Dissatisfied with his previous experiences as a screenwriter in the animation industry, Savin Yeatman-Eiffel wanted to create a distinctive kind of show, one that would revive the type of emotions he had felt as a kid watching the classic Japanese anime series of the 70s. In short, he wanted to stress the emotional side of his characters and story, something that he felt had totally disappeared from Western animation productions. Working on that idea, he created his own company "Sav! The World Productions", which released in 2001 a short movie entitled Molly, Star-Racer, produced in part by Sparx Animation Studios and set to a Y&Co. remix of Ayumi Hamasaki songs. The trailer already showed a mix of 3D and 2D though at the time 3D was still predominant. It featured many of the characters with unfinalized designs including Jordan, Don Wei, Maya, Aikka, Satis, Toros, Sül, Ondai, Ning & Skun, Furter and of course, Molly racing across various places in the Oban landscape featured later in the series. This short movie won the 2001 LEAF Awards and was nominated for best editing in the 2002 Imagina Awards. Leaked on the internet, it quickly became extremely popular among animation fans, generating hundreds of thousands of downloads on various sites - a rarity at the time. The pilot is produced using Alias Wavefront Maya 3D software.