Beano Studios

SmartStudy is a global entertainment company that operates Pinkfong, a platform that offers creative, animated content to provide stimulating and fun learning experiences to children worldwide. More than 4,000 Pinkfong songs, stories and games are available on mobile apps and various digital platforms such as YouTube and Amazon Video. In addition, the company offers Monster Super League, a mobile role-playing game (RPG) that allows players to collect and train monsters.

Mighty Rabbit Studios, Inc. is a developer of pop-culturally aware video games based out of Durham, NC. Their first project is Saturday Morning RPG, a bite-sized episodic role-playing game firmly set in a world inspired by 1980s Saturday morning cartoons. The company was founded in August of 2010 as part of the inaugural session of the game development incubator program, Joystick Labs. The company was formed by co-founders Josh Fairhurst and Nic Allen.

South Park Studio provides animation and production services. The company offers carton animation, and episodes and clips, play games, create an avatar including Cartman, Kenny, Stan and kyle. South Park Studio was founded in 1997 and is based in Los Angeles, Califonia.

Punch Communications is a digital marketing services company. It specializes in animation, social media, illustration, SEO, events management, graphic design, copywriting, videography, photography, digital media, digital marketing, creative, strategy, and influencers. It was founded in 2003 and is based in Market Harborough, United Kingdom.

Creative Logic Entertainment is a company that received a SBIR Phase II grant for a project entitled: User Oriented Character Animation Framework for Producing Believable Motions. Their Project proposes a new approach to the problem of creating and editing premium quality computer-generated character animation that will dramatically reduce the heavy labor penalty associated with animation techniques and software tools currently available. The specific technical innovation consists of a generic animation framework that produces high-quality motion through a reduced set of input parameters (compared to keyframe techniques) while providing a high degree of "directability" for the user. Additionally the proposed innovation affords the ability to capture, store and reproduce stylistic motions with a high level of fidelity and repeatability. Style is encoded in both physically- and behaviorally-based time-variable parameters supporting smooth transitions between styles. The theoretical foundation is similar to spacetime approaches yet has major differences that improve usability, flexibility, and productivity. Successful completion of this project will lead to a product that increases the productivity of experienced animators by simplifying the animation process, and enables novice or non-animators to quickly and easily create animated content. The successful completion of this Small Business Innovative Research phase II project, in conjunction with an appropriately developed user interface, will positively impact the global content creation industry by increasing the ease-of-use for creation of animation compared to the difficult and labor intensive animation processes currently employed. Successful commercialization will expose a much broader consumer market to the art of computer animation. The broader exposure of the solution will allow un-trained and underrepresented groups the ability to express themselves through the art of 3D computer generated character animation that is currently the realm of highly skilled users only. In addition, the increased ease of creating compelling animations will afford the dissemination of animation based information over a broader audience. Finally, the solution will allow animation to be used for applications where it was not previously feasible due to ease-of-use and budgetary constraints opening up new commercial opportunities. Creative Logic Entertainment is a company that received a SBIR Phase I grant for a project entitled: User Oriented Character Animation Framework for Producing Believable Motions. Their Project proposes a new approach to the problem of creating and editing premium quality computer-generated character animation that will dramatically reduce the labor penalty associated with animation techniques and software tools currently available. The specific technical innovation consists of a generic animation framework that produces high-quality motion through a reduced set of input parameters (compared to keyframe techniques) while providing a high degree of "directability" for the user. Additionally the proposed innovation affords the ability to generate, capture and reproduce stylistic motions with a high level of fidelity and repeatability. Style is encoded in both physically- and behaviorally-based time-variable parameters supporting smooth transitions between styles. Successful completion of this project will lead to a product that increases the productivity of experienced animators by simplifying the CG animation process, and enables novice or non-animators to quickly and easily create animated content. The solution will allow animation to be used for applications where it was not previously feasible due to budgetary constraints opening up new commercial opportunities. Furthermore the successful development of this innovation will expose a much broader consumer market to the art of computer animation, allowing educators to develop more creative and visually effective course materials.

Rube Goldberg is a nonprofit organization. Its mission is to promote equity and access in STEM and arts education. Rube Goldberg was founded in 1988 and is based in New York, New York.