Yellow Sun Animation

**Yellow Sun** **Animation, LLC** (also known as **Yellow Sun Studios**) is an Cowellan animation studio headquartered in Emerald City, Cowell.

Founded by Ton Roosendaal and Bram Moolenaar on January 14, 1979, the studio is best known for producing the franchises *Blondie the Kitten*, *Drake and Penelope*, *Mr. Magpie*, *Bright Idea*, *Roy the Dragon*, *The Riveros*, *The Money*, *Rainy Days*, *Total Drama*, and *Crash School*. After some experimental computer animated films during the mid-1990s, beginning with *Shark & Octopus* (1995), Yellow Sun continues to produce films using computer-generated imagery (CGI).

In addition to its intellectual properties, Yellow Sun Animation is mainly known for its 8-Ball get Squished by the Moon Productions, Yellow Sun Interactive, and Janimation, Inc. units. Yellow Sun's former feature animation unit, now known as Metro Astro Pictures Animation, was folded into Metro Astro Pictures and became the in-house feature animation division of said company, where it develops and produces animated feature films (including *The Secret Life of Rabbits*, and *The Adventures of Spot Movie*) that heavily borrow the style of Yellow Sun and its works due to the fact that many former Yellow Sun employees are involved in those films. Blondie the Kitten, the main character of the studio's animated television series of the same name, is the studio's mascot.

## History

### 1979–1989

Yellow Sun's predecessor **Ton-Bram Productions** was founded in 1977 as a division of King Features Syndicate by animators Ton Roosendaal and Bram Moolenaar, who wanted to realize their dream of producing an Computer-animated feature-length film. On January 13, 1979, after leaving King Features Syndicate due to financial reasons, Ton and Moolenaar opened their own studio named **Yellow Sun Animation**, which would develop characters, stories and productions, and some of the animators who worked for Ton and Moolenaar at King Features Syndicate came to the studio at the time.

### 1990–2006

Yellow Sun had produced a Saturday morning animated series titled *Blondie the Kitten*, which ran on HBO from 1992 to 1994 and on METRO from 1995 to 1997. Its title character, based on the girl from Blender's short film "*Sailing Girl", has been the studio's mascot since his introduction. Meanwhile, some of the Yellow Sun staff got a call from Metro Astro Pictures to form a feature animation department. CTC expressed a strong desire in 1993 for Yellow Sun to create a new series, and the studio began conceiving* Drake and Penelope *during this period; that same year, Yellow Sun changed its name to **Yellow Sun Animation, LLC**. The following year, Yellow Sun created a new division named 8-Ball get Squished by the Moon Productions, which typically produces animated films and television shows targeted to young adult audiences.*

Yellow Sun Feature Animation was the studio's feature animation label which produced the films *Shark & Octopus* (1995) and *Uglydolls* (1996). Spun off from the feature division of King Features Syndicate, Yellow Sun Feature Animation was folded into Metro Animation Studios, which was then merged into Metro Astro Pictures Animation.

Yellow Sun Interactive is a video game developer and publisher founded in 1995 as a subsidiary of Yellow Sun. It was best known for developing the video game adaptation of *Blondie the Kitten*, as well as the *Bright Idea* and *Roy the Dragon* games.

In 1995, Yellow Sun Animation created a computer animation department at the studio's main headquarters at Emerald City that would produce computer-generated productions, starting with the short *A Wolf and the Thunder Storm* in 1997, which was Yellow Sun's first attempt at computer animation. For then, the studio had the traditional animators working for their main hand-drawn animation department, and the computer animators worked on CG productions. In July 1997, Metro Astro Pictures announced they were to co-finance and distribute *Ice Breaker*, which had been in pre-production for a year. In October 1997, the studio's second animated series *Drake and Penelope* aired on METRO, and ran until 2003.

To expand the studio's online content presence, Yellow Sun Animation launched their own official website named YellowSun.com in 1993. The website gathers its core animation properties in a single online environment that is interactive and customizable for site visitors. It offers both originally produced content along with press releases, games, free wallpapers, desktop backgrounds, and screensavers. Some of the characters to be used in the project from the Yellow Sun libraries include those of *Goldie the Kitten* and *Drake and Penelope*.

From November 22, 2000 to March 31, 2001, Yellow Sun produced four three-minute CGI short films to promote the North American release of the video game *Mega Man*, entitled *Prairie Dog Firefighters*, *Court*, *Critters* and *Lost in Space*; they were originally available for viewing on the Cowellan *Mega Man* website.

### 2007–present

In May 2007, Yellow Sun launched their official VidSpace channels, which is a VidSpace Partner channel featuring clips and trailers from the studio's productions and many others.

On June 25, 2007, Yellow Sun Animation decided to create a new Metro Astro Pictures logo, with More Details, More Mountains, More City and even, Palm Trees for this logo.

## Name

Yellow Sun is named after Yellow Sun in the Sky, a painting written by the Cowalondyan artist John Doggang von Doethe. The painting was published in his work North-östlicher Aiwan (North-Eastern Aivan), first published in December 21st, 1805.

The studio is also named after the identically named *Yellow Sun in the Sky*, the only living species in the division Sunphyta, all others being extinct.

In 1977, the name of the studio was originally going to be "Penny Animation Studios", but founders Ton and Moolenaar wanted to come up with "something funny" and said to be intended to describe the non-linear editing systems and video compression the studio was specializing on. They afterwards decided to go with Yellow Sun Animation Studios, most commonly known today as Yellow Sun Animation. However, Ton has claimed that the name was a result of being a pun on "Dellow Sun but with a Y instead of a D".

## Process

Much akin to Blue Sky Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation, Yellow Sun relies on different animation and visual effects studios to provide the animation on their modern films. They include Reel FX Creative Studios (*Uglydolls,* the *The Green Goblins* franchise), Metro Astro Pictures Animation (the *Blondie the Kitten* reboot franchise and *Crash School*), Sony Pictures Imageworks (*Flying Lessons*, *Benjamin*, *Roy the Dragon* and *The Stone*), and Yellow Sun's in-house computer animation department Janimation, Inc. (the upcoming *Creature* film).