History
After several years of working for R. O. Blechman at The Ink Tank, Richard O'Connor as producer and Brian O'Connell as executive producer/co-creative director, they founded Asterisk Animation, LLC, in 2003. They dissolved the company in 2011, Brian O'Connell forming Asteroid Media, Inc., and Richard O'Connor forming Ace & Son Moving Picture Co., LLC.
R.O. Blechman, is an American animator, illustrator, children's-book author, graphic novelist and editorial cartoonist whose work has been the subject of retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art and other institutions. He was inducted into the Art Directors Hall of Fame in 1999.
The Ink Tank was a design and animation production company in New York.
In 2011, the firm worked with documentarian Gail Levin to develop packing for PBS' Fall Festival. They produced a suite of signal films for the Ottawa International Animation Festival, a series of commercials for Web.com, title design for A New York Fairy Tale, and the short film Sympathy for the Fish: A Holiday Story.
The Ottawa International Animation Festival was founded in Ottawa, Canada in 1975, with the first festival held from August 10 to 15 in 1976. Initially organized by the Canadian Film Institute on a biennial basis and with the co-operation of the International Animated Film Association), the Festival organization now remains in the hands of the CFI. It moved from a biennial to an annual festival in 2005.
2012 productions include animation for Katy Chevigny's The Honor Code, which premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival, video installations for the New York Book Expo, 1787 -a short film on the drafting of the American Constitution for TEDed, graphics for Deceptive Practice: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay, editorial/graphics for The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, The Hamptons Film Festival, The Chase Community Giving Awards, The Intelligent Channel and animation packages for Unilever and Canongate Publishing.
The 2012 short film Christmas Day features music by The Handsome Family and has screened at film festival around the country and captured the Audience Choice Award at The Citrus Cel Animation Festival, Outstanding Achievement in Animation from Brooklyn's Willifest, the Silver Telly, and Excellence in Design from ASIFA-East Animation Festival.
The Handsome Family is an alternative country and Americana duo consisting of husband and wife Brett and Rennie Sparks formed in Chicago, Illinois, and currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They are perhaps best known for their song "Far from Any Road" from the album Singing Bones, which was used as the main title theme for the first season of HBO's 2014 crime drama True Detective. The band's 10th album, Unseen, was released on September 16, 2016, the first new release on the band's own label and through long-time label Loose in Europe.
ASIFA-East Animation Festival is the animation award show by ASIFA-East, the Eastern U.S. chapter of ASIFA, based in New York City. The 40th Annual ASIFA-East Animation Festival was in 2009.
Production on Elliot Cowan's Stressful Adventures of Boxhead & Roundhead feature film concluded in 2014.
In summer 2016, the company created the "Who We Are" series for StoryCorps and UpWorthy.
StoryCorps is an American non-profit organization whose mission is to record, preserve, and share the stories of Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs. StoryCorps grew out of Sound Portraits Productions as a project founded in 2003 by radio producer David Isay. Its headquarters are located in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
Upworthy is a website for viral content started in March 2012 by Eli Pariser, the former executive director of MoveOn, and Peter Koechley, the former managing editor of The Onion. One of Facebook's co-founders, Chris Hughes, was an early investor. It is owned by Good Worldwide.
Other projects include films and graphics for Sesame Street, Read Russia, ASME, JazzReach, The Future of StoryTelling, David Grubin Productions, Amplify, DAVVS, Pine Brothers Softish Throat Drops, TransAmerica, The School of Life, Cartuna, and others.
Sesame Street is an American educational children's television series that combines live action, sketch comedy, animation and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop and was created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett. The program is known for its images communicated through the use of Jim Henson's Muppets, and includes short films, with humor and cultural references. The series premiered on November 10, 1969, to positive reviews, some controversy, and high viewership; it has aired on the U.S.'s national public television provider PBS since its debut, with its first run moving to premium channel HBO on January 16, 2016.
The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is an American professional association that, in its own words, "promotes the art, science, and practice of multidisciplinary engineering and allied sciences around the globe" via "continuing education, training and professional development, codes and standards, research, conferences and publications, government relations, and other forms of outreach." ASME is thus an engineering society, a standards organization, a research and development organization, an advocacy organization, a provider of training and education, and a nonprofit organization. Founded as an engineering society focused on mechanical engineering in North America, ASME is today multidisciplinary and global.
The School of Life is an educational company that offers advice on life issues. It was founded in 2008 and based in branches in London (headquarters), Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Istanbul, Melbourne, Paris, São Paulo, Sydney, Seoul, Taipei and Tel Aviv. The School offers a variety of programmes and services covering finding fulfilling work, mastering relationships, achieving calm, and understanding and changing the world. The School also offers psychotherapy and bibliotherapy services and runs online and physical shops.
Pixar Animation Studios is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California, that is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, owned by The Walt Disney Company. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder. Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion by converting each share of Pixar stock to 2.3 shares of Disney stock, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, Pixar's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image-rendering application programming interface, used to generate high-quality images.
Edwin Earl "Ed" Catmull is an American computer scientist and former president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. As a computer scientist, Catmull has contributed to many important developments in computer graphics.
