Protozoa, a motion capture company, was founded in 1994 by Brad de Graf with seed money from Motorola. They are a spin-off of Colossal's performance animation, which had developed the Moxie character in 1993 for the Cartoon Network. The company's focus is on character-based, real-time 3-D entertainment. Their projects also includes Squeezils, a cartoon game for Inscape. Dev, the real-time animation character seen daily on MSNBC's The Site is also theirs. They have also been developing other unusual characters for a variety of media, including TV and the World Wide Web. Clients include Microsoft, Silicon Graphics Images, and MSNBC.

Six-Foot Two Productions is Robin Atherly's company in Larkspur. Atherly has provided computer ink and paint services for several CD-ROM producers.

Curious Pictures, a New York-based company founded in 1993, opened a branch office in San Francisco on September 4, 1996. It is headed by Colossal alumna Anne Smith, who worked her way up through the ranks from production manager to senior managing producer of animation. Curious Pictures' first projects here were a Nike commercial directed by Robert Valley and three stop-motion ads for a superstore in the Midwest that were directed by Denis Morellia. Both directors had also worked at Colossal.

Colossal alum Kirk Henderson worked on the Orly's Draw A Story CD-ROM for Brøderbund.

Kevin Coffey's Cartoonland, founded in the 1980s, does several interesting projects each year. They've produced the animation for the Star Wars Chess Game for Software Tool Works and the animation for Doonesbury Flashbacks: 25 Years of Serious Fun for Mindscape. Coffey has also worked on several TV commercials for such national clients as Coca-Cola, Nabisco, Van de Kamp, General Mills and others.

Kirk Henderson, who was one of Colossal's top directors in the 1980s, works as an art director/designer/animator under the name Kirk'sWorks. Last year, he completed Orly's Draw-A-Story for Brøderbund. Prior to that, he helped develop the Toe Jam and Earl CD-ROM.

The influence of (Colossal) Pictures on the local animation and effects industry is immense. For the over 20 years since the company was founded in 1976, Colossal has pushed animation forward as an exciting art form and medium for communication. They helped develop the skills of hundreds of production people and have helped make the Bay area one of the most exciting production centers in the country.

Karl Cohen is President of ASIFA-San Francisco whose first book, Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators, will be published later this year. He also teaches animation history at San Francisco State University.