Glass Ball Productions

Glass Ball Productions (formerly known as Double G Productions, commonly referred to as Glass Ball) is an American production company and animation studio founded by Geo G., behind the animated series Gabriel Garza, BJ and Wally, Eilonwy's Magical Tales, Niz Chicoloco, Zina Supermoon, Adventures of Kit Mineko, TeenV, Cland Ann, Zoe vs. the World, FusionMania, College University and Disney Princess, as well as the films Kit Mineko (1999), The Gabriel Garza Movie (2002), Zina and the Vivid Crew (2004), The TeenV Movie (2005), Zoe Tarr: The Drinking Detective (2007), FusionMania: The Movie (2012), and Havoc on the Planet of the Apes (2019). Glass Ball has also associated on other works, including Dusk and Dawn, The Princess and the Pied Piper, Nepola's Odyssey, Prism and Imagimals.

Based in Los Angeles, California, the studio has mostly associated with such companies as Universal Pictures and The Walt Disney Company.

Early years and major success with Gingo (1988–1996)
Animator Geo G. left Michael Wildshill Productions (later known as Multimedia Animation) in early 1988. While at the studio, he worked on The Master of Colors as animator, The Workers as character designer and additional animator, and Liche's Wish as an uncredited animator. After leaving, he founded Double G Productions. For its launch, the studio produced many logo designs, commercials, promos and shorts for a wide variety of clients.

In 1988, Double G produced some shorts for The Toon Hour on Gingo and later signed a deal with the network to produce shows starting in 1990, with Multimedia handling funding and a minority interest in the studio. As part of the deal, Double G retains creative control and Multimedia/Gingo exclusively distributes the series. Since 1991, Double G had produced Gabriel Garza, one of the first original animated shows for Gingo, which was based on an unsuccessful comic book pitch Geo had created in the early 1980s while at high school. Gingo expressed a strong desire in 1991 for Double G to create a new series, and the studio began conceiving BJ and Wally as their next major series with Gingo during this period. The show revolved around the lives of BJ Wilson and his adoptive brother Wally in the fictional small town of Tootleville, Illinois. The series ran from 1994 to 1997.

The studio had assisted development in video games, such as the 1996 video game adaptation of Gabriel Garza, as well as the Niz Chicoloco and Chrysocolla games, the former of which was created by Double G as a possible mascot for DreamWorks (later DreamWorks Animation) to compete with Disney's Mickey Mouse.

Rename and other successes (1996–2003)
In December 1996, the studio was renamed to Glass Ball Productions. The following year, they produced a show for Disney, titled Eilonwy's Magical Tales, the first show not to air on Gingo, which aired from 1997 to 2002 and lasted 65 episodes (per Disney's rule). In May 1997, Glass Ball signed a multi-year production deal with DreamWorks to co-finance and produce animated feature films for the studio starting with Kit Mineko, which had been in development since 1996, to be followed by The Story of Dusk and Dawn, in which DreamWorks later acquired when Universal Pictures put that project in a turnaround. From 1998 to 2005, DreamWorks and Glass Ball later collaborated on a television series based on Niz Chicoloco, which aired on Gingo.

The studio's first feature film Kit Mineko was released in April 1999 by DreamWorks and was a critical and commercial success, grossing over $159 million worldwide. This success then spawned a multimedia franchise with several video games, a television series Adventures of Kit Mineko which aired on Gingo from 2000 to 2003, comic books, toys, and among others. During this period, Glass Ball began producing Zina Supermoon for Gingo, in collaboration with comedians Steve Oedekerk and Sarah Silverman. The cartoon, premiering in early 2000, revolved around the eponymous space girl who was raised by a race of aliens in the planet known as Voorus and becomes a heroine by attempting to save Voorus from the evil Rebel who plans to steal Voorus's power energy and use it to wipe out the population.

In January 2001, Glass Ball signed a six-year deal with 20th Century Fox Television to produce animated series targeted to adult audiences. The first series out of the deal is TeenV, the studio's first adult animated series, created by Terry Ward, who conceived the series in 1997 following the controversy of the Gabriel Garza episode "The Line Club", which was criticized by critics and parents who interpreted the episode as an example of promoting and implicitly satirizing use of profanity towards children, leading to the creation of TeenV. In July 2002, The Gabriel Garza Movie, a feature-length film based on the Gabriel Garza series, was released by Universal and Gingo Movies.

In 2003, Glass Ball partnered with Venice-based visual effects company Blur Studio to provide animation for computer-animated feature films, beginning with Zoe Tarr: The Drinking Detective, Glass Ball's first computer-animated feature. Later that year, the studio assisted with the development and production of Dusk and Dawn for DreamWorks though Geo G., who designed many of the film's main characters, was initially supposed to co-produce the film under Glass Ball but was never formally credited as one of the producers for the film. It was released by DreamWorks in December 2003 to great critical and financial success, which led to spawning a franchise with two sequels, a prequel, several shorts, television productions, and many more.

Later years (2004–present)
In 2004, Glass Ball named former Warner Bros. Animation executives Clive Nakayashiki and Scott Setterberg vice president and head of production for the studio, respectively. In December of that year, Glass Ball released Zina and the Vivid Crew, based on Zina Supermoon, and was a modest box office success, grossing over $293 million worldwide. The following year, the studio purchased Vivendi Universal Digital Arts and renamed it into Double G Games (which is named after its original company name). In the same year, they also teamed up with David Webber and Jason Stewart to co-produce another animated series for Fox titled Cland Ann, created by TeenV creator Terry Ward. However, it was cancelled in 2008 due to low ratings, but later gained a cult following. In 2007, after its deal with Fox expired, the studio signed a non-exclusive deal with Universal Television Animation to produce newer animated series.

Zoe Tarr: The Drinking Detective, distributed by Rogue Pictures in co-production with ShadowMachine Films and Blur Studio, was released in November 2007 to positive reviews but was vastly overshadowed by the success of Walt Disney Pictures' Enchanted, resulting Zoe Tarr being a box office bomb grossing only $113 million in the box office. Despite this, it was successful enough on home media for Glass Ball to produce a spin-off television series titled Zoe vs. The World, which aired on Gingo's late night block NightHouse from 2008 to 2011. In September 2008, Glass Ball once again teamed up with Gingo on FusionMania, an animated superhero comedy series that centers around three high school students who suddenly become a team of superheroes.

Since the start of the 2010s, Glass Ball began assisting development for the following films Nepola's Odyssey and Imagimals and their sequels for Universal as well as Prism for DreamWorks. In 2016, Glass Ball produced Disney Princess for Disney after many years in development hell and the series lasted three seasons.

Logo
The Glass Ball Productions logo depicts a large glass ball being shattered by a butterfly, followed by a loud cracking sound. The logo was designed by founder Geo G., who created the original idea for the logo. Some special versions of the studio's animation were made to fit episodes of shows like TeenV and Cland Ann. Often, dialogue from some TeenV episodes can be heard during the animation.

The Glass Ball logo was parodied in the "Rejected Pokémon" segment in an episode of the Cartoon Network animated series MAD, where it features a rejected Pokémon called Glasstar, who is shattered by a butterfly (which resembles the one in the Glass Ball logo), thus echoing the famous Glass Ball logo.

Video games

 * See also: Double G Games

Glass Ball has also collaborated and put input through the company's Double G Games unit for several games.

Miscellaneous productions

 * Comedy Central (IDs, commercial)
 * Everyone's Hero (2006; commercials)

Trivia
Coming soon!