Josh Fisher

With animation production on a downturn in L.A., production firm Brandissimo is one bright spot in the toon landscape. On TV, their Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs aired on Cartoon Network and their Emmy-nominated Meteor and the Mighty Monster Trucks aired on Discovery Kids. Now they have found success online in the animated virtual worlds sphere. NFLRUSH Zone is an MMOG world sponsored by the National Football League. The immersive site has acquired more than 1.3 million registered users in its first 15 months. In addition, Brandissimo teamed with veteran animation exec Josh Fisher to expand Fisher's Urbaniacs.com, a comicbook-themed online social community and gaming site.

To get into what else Brandissimo is up to and more on these online projects, we talked with Fisher, Brandissimo's exec producer and SVP of content. Fisher is an Emmy Award-winning exec that has 12 years of experience creating and producing content for young audiences, tweens, and teens. He has developed and produced animation, live-action, and Web development for ABC Family Channel, Fox Kids, Disney, Discovery Kids, Cartoon Network, and several major broadcasters around the world.

Rick DeMott: What projects are Brandissimo working on at the moment?

Josh Fisher: NFLRUSH Zone continues to do great! It's growth rate in the offseason is above projections and we have some great things planned for the summer and upcoming NFL season, including chats with star NFL players, more contests with great NFL-only prizes, more games, including multiplayer games and more. It's a great experience and a lot of fun.

We're making a big push with Urbaniacs as well, having just launched Urbowars, Celebrity Wedgie Toss, and Wedgie Toss on the iPhone. We're also doing new games, comics, and a few other things.

We’ve also got a great project with Cabbage Patch Kids in production and we're working on two unannounced virtual worlds that are really inspiring... I’m itching to tell you about them but we're not ready for that to go public yet. Give me a little more time.

We're also pushing a few things on our linear side as well. We have a great animated series we're developing and we're partnered with a Canadian company on a live action show that was recently greenlit.

Give people a wedgie via your iPhone. All images © Brandissimo.

RD: How did the agreement between Urbaniacs and Brandissimo come about?

JF: I met one of the founders of Brandissimo a while ago. Then, when he read about Urbaniacs in the LA Times, he called me. Three years later Brandissimo has invested in Urbaniacs three times and brought me on as a partner and executive producer of the studio. It's kind of been the best of all worlds.

RD: What are the plans for Urbaniacs in the future?

JF: We’re really excited about a couple of things. First, Urbowars ties in all of the features of Urbaniacs together. It rewards our users for playing and being social. We crown monthly champions. Since our site is intended to be a bit tongue and check, we encourage healthy trash talking along the way. Next, Wedgie Toss 2 has over 14 million game plays and we think the opportunity to give melvins to Kim Kardashian, Steven Colbert, Spencer Pratt, Dane Cook, Enimem and Dick Cheney via Celebrity Wedie Toss will be a fun twist on a game that's already popular. Finally, we’re going mobile with an iPhone version of Wedgie Toss. Urb ON!