Marvel Studios, LLC is an American motion picture studio based at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California and is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, itself a wholly owned division of The Walt Disney Company, with film producer Kevin Feige serving as president. Previously, the studio was a subsidiary of Marvel Entertainment until Disney reorganized the companies in August 2015.
John Alan Lasseter is an American animator, filmmaker, and former chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar and the defunct Disneytoon Studios. He was also the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Harvie Krumpet is a 2003 Australian clay animation comedy-drama short film written, directed and animated by Adam Elliot, and narrated by Geoffrey Rush. It tells the life story of Harvie Krumpet, a Polish-Australian man whose life is plagued by bad luck but who nevertheless remains optimistic.
Ryan is a 2004 animated documentary created and directed by Chris Landreth about Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, who had lived on skid row in Montreal as a result of drug and alcohol abuse. Landreth's chance meeting with Larkin in 2000 inspired him to develop the film, which took 18 months to complete. It was co-produced by Copper Heart Entertainment and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and its creation and development is the subject of the NFB documentary Alter Egos. The film incorporated material from archive sources, particularly Larkin's works at the NFB.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures is an American film distributor owned by The Walt Disney Company. It handles theatrical distribution, marketing and promotion for films produced and released by the Walt Disney Studios, including Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures, and Blue Sky Studios. The company was originally established in 1953 as Buena Vista Film Distribution Company, Inc. It took on its current name in April 2007,
Peter Hans Docter is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, producer, voice actor and chief creative officer of Pixar. He is best known for directing the animated feature films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009) and Inside Out (2015) and as a key figure and collaborator at Pixar. He has been nominated for eight Oscars, seven Annie Awards, a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He has described himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons".
The Animation Guild, I.A.T.S.E. Local 839 is a professional guild and union of animation artists, writers and technicians. It was formed in 1952. In 2002, the organization changed its name from Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists.
Floyd E. Norman is an American animator, writer, and comic book artist. Over the course of his career, Norman has worked for a number of animation companies, among them Walt Disney Animation Studios, Hanna-Barbera Productions, Ruby-Spears, Film Roman and Pixar.
Brown Bag Films, or Brown Bag, is a Canadian-owned Irish television animation production studio, based in Dublin, Ireland with a 2D and 3D facilities based in Manchester, UK and Toronto, Canada. Best known for its character CGI-animated television series and short films, including the Oscar nominated Give Up Yer Aul Sins and Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, Brown Bag Films was established in 1994 by Cathal Gaffney and Darragh O'Connell. The studio has garnered a number of awards, including Academy Award nominations for Give Up Yer Aul Sins and Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, six Emmy Award wins for Peter Rabbit, an Emmy award for Bing and a number of BAFTA, Emmy and Annie nominations for their shows Octonauts, Doc McStuffins and Henry Hugglemonster.
A storyboard artist creates storyboards for advertising agencies and film productions.
Little Airplane Productions is an American television production company, most well known for producing preschool television programs. Founded by Josh Selig in 1998, the company created and produced Wonder Pets! and Oobi for Nickelodeon, Go, Baby! for Playhouse Disney, and 3rd & Bird for the BBC's children's channel CBeebies.
The Fresh Film Festival is a festival for young people which takes place in Limerick, Ireland each Spring.
Jack O'Connell is an English actor. Born and raised in Derby, he trained in acting at the Central Junior Television Workshop in nearby Nottingham, which led to roles in film, television, and theatre. His film debut as a teenaged skinhead, in the coming-of-age drama This Is England (2006), heralded his propensity for playing angry, troubled youth.
Nest Family Entertainment is an American family entertainment company based in Coppell, Texas. It was formed in 1980 as Family Entertainment Network by Jared F Brown, Stephen W. Griffin and Seldon O Young. The company first released dramatized audio cassettes sets that are based on stories from the Holy Bible. In 1981, Nest Family Entertainment founded another company, Living History Productitons to released dramatized audio cassettes set that are based beloved principles of hero classics. The studio owned Richard Rich's animation studios Rich Animation Studios until 1993, then Family Entertainment Network was renamed to Family Entertainment, also in the fall of 1994, Family Entertainment was renamed to Nest Entertainment. In 1996, Living History Productions was folded into Nest Entertainment. Rich Animation Studios was sold to Indian animation company Crest Animation Studios in 2000, and changed its name to RichCrest Animation Studios before being renamed again to Crest Animation Productions.
CJ E&M is a South Korean entertainment and mass media company by CJ Group in 2011. As July 2018, CJ E&M became a division of the CJ ENM.
Triggerfish Animation Studios, or simply Triggerfish, is a computer animation film studio based in Cape Town, South Africa. The studio is best known for its animated feature films Adventures in Zambezia (2012), Khumba (2013), and the work they have done on television specials created for UK producers Magic Light Pictures. In 2016, Stick Man was awarded the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy International Animation Festival. In 2017, "Revolting Rhymes" again won the Cristal for best TV production at the Annecy Festival, and was nominated for the Best Short Film (Animated) Oscar at the 2018 Academy Awards.
Professional Sweetheart is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic comedy directed by William A. Seiter from a screenplay by Maurine Watkins. It starred Ginger Rogers in her first film with RKO Radio Pictures, along with Norman Foster, ZaSu Pitts, and Frank McHugh. The film is a comedic satire of the radio industry.
