, providing employees the time and resources to create their own short, personal animated projects. The resulting work has been screened for several years at the SVA Theatre and elsewhere, and has become as indicative of the studio’s collected talents, imaginations and sensibilities as its official résumé. (And they still sell T-shirts: Check out titmousestuff.com.)

Having a child—the two have a son, Conan, who is now nine—also changed things for the couple. The demands of parenting led Shannon to step back from the day-to-day production work that previously consumed her life. And for a while, Chris found himself walking into meetings with network executives with a baby strapped to his chest.

As Conan has gotten older, the work-life balance has become easier—which is good, because his parents have ambitious plans. Chris hopes to produce more full-length animated features. Titmouse’s first, Nerdland, came out in 2016; their latest, Arlo the Alligator Boy, came out last year. Shannon is working on an initiative to support greater inclusion and diversity in the animation industry.

“I’m trying to show people, ‘You can be a woman and own a studio. You can be a lead person and still have a baby,’” she says—even if she sometimes finds it hard to believe herself.

Alexander Gelfand is a freelance journalist in New York City who often writes about technology, business and the arts.

A version of this article appears in the spring/summer 2022 Visual Arts Journal.