Homeworld
Relic Entertainment was founded in Vancouver, Canada, on June 1, 1997, and began work on "Homeworld" as their first title. Relic co-founders Alex Garden and Luke Moloney served as the director and lead programmer for the game, respectively, while Erin Daly was the designer and Aaron Kambeitz the lead artist. Garden was 22 years old when he founded the company. Writer David J. Williams is credited with the original story concept, while the script itself was written by Martin Cirulis and the background lore was written by author Arinn Dembo. Cirulis and Dembo, credited jointly as "Marcus Skyler", were selected by the publisher, Sierra Studios, partway through development to expand the story concept of Relic and Williams. Sierra agreed to publish the game early in development based on, according to Garden, "two whiteboard presentations and no demo". The development of the game took over two years; the game systems were largely complete by the final eight months, which Relic spent polishing and improving the game, including adding the whole-map Sensors Manager view. The game was initially expected to be released at the end of 1998; Garden stated in a 1999 interview that the team found creating the core game itself much easier than getting it to the quality level they wanted, and that if they had known how difficult it was going to be they may have chosen not to do the project. Several ideas for the game, including ship customization, convoy routes, and different unit types for the Kushan and Taidann fleets were cut during development as they could not be done well enough for the project.
Crest Animation Productions
The studio was founded by film director Richard Rich in 1986, who previously worked at Walt Disney Productions. In 1987, the studio was owned by Nest Family Entertainment to produce and distribute educational animated Christian and historical videos for children such as Animated Stories from the New Testament, Animated Hero Classics and Animated Stories from the Bible. In 1994, the two studios produced and released their first and most famous collaborated feature film called "The Swan Princess", based on the classic ballet Swan Lake, it was distributed for New Line Cinema. The film was rather successful on its first opening weekend. It also spawned two sequels, "" and "", neither of which did a good performance. In 1999, the two studios teamed up with Morgan Creek Productions and Rankin/Bass Productions to produce an animated adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I" for Warner Bros.. However, the film bombed at the box office and received very negative reviews, which forced Nest Family Entertainment to sell off the studio to Crest Animation Studios in 2000 to form RichCrest Animation Studios. In 2001, the studio produced and released its last collaborated feature film with Nest Family Entertainment, "The Trumpet of the Swan", based on E.B. White's 1970 novel of the same name. It was distributed by TriStar Pictures and also performed poorly. RichCrest Animation Studios continued to produce Bible videos for Nest Family Entertainment until 2005. In February 2007, it was renamed to Crest Animation Productions and announced that it was "expanding its business to become a full-service animation studio specializing in the development and production of CGI-animated properties for theatrical, television, home entertainment and interactive distribution". The studio was finally shut down in 2013, after failing to make a profit. Many of its productions contracts were handed over to other studios for completion. For example, Norm of the North, a film that was in production at Crest before closing, along with future Alpha and Omega sequels were handed over to be finished at Splash Entertainment.