Visionary Media
Visionary Media's founder, Chairman and CEO David B. Williams sits atop an expanding next-generation entertainment studio. The young company's driving force is to develop properties with the cross-media appeal so desirable in today's "convergence" landscape. Beginning in 1992, Williams was instrumental in creating the SHOPPING2000 Web site and CD-ROM series for ContentWare, Inc., as well as producing award winning sites for Smithsonian Magazine. He then followed a passion to create entertainment for the burgeoning youth market. He recalls, "I had a sense that was where all the excitement was in terms of who was embracing the technology and consuming it most voraciously." So Williams broke away to found Visionary Media and soon began marshaling together a group of talented people. This ultimately led to his creation of the company's signature animated net property WhirlGirl.

A comedy/action/sci-fi adventure (marrying what Williams calls "the fantastical with the down-to-earth"), WhirlGirl proved itself to be a critical and commercial success on its own Web site before being picked-up in January by Showtime Online. Setting an industry precedent, they aired the initial episode on Showtime's TV channel simultaneous with its new webcast premiere. The company is now in production on 28 additional episodes for the cable's online division. Visionary President and COO Glenn Ginsburg feels the Showtime deal allows them to do a lot of innovative experimentation in developing a show's Web and cable relationship. Anticipating the day when the TV and Internet will converge into one "appliance," Ginsburg says they are now working on what he calls "pre-convergence ideas." An early example of this type of synergy was when Showtime used WhirlGirl heroine, Kia Cross, to host a "Lethal Ladies" film week marathon. During a broadcast promotion, the animated WhirlGirl offered the audience a chance to choose what film they'd like to see the next weekend, inviting them to log on to her Web site to cast their vote.

WhirlGirl heroine Kia Cross. Courtesy of Visionary Media.

Williams' believes in creating shows that are, in his mind, "media agnostic." He explains: "That is, the shows can go on the Internet and have a vibrant life there but can also go to television, film, video games, and print because why consider a great character and great stories as only being able to live in one `box'?" First and foremost, though, Visionary keeps its focus on the medium of the Internet by concentrating on building compelling storylines with high-end graphics specifically produced to stream well within today's available technology. WhirlGirl's eclectic crew includes the series head writer Betsy Hooper, whose background is stage and authoring children's books, art director/animator Joel Rodgers, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and comic book artist, and sound designer/composer/production director Ephraim Kehlman, who came from traditional broadcast media and live sound direction. "We all wear a lot of hats," Williams said, "so it's a tight little team." Also on board working site production and series development is Christine S. Jones, who brings to the mix her previous experience with some of NY's top digital media firms.

WhirlGirl is not an interactive program, per se, but `outside' the show, the company is developing Web concepts to offer interaction and community-play. One of these is tentatively entitled "Make-A-Scene." WhirlGirl's audience will be able to choose scenes from specialized categories, pick from selected music cues, and add in dialogue (delivered as captions) to direct and create their own shows. Williams sees this as an example of extreme interactivity, saying, "It exploits the opportunities the medium provides tremendously without detracting from your storytelling at all." With these many emerging formats for entertainment content, he sees the possibility of "a kind of `new' renaissance in animation." With five more projects already in the pipeline, Visionary Media is positioning themselves firmly at the hub of making it happen.

togglethis
togglethis, a three-year-old new media entertainment and technology group, is fashioning a new course in Web programming by producing animated shows distributed via their proprietary software platform. Co-founders Paul Maya and Marc Singer first met up in the multimedia division of the Times-Mirror where they teamed on software development and production of interactive CD-Roms. Turning their attention to the Internet, they set out to develop new forms of Web entertainment and advertising that could work more effectively than the ubiquitous promotional banners and buttons. The result was their invention of the toggled software, a system which delivers fun, engaging characters right into the `net audience's mailbox.