Animation studio

An animation studio is a company producing animated media. The broadest such companies conceive of products to produce, own the physical equipment for production, employ operators for that equipment, and hold a major stake in the sales or rentals of the media produced. They also own rights over merchandising and creative rights for characters created/held by the company, much like authors holding copyrights. In some early cases, they also held patent rights over methods of animation used in certain studios that were used for boosting productivity. Overall, they are business concerns and can function as such in legal terms.

Currently there are about 201 animation studios dedicated to the production and distribution of animated films that are active. Few are actual production house where as others are corporate entities. Many of these animation studios help with the fulfillment of animation works for big brand names and have carried out outsourced projects including Nemo.

Winsor McCay was widely renowned as the father of the animated cartoon, having converted his cartoon strip Little Nemo into a 10-minute feature film, co-directing it along with J. Stuart Blackton, released on April 8, 1911. However, the idea of a studio dedicated to animating cartoons was spearheaded by Raoul Barré and his studio, Barré Studio, co-founded with Bill Nolan, beating out the studio created by J.R. Bray, Bray Productions, to the honour of the first studio dedicated to animation.

Though beaten to the post of being the first studio, Bray's studio employee, Earl Hurd, came up with patents designed for mass-producing the output for the studio. As Hurd did not file for these patents under his own name, but handed them to Bray, they would go on to form the Bray-Hurd Patent Company and sold these techniques for royalties to other animation studios of the time. The patents for animation systems using drawings on transparent celluloid sheets and a registration system that kept images steady were held under this firm. Bray also developed the basic division of labor still used in animation studios (animators, assistants, layout artists, etc.).

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