Blue Sky Studios

Blue Sky Studios, Inc. is an American computer animation film studio based in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was founded in 1987 by Chris Wedge, Michael Ferraro, Carl Ludwig, Alison Brown, David Brown, and Eugene Troubetzkoy after their employer, MAGI, one of the visual effects studios behind Tron, shut down. Using its in-house rendering software, the studio created visual effects for commercials and films before dedicating itself to animated film production. Its first feature, Ice Age, was released in 2002 by 20th Century Fox. It produced 13 feature films, and its latest release being The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, released on January 28, 2022, with their next release being Nimona in 2023.
Blue Sky Studios its a subsidiary of Fox Animation Studios under Paramount. 
Ice Age and Rio were the studio's most commercially successful franchises, while Robots and Spies in Disguise were among its most critically praised films. Scrat, a character from Ice Age, was the studio's mascot.
==History==
===1980–1989: Formation and early computer animation===
In the late 1970s, Chris Wedge, then an undergraduate at Purchase College studying film, was employed by Mathematical Applications Group, Inc. (MAGI). MAGI was an early computer technology company which produced SynthaVision, a software application that could replicate the laws of physics to measure nuclear radiation rays for U.S. government contracts. At MAGI, Wedge met Eugene Troubetzkoy, who held a Ph.D in theoretical physics and was one of the first computer animators. Using his background in character animation, Wedge helped MAGI produce animation for television commercials, which eventually led to an offer from Walt Disney Productions to produce animation for the film Tron (1982). After Tron, MAGI hired Carl Ludwig, an electrical engineer, and Mike Ferraro transferred to the film division from the Cad Cam division of MAGI. As MAGI's success began to decline, the company employed David Brown from CBS/Fox Video to be a marketing executive and Alison Brown to be a managing producer. After MAGI was sold to Vidmax (Canada), the six individuals—Wedge, Troubetzkoy, Ferraro, Ludwig, David Brown, and Alison Brown—founded Blue Sky Studios in February 1987 to continue the software design and produce computer animation.
At Blue Sky, Ferraro and Ludwig expanded on CGI Studio, the studio programming language they started at MAGI and began using it for animation production. At the time, scanline renderers were prevalent in the computer graphics industry, and they required computer animators and digital artists to add lighting effects in manually; Troubetzkoy and Ludwig adapted MAGI's ray tracing, algorithms which simulate the physical properties of light in order to produce lighting effects automatically. To accomplish this, Ludwig examined how light passes through water, ice, and crystal, and programmed those properties into the software. Following the stock market crash of 1987, Blue Sky Studios did not find their first client until about two years later: a company "that wanted their logo animated so it would be seen flying over the ocean in front of a sunset." In order to receive the commission, Blue Sky spent two days rendering a single frame and submitted it to the prospective client. However, once the client accepted their offer, Blue Sky found that they could not produce the entire animation in time without help from a local graphics studio, which provided them with extra computer processors.
===1989–2002: Television commercials, visual effects and Bunny===
Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, Blue Sky Studios concentrated on the production of television commercials and visual effects for film. The studio began by animating commercials that depicted the mechanisms of time-release capsules for pharmaceutical corporations. The studio also produced a Chock Full O' Nuts commercial with a talking coffee bean and developed the first computer-animated M&M's. Using CGI Studio, the studio produced over 200 other commercials for clients such as Chrysler, General Foods, Texaco, and the United States Marines. They made a CG Homer and Bart Simpson for the "Homer3" segment of the 1995 The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror VI" and a cartoon bumper for Nicktoons that features an orange blob making a dolphin, a dinosaur, and a walking person
In 1996, MTV collaborated with Blue Sky Studios on the film Joe's Apartment, for which Blue Sky animated the insect characters. Other clients included Bell Atlantic, Rayovac, Gillette and Braun. The Braun commercial was awarded a CLIO Award for Advertising. Recalling the award, Carl Ludwig stated that the judges had initially mistaken the commercial as a live action submission as a result of the photorealism of the computer-animated razor. In August 1997, 20th Century Fox's Los Angeles-based visual effects company, VIFX, acquired majority interest in Blue Sky Studios to form a new visual effects and animation company, temporarily renamed "Blue Sky/VIFX". Following the studio's expansion, Blue Sky produced character animation for the films Alien Resurrection (1997), A Simple Wish (1997), Mouse Hunt (1997), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and Fight Club (1999).
