The Internet soon became the trio’s primary focus and for their transformation into the DotComix of today, deGraf recruited Damon Danielson as President and CEO. Since January of ‘99, Danielson’s talents have been directed toward building the team, modeling the relationships and marshalling the financing necessary to position the company as a leader in its new Internet space. The Yale educated Danielson has had a wealth of creative and business experience ranging from work with Sony New Technologies, b-to-b Internet company Music One and Silicon Entertainment where, as CEO/President, he rode herd over the diversified company engaged in highly interactive games and NASCAR themed simulators.

Executive Producer Buzz Hayes, with his extensive film production and new media background, was brought in to create, produce and assemble the cluster of original programming needed to make up DotComix’ new dot-com identity. With a Masters in Film Production from USC, Hayes first spent around 10 years as head of research and development at LucasFilm’s THX. He then started his own independent company, Stone’s Throw Films, where he produced the smash Indy film Swimming With Sharks starring Kevin Spacey. Next came his co-founding of Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Interactive which created the critically successful CD Rom entitled "IX." This adventure game’s art design and irreverent tone attracted the attention of deGraf who later enlisted Hayes to incubate the DotComix world.

Jane White, having joined deGraf and company in 1996, was already in place and primed to continue her work as Sr. VP of Development and Executive Producer for DotComix’ new adventures. From the roots of the six people deGraf, Scaparro and Gregory had at the beginning, today’s DotComix mix of talent modelers, animators, writers, producers and directors numbers around 35. That work-force is expected to double in the next four to six months as the floodgates for new production swing wider each day.

Sister Randy’s all about entertainment! © Protozoa, Inc.

Mapping Future Motion
In discussing the future, DotComix is taking what Danielson calls the "sneaker approach" in syndicating their shows to outside partnerships while simultaneously building their body of work into a magnetic Web destination. He states, "All of the entertainment that you would find on our Web site, we would work with other distribution partners on the Web -- and now on television, as well -- to syndicate the properties and to generate revenue through doing that." In the process, he continues, "Those relationships, we think, will bring us traffic and keep our eyeball acquisition costs very low in terms of driving people back to our own site." DeGraf jokes that, "The whole issue of being a portal vs. syndication -- we’ve been too wimpy to choose!" But the reality is that they have a very savvy business plan in place. Having just completed a Series C financing round, they can now shoot forward with plans for a rapid expansion on both the company’s production and business fronts.

Although creatively and financially satisfying, DotComix has backed off producing for-hire entertainment projects (such as last year’s highly regarded series The Dog & Dinosaur Show for BBC Choice and the creation of the successful "M&M’s" live Crispy character for its national media tour). The exception would be, Danielson notes, if "something so stupid and so good walks in the door that you just have to do it…something that may be strategically relevant or we think it’s going to make a big splash in the marketplace." Otherwise, they are staying focused on their own intellectual properties while remaining open to joint productions involving equity and ownership positions.

With ambitious goals to reach a more diverse Internet audience, DotComix is prepping an agglomeration of community-targeted channels. Up first will be the launch of its broadband venue sometime this month. Bringing on name-brand directors, DotComix has developed a clever strategy of stringing their immense 3D library of productions together with original fare into a network-type format that will exhibit richer programming for the high bandwidth audience. Next to hit the Net will be a channel targeting the younger woman’s audience which is expected to be up within a couple of months. At the same time, PolkaDotcomix, a kids destination channel, is in significant development for an expected launch sometime next Fall.