Blue Sky Studios, or simply Blue Sky, is an American CGI-animation studio which specializes in high-resolution, computer-generated character animation and rendering. It is owned by 20th Century Fox and located in Greenwich, Connecticut. In addition to their feature-length animated films, including the Ice Age series, Robots (2005), Horton Hears a Who! (2008), and Rio (2011), Blue Sky has worked on many high-profile films, primarily in the integration of live-action with computer-generated animation.

 

History

1987–97

Blue Sky was founded in February 1987 by Chris Wedge, Carl Ludwig, Dr. Eugene Troubetzkoy, Alison Brown, David Brown and Michael Ferraro, who had previously worked on the Disney film Tron while employed at MAGI/Synthavision.Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the studio concentrated on the production of television commercials and visual effects for film. Some of the more memorable commercials that Blue Sky worked on during this time period were a Chock Full O' Nuts spot with a talking coffee bean, and an intro for a Nickelodeon block called Nicktoons that featured the show's mascot, Nick Boy, realized as human-shaped orange goo. Using their proprietary animation pipeline, the studio produced over 200 spots for clients such as Chrysler, M&M/Mars, General Foods, Texaco, and the United States Marines.

 

1997–present

In August 1997, 20th Century Fox's Los Angeles-based visual effects company, VIFX, acquired Blue Sky Studios to form a new visual effects and animation company.The new company produced visual effects for films such as The X-Files, Blade, Armageddon, Titanic and Alien Resurrection.In 1998, Chris Wedge realized long unfulfilled dreams and produced the Academy Awarded animated short film, Bunny.

 

Due to the f/x market crash, Fox decided to leave visual effects business. In March 1999, they sold VIFX to another visual effects house, Rhythm & Hues Studios,and considered selling Blue Sky next. At the time, the studio got the opportunity with the Ice Age script to turn it into a comedy. In 2002, Ice Age was released to a great critical and commercial success. The film got a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and established Blue Sky as the third studio, after Pixar and DreamWorks, to launch a successful CGI franchise.

 

On January 5, 2009, the studio moved from White Plains, New York to Greenwich, Connecticut.

 

Technology

The studio is notable for its proprietary Renderer CGI Studio, a rendering software system like Pixar's RenderMan. Initially developed by Eugene Troubetzkoy, Carl Ludwig, Tom Bisogno and Michael Ferraro, CGI Studio was notable for its use of ray tracing as opposed to REYES-like scanline rendering prevalent throughout the CG industry.
 

Filmography

Released films

#	Title	Release date	Budget	Gross	RT
1	Ice Age	02002-03-15March 15, 2002	$59,000,000	$383,257,136	77%
2	Robots	02005-03-11March 11, 2005	$75,000,000	$260,718,330	64%
3	Ice Age: The Meltdown	02006-03-31March 31, 2006	$80,000,000	$655,388,158	57%
4	Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!	02008-03-14March 14, 2008	$85,000,000	$297,138,014	79%
5	Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs	02009-07-01July 1, 2009	$90,000,000	$886,686,817	45%
6	Rio	02011-04-15April 15, 2011	$90,000,000	$484,635,760	72%
7	Ice Age: Continental Drift	02012-07-13July 13, 2012	$95,000,000	$867,291,788	38%