Wellington, New Zealand – May 17th 2013 - DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. (Nasdaq: DWA) redefines a snail's pace and makes mobile history with the action-packed Turbo Racing League App and the $1,000,000 Shell-Out Contest Presented By Verizon. The game, which is inspired by DreamWorks Animation's upcoming summer film Turbo about a snail who gains super-speed, will feature the first contest of its kind to shell-out one million dollars in total cash prizes.

The Turbo Racing League App from DreamWorks Animation and PikPok(R) features the thrill of racing in the palm of your hands and is available on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android handsets and tablets, and Windows Phone 8. Players can rocket to the finish line like shell on wheels as they drift around corners, perform crazy stunts, collect tomatoes and grind rails to earn performance upgrades and improve their race times. The game is available on all mobile carriers, however, fans who play the game on a Verizon device will have access to exclusive content from the film as well as unique game customization options and insider tips and tricks on game play.

"Turbo Racing League perfectly captures the high-octane excitement of the film, and players of all skill levels will love the detail and depth that went into creating this addictive racing game," said DreamWorks Animation Head of Global Interactive Chris Hewish. "The basic game play is easy enough for everyone to enjoy, but the added complexities of the advanced maneuvers and the $1,000,000 Shell-Out will have racers vying for a lot more than bragging rights!"

To compete for real cash prizes in the $1,000,000 Shell-Out Presented By Verizon, eligible* players must achieve Daily Goals or obtain sufficient tomatoes throughout the game to unlock access into the weekly Contest. Once in the race, players can show off their driving skills on specific Contest race tracks during an eight week qualifying period of weekly Preliminary Races starting on May 16, 2013 and continuing until July 7, 2013. Each week, the ten fastest racers will win cash prizes up to $25,000.

Each of the eight weekly first place finishers will earn an invitation to the Grand Finale Race Event in Los Angeles to compete against each other for the chance to earn the title of Turbo Racing League Champion and the Grand Prize of $250,000!

The final race will be held in Los Angeles on July 17, 2013, in conjunction with the theatrical premiere of Turbo.

The Turbo Racing League App features:

• Nine Unique Race Tracks to Test Your Skills
• Special Race Events: Time Trials, Limited Fuel, Slalom and Rival Races
• Thousands of Performance and Design Combinations: Shell Upgrades, New Paint Jobs and Neon Glows
• Leaderboards highlighting how you rank against your friends and all the top players
• Ability to record your greatest race moments, watch on instant replay and share with your friends
• Optional Facebook and Twitter posting to show off your pimped-out Shell and best scores

*Turbo Racing League $1,000,000 Shell-Out Contest begins on May 16, 2013 and ends on July 17, 2013. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Airtime, message & data rates may apply for app download & use. US Adults only. VOID in AZ, IA, LA, ND and VT. Age restrictions and other eligibility requirements apply. For complete Contest eligibility requirements, rules, terms and conditions, please visit: www.turbomovie.com/shelloutrules.html. Sponsors: DreamWorks Animation LLC, 1000 Flower Street, Glendale, CA 91201 and Prodigy Design Limited/PikPok- Level 7, Willbank House, 57 Willis Street, Wellington, New Zealand.

Racing into theaters from Twentieth Century Fox on July 17, Turbo is a high-velocity 3D comedy about a snail who dares to dream big - and fast. After a freak accident infuses him with the power of super-speed, Turbo kicks into overdrive and embarks on an extraordinary journey to achieve the seemingly impossible: competing in the world's fastest race. With the help of his tricked-out streetwise snail crew, this ultimate underdog puts his heart and shell on the line to prove that no dream is too big, and no dreamer too small.

The Turbo Racing League App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch or at www.Appstore.com/TurboRacingLeague, from Google Play at http://play.google.com, and from Windows Phone Store at http://www.windowsphone.com.

Into the Dead App for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Android Passes 10 Million Downloads

PikPok® zombie themed original game reaches major milestone

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – May 7, 2012 – Leading digital games publisher PikPok® announced that their original title, Into the Dead™ for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Android, passed the 10 million download mark in April 2013, less than 5 months after release.  The game joins another PikPok title past 10 million downloads, Flick Kick® Football, and is fast chasing down the Flick Kick series total of over 20 million downloads.

The Into the Dead App throws you into the gruesome world of the zombie apocalypse where there are no second chances. Do what you have to stay alive, keep moving as fast as you can, and protect yourself by any means necessary. When the Dead are rising, run!

“We have been extremely pleased with the critical reception of the game, as well as reaching such a large and rapidly growing number of gamers with a new IP" said Mario Wynands, Managing Director of PikPok.  “I’m very proud of the team and process we have built that has been able to have repeat success, and look forward to seeing how our upcoming releases will be received.”

