MUMBAI: W!ldbrain Animation Studios, the animation company based in San Francisco, will now expand its operations to and include a satellite studio in Los Angeles.

W!ldbrain Animation Studios general manager Marge Dean said, “With W!ldbrain’s growing pipeline of motion pictures and television series, and a steady increase in long-form, work-for-hire business, the impetus of this move can be attributed to the growth of 3D animation in television.”

The new W!ldbrain Animation Studios space is located in Sherman Oaks, CA and is up and running, effective immediately. The Los Angeles-based studio is being headed by Chris Staples and Michelle Papandrew (Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends).

W!ldbrain Animation Studios’ San Francisco-based operations will continue to serve as a principal hub for commercial work, television, motion pictures and game animation, as well as original content development.

"The accelerated growth of our own intellectual property production slate and our work-for-hire business led to our decision to expand the animation studios to Los Angeles," said Dean. "W!ldbrain is a leader in 3D CGI animation. This is an area of the entertainment business that continues to show tremendous growth, both domestically and internationally. There are a number of studios that are looking to produce 3D CGI television series based on their respective 3D animated box office hits. This creates a great opportunity for us to expand our future work-for-hire business as one of the few studios that has an experienced and tested CG pipeline for television," she continued.

Dean and Josh Book, CG Supervisor for W!ldbrain Animation Studios, are both pioneers in the creation of CG production for television. Book structured and developed the CG department at Nickelodeon that produced Tak and the Power of Juju, the network’s first CGI series; The Penguins of Madagascar, the CGI animated television series based on the 2005 film, Madagascar; and Fan Boy and Chum Chum, the CG animated comedy series spin-off of the Nickelodeon anthology series Random! Cartoons. Dean produced Roughnecks: Starship Troopers Chronicles, a CGI animated television series based on both the novel by Robert A. Heinlein and the 1997 film adaptation directed by Paul Verhoeven. She also set up the team for the popular CGI series, Back at the Barnyard for Nickelodeon, and produced the first season.