Rough Draft Studios

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rough Draft Studios

Type	Animation Studio
Founded	1991
Founder	Gregg Vanzo
Headquarters	Glendale, California and Seoul, South Korea
Key people	Gregg Vanzo, Nikki Vanzo, Claudia Katz
Industry	Film and Television
Website	www.roughdraftstudios.com

Rough Draft Studios, Inc. is an animation studio founded by Gregg Vanzo, that resides in Glendale, California, USA with its sister studio, "Rough Draft Korea" in Seoul, South Korea.

1 Founding
2 Growth in business
3 Production
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Founding

In 1991 Gregg Vanzo approached John Kricfalusi, the creator of The Ren and Stimpy Show, about forming his own animation studio in South Korea. This was how Rough Draft began. Due to having difficulties with some other studios about getting the Ren and Stimpy "feel" correct, Kricfalusi was admittedly hesitant about adding another studio, but he was pleased when Rough Draft not only met his expectations, but surpassed them.

[edit] Growth in business

After 1991, and Ren and Stimpy, many other shows requested the assistance of Rough Draft in animation and ink & paint. The two most notable of these shows were The Simpsons in 1992, and Beavis and Butt-head in 1993. Rough Draft quickly became a powerhouse animation studio, providing overseas work for many Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon original series.^[1]

Rough Draft later opened a studio in Glendale, California to directly produce animation for shows such as Futurama (Emmy and Annie award winning) and The Maxx (Annie nominated), as opposed to the outsourced work previously done in Korea for other studios.

During production of Futurama the Glendale office was at a total of 130 people. When the show was effectively cancelled by FOX^[2], the office's workforce dwindled down to just 30.^[3]

[edit] Production

Rough Draft Studios has produced over 120 half-hours of prime-time animation. RDS specializes in the blend of traditional and computer animation. The studio has used Toonz for digital animation production since 1993.^[4]