The Into the Dead App for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Android features:

• Intense gameplay with stunning visuals and sound depicting a grim zombie apocalypse
• The ability to unlock an arsenal of powerful weapons and perks to help you stay alive
• Multiple modes, missions, minigoals that provide constant challenges to overcome
• Challenges to test your skill competing against friends
• Ongoing updates to deliver new modes, features, and content

The Into the Dead App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore and from Google Play at http://play.google.com.

PikPok and Adult Swim Games have once again joined forces to develop and publish a sequel to the popular Robot Unicorn Attack.

The sequel includes many improvements to gameplay, visuals, and meta-game, with completely new artwork and gameplay design, while retaining the basic game mechanic.

Depth is added through the ability to upgrade your unicorn, use perks, beat goals, both daily and personal, and with a team system, which allows the gamer to choose one of two unicorn sides, Inferno and Rainbow, to compete on a community basis with other players.

Robot Unicorn Attack 2 is available on iOS for free.

To find out more see the game page, here.

Last week was pretty fun. Chris Howlett and Harrison Thrupp came down from Meda Design School (MDS) in Auckland to do their internships here at the studio. They each prototyped a game under the guidance of Senior Programmer, Tom Hall.

They also spend some of the time they were with us talking with a game designer, a PikPok team member recently graduated from MDS, and a product manager, as well as working with the QA testing team, and at the end of the week they shared their prototypes with the whole studio (brave!).

We really enjoyed havig them here, and wish them all the best with their studies and future careers.

We're delighted at today's news that Super Monsters Ate My Condo has been nominated for a BAFTA Video Game Award! The award in question is for Mobile and Handheld, and we're in incredibly good company, with co-nominees such as LittleBigPlanet (Vita), Incoboto, and The Walking Dead!

PikPok apps are distributed all over the world, and are played by a large number and wide selection of people varying demographically, geographically, and culturally. Small children, adults, men and woman play, casual gamers and hardcore, from a varied range of religious and social backgrounds, and many countries. There isn’t really such a thing as a typical PikPok customer, unless your parameters are so broad as to have the footprint of a titan, i.e. a primate with a suitable device.

Localisation is the process of adapting content for different audiences, and while translation is the most obvious part of this, there is more to it, as Andy Macoy, PikPok Localisation Manager, explains.

Aside from menus and instructions in games, what else does localisation cover?

Localisation is definitely more than just translation.

Where relevant, localisation has to speak-up for the gaming tastes and cultural differences of all the regions we’re intending to release a game.  Tailoring your game heavily to the tastes of one country is fine if that’s where you expect the vast majority of your customers to be, but if a game is going global things may need to be tweaked in order to please everyone.  If an element would be deemed funny in one target country while highly offensive in another for example, that has to be flagged.

In addition to translating all the text within a game, translating and recording any vocals is becoming an increasingly expected feature in modern games so I’ll have to organise scripts and recording sessions.

Also, ensuring all our games are properly submitted to the various local ratings bodies around the world such as ESRB or PEGI falls under my wing.

What is your background? How did you get into localisation?

I started in the games industry straight out of uni, initially in QA for Sony, transferring over to their publisher support team after a while before moving into production at Namco.  Most of their games were developed in Japan, so our primary job there was getting them ready to release in Europe and organising translations was a major part of that.  As a result I became a bit of a specialist in the area while still able to serve as a more traditional producer too whenever needed.

What are the pitfalls you sometimes hit localising games like Flick Kick Football?

Screen space is usually the biggest one.  A word which is 6 letters long in English may well have a German or French equivalent which is twice as long or more, so if there isn’t enough space available in a menu button to fit it’s title in all languages we have a problem.

Another common issue is translators working too literally from the English source text, which in the case of games having a lot humour or regional idioms in their wording can mean things are lost in translation.

How do you address those issues?

Automated test translations can give a rough idea of how much space will likely be needed for all supported languages nice and early, allowing the UI designers to take it into account.

Giving translators as much info on the game and context for each line is key to getting back their best work.  Often they’ll not be in a position to play the game while translating, so are reliant upon descriptions, movies and screenshots.  There’s no such thing as too much info, anything you can give them is helpful.

Post-release we will also listen to feedback from our community of fans and rework translations where there’s a consensus we didn’t get it quite right the first time.  We want our games to be as polished as possible for everyone, so every little bit of help is appreciated.

Does our QA team look at localisation issues for you, or do you have to go through each game yourself?

It’s a bit of both.  The QA team will look out for any issues in-game around text running too long for the available space, untranslated text or any other problems as far as people who don’t speak the various languages can.  I’ll take care of getting the issues they find fixed, addressing any minor issues such as obvious typos myself while working with the translators to fix any problems which can’t be taken care of in-house.  On top of that we’ll get everything proof-read by translators once it’s in the game, ideally by sending them a build of the game but sometimes we’re forced to use videos or screenshots instead.

