Gingo Animation

Gingo Animation, LLC (also known as Gingo Studios or simply Gingo) is an American animation studio based in North Hollywood, California. Founded by Geo G. and Michael Wildshill in 1982 as Geo G. Productions, the studio has been owned by Universal Studios, a division of Comcast through its wholly owned subsidiary NBCUniversal, since 2004. Gingo creates animated feature films, short films, television programs, and video games. Although the studio initially made two traditionally animated films, all of their films now utilize computer animation. The studio has currently produced a total of eighteen feature films, beginning with Paint World (1999) and its most recent being Gabriel Garza 3 (2017). It is best known for the franchises Gabriel Garza, Hatty, Niz Chicoloco, Planetokio, Paint World, Computeropolis, Paradoria, and Imagimals.

As of August 2017, Gingo's feature films have grossed a combined total $90.5 billion worldwide, with an average gross of $597.2 million per film. Three of its films—DCL: Desktop Component League (2016), Computeropolis 2 (2007), and Gabriel Garza 2 (2014)—are among the 50 highest-grossing films of all time, and fourteen of its films are among the 50 highest-grossing animated films of all time, with DCL: Desktop Component League being the sixth all-time highest in the latter category. The studio has received two Academy Awards as well as 37 Emmy and numerous Annie Awards and multiple Golden Globe & BAFTA nominations. All of Gingo's feature films are distributed worldwide by Universal Pictures, with the exception of Woo La La (2009), which was distributed by Toho in Japan with Universal handling international rights. Gabriel Garza, a character from the studio's animated television series of the same name, is the studio's mascot.

1982–1998: Early years
Gingo Animation was founded by animators Geo G. and Michael Wildshill in 1982 as Geo G. Productions, originally a division of Hanna-Barbera. In early 1988, Geo G. Productions was renamed as Gingo Animation, and was thus separated from Hanna-Barbera. The studio had produced a Saturday morning animated television series titled Gabriel Garza, which ran on CBS from 1994 to 2002. Its title character Gabriel Garza has been Gingo's mascot since his introduction in 1994. In 1993, Gingo created a division named Glass Ball Productions, which typically produces animated films and television shows targeted to young adult audiences.

Gingo Interactive was a video game developer and publisher founded in 1994 as a subsidiary of Gingo. It was best known for developing the video game adaptation of Gabriel Garza, as well as Niz Chicoloco and its sequel Niz 2: The Journey of Nonsensical. In 2007, however, it was shut down in order to focus on third-party development of video game adaptations of its franchises by other developers.

In May 1996, Gingo Animation and Universal Studios announced that they were teaming up to co-finance and distribute Gingo's first feature film Paint World, which had been in pre-production for a year. On August 21, 1998, Gingo and Universal signed a $250 million deal to make ten more films that were estimated to be completed within the next fifteen years. Another project was also announced, titled The Tub People, intended to be based on the children's picture book of the same name by Pam Conrad; however, it was put on hold two years later because of script issues. At this time Universal purchased a 60% share of Gingo.

From October 21, 1999 until January 31, 2000, Gingo produced four three-minute CGI short films to promote the North American release of the video game Planetokio, entitled Bot Fight, Race, Clones and Iken's Lunch; they were originally available for viewing on the North American Planetokio website.

1999–present: Feature films
On December 25, 1999, the studio's first feature film Paint World was released to a great critical and financial success.

Due to the increasing popularity of computer animation, Gingo decided to exit the hand-drawn animation business and become a fully CGI studio. Beginning with Computeropolis, all of its films were expected to be produced in CGI; as of 2014, Gingo has not produced a traditionally animated film to date. In 2004, Computeropolis was released to great critical and commercial success. The film established Gingo as the fourth studio, after Pixar, DreamWorks Animation and Blue Sky Studios, to launch a successful CGI franchise.

After the success of Computeropolis, in September 2004 Geo G. and Michael Wildshill sold their remaining interest in Gingo to Universal. The studio would be then bought out by Universal to avoid a repeat. Character trademarks from franchises created by Gingo, such as Gabriel Garza, Hatty Weasel, and Iken of Planetokio, were retained by Gingo and sold to Universal. However, intellectual property produced through Gingo's Glass Ball label, such as Geo TV and Cland Ann, were retained by 20th Century Fox, who opted to retain said series within its adult animation lineup, which consisted of The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Futurama. The Gingo name was also guaranteed to continue, and the studio would remain in its current location in North Hollywood.

In April 2005, Gingo announced that it would be working with Universal Studios to create Computeropolis: A Technical Ride, a 3-D ride at Universal Studios in Orlando, Hollywood, Sentosa, and Osaka. The ride officially opened on June 11, 2006 in Orlando, Hollywood on March 15, 2008, Sentosa on March 18, 2010, and Osaka on March 4, 2011. In 2008, Gingo celebrated 20 years of being an animation studio.