Meanwhile, starting in 1990, Chris Wedge had been working on a short film named Bunny, intended to demonstrate CGI Studio. The film revolves around a rabbit widow who is irritated by a moth. The moth subsequently leads the rabbit into "a heavenly glow, reuniting her with her husband." At the time, Wedge had been the thesis advisor for Carlos Saldanha while Saldanha was a graduate student at the School of Visual Arts; Wedge shared storyboard panels for Bunny with Saldanha during this time. After Saldanha's graduation, Blue Sky Studios hired him as an animator, and he later directed a few commercials. It was not until 1996 when Nina Rappaport, a producer at Blue Sky Studios, assigned Wedge to complete the Bunny project, which required CGI Studio to render fur, glass, and metal from multiple light sources, such as a swinging light bulb and an "ethereal cloudscape". In the initial stages of the Bunny project, Carl Ludwig modified CGI Studio to simulate radiosity, which tracks light rays as they reflect off of multiple surfaces. Blue Sky Studios released Bunny in 1998, and it received the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Bunny's success gave Blue Sky Studios the opportunity to produce feature-length films.
===2002–Present: Feature films under Paramount===
In March 1999, Fox decided to sell VIFX to another visual effects house, Rhythm & Hues Studios, while Blue Sky Studios would remain under Fox. According to Chris Wedge, Fox considered selling Blue Sky as well by 2000 due to financial difficulties in the visual effects industry in general, however Blue Sky along with News Corporation were acquired by Paramount. Instead, Wedge, film producer Lori Forte, and animation executive Chris Meledandri presented Fox with a script for a comedy feature film titled Ice Age. Studio management pressured staff to sell their remaining shares and options to Fox on the promise of continued employment on feature-length films. The studio moved to White Plains NY and started production on Ice Age. As the film wrapped, Fox feared that it might bomb at the box office. They terminated half of the production staff and tried unsuccessfully to find a buyer for the film and the studio.[citation needed] Instead, Ice Age was released by 20th Century Fox on March 15, 2002, and was a critical and commercial success, receiving a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards in 2003. The film established Blue Sky as the third studio, after Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, to launch a successful CGI franchise.
In January 2009, the studio moved from White Plains, New York to Greenwich, Connecticut, taking advantage of the state's 30 percent tax credit and having more space to grow. The studio stated in April 2017 that it intended to stay in Connecticut until 2025.
In 2013, Chris Wedge took a leave of absence to direct Paramount Animation's live-action/computer-animated film Monster Trucks. He then returned to Blue Sky Studios and worked on multiple projects for the company, such as serving as an executive producer.
In July 2019, Miloro announced that she would be stepping down from her role as co-president, thus leaving Baird as sole president.
In August 2019, former Walt Disney Animation Studios head Andrew Millstein was named as co-president of Blue Sky Studios alongside Baird, while Paramount Animation president Connor Sentance would also be taking a supervising role.
== Filmography ==
===Feature films===
# 	Title 	Release date 	Distributor/Co-production with 	Notes
1 	Ice Age 	March 15, 2002 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
2 	The Wainscott Weasel 	2003 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
3 	Santa Calls 	December 15, 2004	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
4 	Robots 	March 11, 2005 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Animation	
5 	Ice Age: The Meltdown 	March 31, 2006 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
6 	Ant-N-Grasshopper 	March 2, 2007 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
7 	The Iguana Brothers 	2008 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
8 	Horton Hears a Who! 	March 14, 2008 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
9 	Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs 	July 1, 2009 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