Aside from the UI crew, who do you interact with most often.

The people I usually pester the most are the QA team and the producer of the game concerned, having lots of to-and-fro to get any bugs ironed-out of the translations.  The producer will also often need my help with translations for things like iTunes listings and other promotional materials after the in-game work is all done.

Do you have any funny stories about mistranslation or misunderstanding?

We’ve not had a full-on Zero Wing moment of incredibad translation yet, but hopefully I’ve not just jinxed things.

Super Monsters Ate My Condo is the follow-up to Monsters Ate My Condo, both developed by PikPok and published by Adult Swim Games.

A DreamWorks Animation Rise of the Guardians plush elf toy

To enter, download and print the linked elf image and decorate him using all of your creativity and holiday spirit. Entries may be decorated with fabric, ribbon, beads, paint, glitter, macaroni, paper, tinsel and more. Make your elf as cheerful as he can be, then take a clear, well-lit, focused photo, at least 1024 pixels along the shortest side.

Email the photo to us at decoratedelf@pikpok.com, along with your name, age, postal address, a list of decorative materials used, and the title of your decorated elf.

Entries close December 17, 4 pm PST (December 18 at 1 pm NZDT), with winners to be announced at 4 pm PST on December 19 (December 20 at 1 pm NZDT). All entries by persons under 13 years of age must be entered by a parent or guardian. Entry photographs will become property of PikPok, and will be published across our social channels, along with the first name and age of each entrant.  Elf plush provided courtesy of DreamWorks Animation.

PikPok® unleashes zombie horde themed original title on customers

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – December 6, 2012 – Leading mobile games publisher PikPok® announced the launch of the Into the Dead™ App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, available today from the App Store.

The Into the Dead App throws you into the gruesome world of the zombie apocalypse where there are no second chances. Do what you have to stay alive, keep moving as fast as you can, and protect yourself by any means necessary. When the Dead are rising, run!

“We’ve had a lot of fun exploring a darker creative side of PikPok with Into the Dead," said Mario Wynands, Managing Director of PikPok. “The mature content of the App is quite a departure from the usual PikPok release, but it contains all the polish and fun people have come to expect from us.”

The Into the Dead App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch features:

• Intense gameplay with stunning visuals and sound depicting a grim zombie apocalypse
• The ability to unlock an arsenal of powerful weapons and perks to help you stay alive
• Missions and minigoals that provide constant challenges to overcome
• Challenges to test your skill competing against friends
• Ongoing updates to deliver new modes, features, and content

The launch trailer for the App can be viewed at www.intothedead.com

The Into the Dead App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone, iPad and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore.

Animation done well is transparent to all but enthusiasts. An unnaturally weighted or timed movement can be jarring, and break immersion and enjoyment for the gamer, while well executed animation looks seamless and natural, and is barely noticed as a result. Our Lead Animator, Mark Cuthbert, has been with us for years, and has a lot of experience to share.

What was your background in terms of skills/qualifications and experience when you came to PikPok?

I joined the company at a time when there weren’t many (if any) computer art/animation courses. The closest animation related course I knew of at the time was a traditional 2d animation course. Any relevant skills I brought to the job were self-taught. The only industry-like experience I’d had was working with a modding group.

What types of animation techniques, tools, and processes are used in the PikPok animation team?

Pretty much all our animation is 3d, even characters that look 2d are actually 3d. We mostly use Autodesk Maya, utilising a mix of its standard features and our own proprietary tools. We cover a range of animation techniques, from realistic to cartoony, it depends on the needs of the project.

What are the advantages of animating apparently 2D assets in 3D?

The main advantage is it’s using methods and techniques we’re familiar with. Historically we’ve always used Maya for our animation, doing seemingly 2d animation in Maya means we’re not across applications and we can use the same tools.

How involved are you with the development of proprietary animation tools?

Very involved, if it’s something the animation team can’t do, we work closely with the tech-art team to design and iterate tools. We’re constantly looking for new ways to improve our production workflow.

How many animators do we have, and do they specialise in particular tasks/methods?

We currently have two animators. One focuses solely on animation and the other does a mix of character rigging and animation. We’re both capable animating in a variety of styles.

Which part of your role do you get the biggest kick out of?

I personally enjoy the challenge of character rigging, there’s something really satisfying about building something akin to a puppet and having it move and deform as you want it to.

Which PikPok title have you had the most fun animating for, and what about that project made it so enjoyable?

Probably Into The Dead. Mostly because I’ve always wanted to animate 1st person weapons and the theme of the game is more to my tastes. I also really enjoyed animating on Extinction Squad. It was fun to do something cartoony and cute.