Plastic Wax took top honours in being awarded this year’s NSW Creative Laureate Award.

Parliamentary secretary Ben Franklin said NSW’s creative industries services exports were worth $2.8bn in 2015-16, about 71 per cent of the national total.

“It is vital to the innovation which drives growth and prosperity, enriching NSW’s cultural and economic capital,” he said.

Mr Franklin said the internationally recognised animation studio Plastic Wax was awarded this year’s NSW Creative Laureate for its significant leadership, capability and influence over more than 20 years in the NSW creative industries.

Dane Maddams, executive vice-president of Plastic Wax, said “We’re quite unique in that no one does specifically what we do in Australia,” he said.

“Most of our clients are in North America and it’s a privilege to regularly work with companies such as Disney, Warner Bros and Microsoft who choose to work with an Australian company, even though they’ve plenty of options close by. So, we are honoured to be singled out for such recognition domestically.”

In accepting the award, executive producer of Plastic Wax, Felix Crawshaw spoke to the future for the company. “ Our long pedigree in cinematics is all apparent,” he said, “but we’re also quietly leading the charge into VR, AR and animated TV series produced in-engine.”

Crawshaw cited reports on this emerging market growing from $5.6bn in 2016 to $162bn by 2020 in AR/VR alone – three times bigger than the growth in film, television and music combined.

“Real time rendering in-engine is revolutionising the way productions can be made, and it’s this technological backbone that underpins VR and AR,” Crawshaw said, “It’s a very exciting time for Plastic Wax, as we have played and developed IP in this space for years.”