Burbank, California's S4 Studios is a 3D and Flash animation content studio founded by animation veterans Dale Hendrickson, Geoffrey Kater and Larry Le Francis. Dale Hendrickson spent eight years as a character designer on THE SIMPSONS, Geoffrey Kater is an award-winning industrial design futurist (THE SILVER SURFER) and Larry Le Francis has over 15 years of long form production, development and marketing experience on THE SIMPSONS, RUGRATS, DUCKMAN and SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS, among others. The studio recently completed its first long form 3D project by providing the animation production for THE GROOVENIANS, Cartoon Network's first 3D animated half-hour program. Created and designed by pop surrealist Kenny Scharf and produced, written and directed by Jordan Reichek, the original special debuted on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim November 10, 2002. THE GROOVENIANS characters were animated and rendered by S4 in LightWave 3D7, and were created in the style of the old George Pal Puppetoons of the 1940s and '50s. "Kenny Scharf's work is very sculptural in nature, and 3D characters permeate a lot of his work," explained Geoffrey Kater. S4 has also recently created a 3D short starring the Terrytoons characters Hashimoto, Sydney the Elephant and Astronut for client Viacom, as well as a series of Flash-animated Webisodes for Sony Playstation.