In 2008, Universal announced a deal with another animation studio named Illumination Entertainment, positioning it as NBCUniversal's family entertainment arm within its feature animation group. This meant that Universal would be able to release as many as three animated films in a year, divided between the two studios; Gingo and Illumination remain separate companies; critics and fans felt that Gingo and Illumination were meant to help Universal to establish a feature animation group and a competitor to Disney's feature animation group which consists of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios (including its division DisneyToon Studios).

Wildshill later explained that after the merger, to maintain the studios' separate identities and cultures (notwithstanding the fact of common ownership and common senior management), he and Geo G. "drew a hard line" that each studio was solely responsible for its own projects and would not be allowed to borrow personnel from or lend tasks out to the other; the rule ensures that each studio maintains "local ownership" of projects and "can be proud of its own work". Thus, for example, when Gingo had issues with Gabriel Garza (2011) and Illumination with The Lorax (2012), "nobody bailed them out", and each studio was required "to solve the problem on its own", even when they knew there were personnel at the other studio who, theoretically, could have helped.

In September 2012, Gingo named a former president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, Peter Schneider, president of Gingo Animation; however, in January 2013, Schneider resigned for personal reasons. In 2013, Gingo celebrated its 25th anniversary. In October 2014, just a month before the release of Disney's Big Hero 6, Universal entered a licensing agreement with Disney to use the Hiro Hamada character and trademark for Universal's Gingo productions (such as films, television series, shorts, specials, video games, etc.), which sparked media speculation that Hiro will guest star in Gingo's animated comedy sketch series GGTV as well as appearing in one Gingo film. Gingo coincidentally planned an animated film based on the original Big Hero 6 comics by Marvel in the mid 2000s until it got cancelled years before Disney released their own version of Big Hero 6 in 2014. Gingo's CEO and founder Geo G. stated that the reasoning was due to wanting to have Hiro in Gingo media because of the increasing popularity of "Liro", an internet crossover fan-fiction relationship between Hiro and Leno Garza, a character from Gingo's Gabriel Garza franchise, as they both share the similar appearance and characteristics. Universal and Gingo stated in July 2017 that they intend to keep the Hiro Hamada character license from Disney until the contract expires in 2027.

On April 28, 2016, NBCUniversal announced its intent to acquire competing studio DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion, thus making DreamWorks Animation the third animation studio owned by Universal; the acquisition was later completed on August 22, 2016.

Name
Gingo Animation is named after Gingo biloba (later Ginkgo biloba), a poem written by the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The poem was published in his work West-östlicher Diwan (West-Eastern Divan), first published in 1819. Goethe used "Gingo" instead of "Ginkgo" in the first version to avoid the hard sound of the letter "k".

The studio is also named after the identically named Ginkgo biloba, the only living species in the division Ginkgophyta, all others being extinct. It is found in fossils dating back 270 million years. Native to China, the tree is widely cultivated and was introduced early to human history. It has various uses in traditional medicine and as a source of food. The genus name Ginkgo is regarded as a misspelling of the Japanese gin kyo, "silver apricot". However, "gingo" is more commonly translated as "passed" from Swedish.

The name of the studio was originally going to be "StarActive Studios", but founders Geo and Wildshill wanted to come up with "something funny" and said to be intended to describe the non-linear editing systems and video compression the studio was specializing on. They afterwards decided to go with Gingo Animation Studios, most commonly known today as Gingo Animation. However, Geo has claimed that the name was a result of being a pun on "bingo but with a G instead of a B".

Feature films

 * Further information: List of Gingo Animation films

Short films

 * Further information: List of Gingo Animation shorts

Online series
Coming soon!

Television specials
All the television specials are aired on NBC, except as indicated.

Associated productions
Gingo Animation has occasionally collaborated with other studios to assist in the production of some animated features. These films are:
 * Curious George, providing development (uncredited)
 * The Tale of Despereaux, providing development (uncredited)
 * Despicable Me, providing development (uncredited)
 * Niz Chicoloco, providing story, development, and pre-production; originally labeled under the Gingo Animation banner
 * Paint Universe, providing story, development, pre-production, and animation

Golden Globes
More coming soon!

Annie Awards
Coming soon!

Critics' Choice Awards
Coming soon!

Saturn Award
Coming soon!

Trivia

 * Gabriel Garza is Gingo's mascot.
 * Gingo is often described by fans as the Universal counterpart of Pixar, but Gingo is more described by some fans as the Universal counterpart of Walt Disney Animation Studios while Illumination is described as the Universal counterpart of Pixar, due to the fact that both Illumination and Pixar have no films released in 2014.
 * On the other hand, the "Universal•Gingo" merger is also similar to the "Disney•Pixar" merger.
 * So far, every Gingo film is rated PG by the MPAA, except Gingo's first film Paint World, which was rated G.
 * Unique for an animation studio, every one of Gingo's feature films so far features a younger (human) protagonist (mostly a young boy or a teenage boy), excluding Woo La La, Plucky Chicken, DCL: Desktop Component League and Imagimals.