Former Raven Trevor Pryce Has Built a Live-Action Animation Studio in East Baltimore

“I can’t draw anymore. But for some reason, when I was a kid, I was a very good artist,” recalls Trevor Pryce, inside the sprawling studio space of The Outlook Company, his media and live-action animation business in the historic Hoen Lithographic building in East Baltimore.

“In 4th and 5th grade, I would take small pictures and draw them big, very close to scale—a lot were Mickey Mouse-type characters that I’d put on BMX bikes and skateboards and stuff. I was on my way to being a great artist and then puberty hit, and I lost all control of my limbs and fine motor skills. That was the end of that.”

Not quite. The 6-foot-6 Pryce regained control of his limbs well enough to become a 290-pound All-Pro defensive end, starring for three Ravens playoff teams. And though his drawing ability never returned, he realized after his playing career ended that his artistic sensibilities had never left.

Like many ballplayers, he initially struggled to find his post-football footing, penning a thoughtful piece for The New York Times about his restlessness. A longtime musician and movie buff, he had an interest in potentially scoring films, but since he doesn’t read music, that morphed into writing films.

Remarkably, Sony bought his first screenplay and Disney, his second. Then, it was three years before he sold anything else. However, he’d also co-authored a successful comic book novel, An Army of Frogs, illustrated by renowned comics artist Sanford Greene, which got picked up by Netflix, evolving into a three-season, 26-episode series in 2016.

The comic book and project, set in Australia, had been inspired by the BBC documentary Planet Earth and a particular high-speed camera shot of a frog jumping from tree to tree, which Pryce thought resembled a human superhero when fully stretched out.

“That was the spark and five minutes later, I remember saying to myself, ‘Ninja Turtles exist, has anybody done frogs yet?’ My next thought was, ‘Frogs need an enemy—scorpions. Holy cow, we need a place. Has anybody done Australia?’ It flooded out of me.”

Which brings us inside his state-of-the-art studio, fully dedicated at the moment to turning Kulipari: An Army of Frogs, the successful Netflix series, into a feature-length animated film.

On a recent morning, as an actor and staff member role play in motion-capture suits, pictured left above, Pryce explains that he hopes—no, expects—the film to catapult his animation company into a different stratosphere, the way the success of Star Wars allowed George Lucas to grow and expand LucasFilm.

His decision to establish his animation studio in East Baltimore instead of Hollywood, while perhaps unexpected to some, wasn’t that complicated. Pryce’s kids were doing well at the McDonogh School in Owings Mills, and he didn’t want to move them. And with institutions such as the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Baltimore School of the Arts, he feels there is plenty of talent here to develop.

“I’ve had overtures to move to other states. They said, ‘Hey, if you come, we can promise you X, Y, Z,’ and I’m like, ‘I wouldn’t mind taking your money and your space, but that means I’ve got to live where you are, and I don’t want to live there.’ I tell people all the time that being a media company, an animation and gaming studio, in Baltimore is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because we’re the only one. It’s a curse because we’re the only one. So that has to change, and it will change once we’re successful.”

In the studio, the outgoing, 49-year-old Pryce jokes that he doesn’t touch any of the equipment. But once the frames are made and the animation is done, he does the editing In fact, he oversees production and works with the voice- over actors, including, by coincidence, a certain Stars Wars icon who was nominated for an Emmy in Pryce’s Netflix series. Pryce admits that even a former Super Bowl-winning football player (with a little fantasy-adventure obsession) can still get momentarily starstruck.

“The first day we were recording, I walked into our old studio and there’s Luke Skywalker sitting in front of me, right? He’d just got done shooting Star Wars: The Force Awakens. He’d read my comic book while filming in the Middle East. I’d tell him how I wanted something said and Mark Hamill would take direction from me. He’d say whatever I want him to say, in the way I wanted him to say it. He would 100 percent do it. It was great. He’s also a sweet, sweet guy. Very different from the Jedi master you think he is.”