Sans Strings Studio

Sans Strings Studio is an independent real-time animation, virtual production and game-development company creating original entertainment across interactive games, episodic comedy, short-form content and live or transmedia formats. Founded by Sébastien Deguy and Ryan Corniel, the studio combines tactile puppetry performance with real-time digital production.

Its core technology is F.E.L.T. (Fuzz-E Logic Toolset), a proprietary character and performance-capture framework developed in Unreal Engine 5. The system enables artists and puppeteers to perform digital characters live with VR controllers and game inputs, rather than relying solely on conventional frame-by-frame animation. Assets created in tools including Houdini and ZBrush can be animated and rendered in real time with physics-based hair and dynamic secondary motion.

This approach supports a cross-platform "build once, deploy everywhere" pipeline: shared character assets and performance logic can be used across games, animated series, social shorts and live experiences.

Capabilities

• Real-time character animation and digital puppetry
• Virtual production and tactile motion-controller puppeteering
• Unreal Engine 5 production pipelines, including Control Rig, Physics Rig and procedural grooming
• Digital character rigging and performance-capture pipeline design
• Video game development, co-production and transmedia IP development
• Branded entertainment and commercial short-form production

Projects

The studio's projects include Felt That: Boxing, an in-development comedic puppet-combat game for PC; Gleeful Beasts, a digital puppetry sketch-comedy series; and Stuntman Stu, a 22-episode branded short-form series made with Playmates Toys. Its development slate also includes the adult-animation sketch-comedy series String Theory, preschool project Tideschool, TUBE vs CUBE, and Dogs Dogs Dogs Dogs Dogs Dogs Dogs!

Sans Strings Studio publicly emerged through the a16z speedrun 005 accelerator in 2025. In 2026, it closed a $5.5 million Series Seed round led by Red River West, supporting its development of original IP and real-time production technology.