10	Rio 	April 15, 2011 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
11	Horton Hears a Who! 	March 14, 2008 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
12	Ice Age: Continental Drift 	July 13, 2012 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
13	The Adventures of Mordecai and Rigby!	February 14, 2013	Paramount Pictures20th Century Fox AnimationRare Ltd. 	
14	Epic 	May 24, 2013 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
15	Rio 2 	April 11, 2014 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
16	X-Wing 	2015 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Animation	
17	Ice Age: Collision Course 	July 22, 2016 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
18	Ferdinand 	December 15, 2017	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios
Davis Entertainment 	
19	Anubis 	March 23, 2018 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
20	The Grinch 	November 9, 2018 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
21	Spies in Disguise 	December 25, 2019	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios
Chernin Entertainment 	
22	Extinct 	August 20, 2020 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
23	The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild 	January 28, 2022 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	Released on Paramount+
24	Nimona 	March 14, 2022 	Paramount Pictures20th Century Fox AnimationAnnapurna PicturesVertigo Entertainment	Released on Paramount+
25	Foster 	2023 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
26	Banjo-Kazooie 	2023 	Paramount Pictures20th Century Fox AnimationRare Ltd. 	
27	Pound Puppies 	TBA 	Paramount Pictures20th Century Fox AnimationEntertainment OneHasbro 	
28	Mutts 	TBA 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
29	The Cat in the Hat 	TBA 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
30	Thing One and Thing Two 	TBA 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
31	Oh, the Places You'll Go! 	TBA 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
32	Horton Hatches the Egg 	TBA 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
33	Green Eggs & Ham: The Movie 	TBA 	Paramount Pictures
20th Century Fox
Fox Animation Studios 	
===Television specials===
#	Title 	Release date
1	Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas 	November 24, 2011
2	Ice Age: The Great Egg-Scapade	March 20, 2016
===Short films===
# 	Title 	Release date
1 	Bunny 	November 2, 1998
2 	Gone Nutty 	November 26, 2002
3 	Aunt Fanny's Tour of Booty 	September 27, 2005
4 	No Time for Nuts 	November 21, 2006
5 	Surviving Sid 	December 9, 2008
6 	Scrat's Continental Crack-Up 	December 25, 2010
7 	Scrat's Continental Crack-Up: Part 2	December 16, 2011
8 	Umbrellacorn 	July 26, 2013
9 	Cosmic Scrat-tastrophe 	November 6, 2015
10	Scrat: Spaced Out 	October 11, 2016
==Television series==
Title 	Release date 	Network 	Co-production with
Ice Age: Scrat Tales 	April 13, 2022	Paramount+	20th Century Fox Television Animation
The Journeys of Blu and Jewel	TBA 	Paramount+	20th Century Fox Television Animation
===Contributions===
*Nickelodeon (1991) – Blob ident
*The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror VI (1995) ("Homer3" Segment)
*Joe's Apartment (1996) – dancing and singing cockroaches
*Alien Resurrection (1997) – the aliens
*A Simple Wish (1997) – numerous characters and special effects
*Mouse Hunt (1997) – several mice and household effects
*Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) – several alien creatures
*Jesus' Son (1999) – sacred heart, "liquid" glass, and screaming cotton ball effects
*Fight Club (1999) – the "sliding" penguin
*The Sopranos (2000) – the "talking fish" in the episode "Funhouse"
*Titan A.E. (2000) – 3D animation: creation of the new world in the final "Genesis" sequence
*Family Guy (2006) – Scrat's cameo in the episode "Sibling Rivalry"
*Banjo-Kazooie 3 (2008) - cutscene and character animation
*Sonic The Hedgehog: Animated (2009) – the Transformers in the episode "Spolier Alert!"
==Franchises==
Titles 	Release dates	Films	Shorts
Ice Age	2002–present 	6 	7
Rio 	2011–2014 	2 	0
==Notes==
# ^ Jump up to:a b or its regional affiliates such as disney.co.uk
#^ under Paramount Pictures