Shumka x Buffalo Buffalo
Shumka x Buffalo Buffalo is an ongoing collaboration between the Shumka Centre for Creative Entrepreneurship at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU) and Vancouver-based independent game studio Buffalo Buffalo. The partnership connects ECU students and recent graduates with industry-embedded applied research opportunities in game development, animation, and interactive media production.
The collaboration was initiated through Shumka Centre’s Technology Pathways for Creative Futures program in Spring 2025. Through a curricular Game Jam and Hackathon module embedded in ECU’s senior Interaction Design studio course, three Buffalo Buffalo team members participated as industry mentors, working directly with 20 ECU students on game design concepts, development workflows, and collaborative production processes.
Following this engagement, Shumka x Buffalo Buffalo: Birdseed—an NSERC Mobilize industry research project—was launched in June 2025 to support animation production for Buffalo Buffalo’s virtual reality game Birdseed. The project provided opportunities for two ECU students and one recent graduate from the Bachelor of Media Arts (BMA) program to contribute to the design and development of 3D animations and stylized assets within a professional game development pipeline, supported by faculty and industry mentorship.
The collaboration continues from January to December 2026 through Shumka x Buffalo Buffalo – Robot Bash: Grafting, a Mitacs Business Strategy Internship (BSI) project supporting animation system development for Buffalo Buffalo’s unannounced multiplayer evolution brawler game. Through this initiative, a recent BMA graduate from ECU joins the studio as a 3D animation intern, contributing to the development of modular animation assets and workflows for real-time gameplay environments.
Together, these projects support collaboration between academia and industry while creating pathways for emerging creative talent to contribute to Canada’s growing interactive media sector.
