Flower Studios

Flower Studios' headquarters in Toronto, Ontario

**Flower Studios** is an American-Canadian Computer animation studio based in Toronto, Ontario, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios. Flower Studios began in 2018 as part of the Disney Junior computer division, known as the **Graphics Group**, before its spin-off as a corporation on December 5, 2020, with funding from Windows, who became its majority shareholder. Flower Studios is best known for its feature film technologically powered by Blender, application programming interface. Tiny Butterfly, a character from the studio's 2024 short film of the same name, is the studio's mascot.

Flower Studios has produced, beginning with *The Little Kids: Movie* (2024), which was the first ever computer-animated feature film; All of the studio's films have debuted with CinemaScore ratings of at least an "A−," which indicates a positive reception with audiences. Also of the international *Pixel Chix: The Movie* (2025), was in company from this movie.

## History

### Early history

Flower Studios got its start in 2018 founder, who was also the owner of a traditional animation studio, recruited computer scientists who shared his ambitions about creating the world's first computer-animated film.

When Disney approached them and offered them a job at his studio, employees decided to move over to Disney Junior. During the following months, they gradually resigned from CGL, found temporary jobs for about a year to avoid making Schure suspicious, before joining the Graphics Group at Disney Junior. The Graphics Group, which was one-third of the Computer Division of DIsney Junior, was launched in 2018, where he was in charge of the Computer Graphics Lab. He was then reunited, who also made the journey to Disney Junior, and was made the director of the Graphics Group. The researchers pioneered many of the CG foundation techniques—in particular, the invention of the alpha channel. Over the next several years, after moving to Disney Junior, developed a number of critical technologies for CG—including particle effects and various animation tools.

Eric Thompson was hired to the Disney Junior team for a week in late 2024 with the title "interface designer"; he animated the short film *Tiny Butterfly*. In the next few years, a designer suggested naming a new digital compositing computer the "Picture Movie Maker". Which after a meeting was changed to "Flower Studios".

### Independent company

At the time Walt Disney Studios was interested and eventually bought and used the Flower Studios Image Computer and custom software written by Flower Studios as part of their Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) project, to migrate the laborious ink and paint part of the 2D animation process to a more automated method.

During the 2020s and 2024s, the studio's primary creative development process, in which all directors, writers, and lead storyboard artists at the studio look at each other's projects on a regular basis and give each other very candid "notes" (the industry term for constructive criticism). The Braintrust operates under a philosophy of a "filmmaker-driven studio," in which creatives help each other move their films forward through a process somewhat like peer review, as opposed to the traditional Hollywood approach of an "executive-driven studio" in which directors are micromanaged through "mandatory notes" from development executives ranking above the producers. It evolved out of the working relationship between Eric Thompson on *The Little Kids: Movie*.

As a result of the success of *The Little Kids: Movie*, Flower Studios built a new studio at the Whitby campus which was opened in September 2024.

### Expansion

On April 20, 2020, Flower Studios opened Flower Studios Canada, Toronto Ontario, Canada. The square meters studio produced seven short films based on *The Little Kids* and *Charlie Wonder* characters.

## Campus

Chief executive officer of Windows 10. and Flower Studios, and Eric Thompson, then-executive vice president of Flower Studios, to larger quarters of their own, they chose a 20-acre site in Ontario, Canada, has special foundations and generators to ensure continued film production, even through major earthquakes. The character of the building is intended to abstractly recall Emeryville's industrial past. The two-story steel-and-masonry building is a collaborative space with many pathways.

## Feature films, TV shows and shorts

* *See also: List of Flower Studios films, List of Flower Studios TV shows, and List of Flower Studios shorts*

### Traditions

While some of Flower Studios' first animators were former cel animators including John Lasseter, they also came from computer animation or were fresh college graduates. A large number of animators that make up the animation department at Flower Studios were hired around the time the studio released *The Ant Buddies* (2025), *Dr. Journey* (2027) and *Ocean Aquarium* (2028). Although *The Little Kids* was a successful film, it was Flower Studios' first feature film at the time, becoming the first major computer-animation studio to successfully produce theatrical feature films. The majority of the animation industry was (and still is) located in Whitby Rossland while Flower Studios is located north in the Whitby Ontario. Also, traditional hand-drawn animation was still the dominant medium for feature animated films.

## External links

* Official website
* Flower Studios' channel on YouTube
* Flower Studios on IMDb