"Blue-Zoo" redirects here. For the New Wave band, see Blue Zoo. For the American restaurant, see BlueZoo. For the Australian children's television show, see Blue Zoo (TV series).
Blue Zoo Animation Studio is a British animation studio known for producing children's television series, commercials and short films. Founded in 2000 by Oli Hyatt, Adam Shaw, and Tom Box from Bournemouth University,[1] the studio has gone on to win numerous BAFTAs and in 2021 won two Daytime Emmy awards. They have also previously won the Best Places to Work in TV survey by Broadcast and Best Companies Group.
The company operates from a studio in Fitzrovia, London, where they have a team of over 200 artists. Blue Zoo later opened a second studio in Brighton called Brighton Zoo in 2022, in the partnership with Plug-In Media, and is 'dedicated to episodic 2D animation'.[2][3]
In 2021, the company became the first major animation studio in the world to achieve B Corp certification.[4]
History
In December 2009, Blue Zoo Animation Studio entered the video platform service by partnering with animator Junior Jesman and distributor Cake Entertainment to develop and produce an animated web series entitled If I Was... for French streaming network Dailymotion with Blue Zoo providing and developing animation services and Cake Entertainment distributing the series online.[5]
In April 2014, Blue Zoo and a Dutch company Mercis BV collaborated on the production of Miffy animated CGI series, which was released one year later.[6]
In 2019, Blue Zoo strengthen its position as a world-class production company with the expansion into the rights management and distribution activities by launching its rights division dedicated to its own and third-party IP named Blue Zoo Rights with Alison Warner heading the new rights division.[7]
During the annual Cartoon Forum held in September of the same year, Blue Zoo partnered with Belgian production company Studio 100, through the latter's distribution arm Studio 100 Media and its subsidiary m4e, to produce an CGI-animated preschool series entitled Monika's Garden, but no news for that series was made since.[8]
In 2022, Blue Zoo and Brighton-based producer Plug-In Media established a joint-venture regional animation production and interactive studio called Brighton Zoo, based in Brighton, South England. Their first collaboration and animated production was Supertato.[9][10] Later in the same year, Blue Zoo expanded into the French production business by partnering with Paris-based animation production studio Samka Productions to launch an animation studio and post-production company called Kazoo Animation.[11]
In October 2024, the company's show Numberblocks reached 10 million subscribers on YouTube. [12]
