S4 Studios - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

S4 Studios, LLC is a multidisciplinary broadcast design, animation and visual effects studio, founded in 1999 by Geoffrey Kater and Dale Hendrickson, augmented two years later by Larry Le Francis. The company is named after a highly-sensitive and purportedly extraterrestrial alien research complex located within the super-secret U.S. government base Area 51

Area 51

Area 51 is a military base, and a remote detachment of Edwards Air Force Base. It is located in the southern portion of Nevada in the western United States, 83 miles north-northwest of downtown Las Vegas. Situated at its center, on the southern shore of Groom Lake, is a large military airfield...

. Kater, a futurist designer, came from Saban

Saban

Saban Entertainment , was a worldwide-served independent American television production company formed in 1984 by music and television producers Haim Saban and Shuki Levy as "Saban Productions", a U.S...

Entertainment. Le Francis was an animation series producer at Klasky Csupo, Inc. and Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon (TV channel)

Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...

. Hendrickson designed some 2,000 characters for Fox-TV’s The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

during his seven years as the series’ Character Design Supervisor. He left S4 Studios in 2006. Originally located in Van Nuys, California

Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California

Van Nuys is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California.-History:Look at the two photos of Van Nuys' first year—and then listen to what the Los Angeles Times wrote on February 23, 1911, the day after the Van Nuys town lot auction--"Between dawn and dusk, in the...

, the company relocated to Hollywood, California

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California

Hollywood is a famous district in Los Angeles, California, United States situated west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Due to its fame and cultural identity as the historical center of movie studios and movie stars, the word Hollywood is often used as a metonym of American cinema...

in 2004.

History

S4 Studios’ first major project in 1999 was The Groovenians, a one-off half-hour 3D animated special for Cartoon Network based on characters created by Kenny Scharf

Kenny Scharf

Kenny Scharf is an American painter who lives in Brooklyn, New York. The artist received his B.F.A in 1980 at the School of Visual Arts located in New York City. Scharf's works consist of popular culture based shows with made up science-related backgrounds...

and featuring music from Devo

Devo

Devo is an American band formed in 1973 consisting of members from Kent and Akron, Ohio. The classic line-up of the band includes two sets of brothers, the Mothersbaughs and the Casales . The band had a #14 Billboard chart hit in 1980 with the single "Whip It", and has maintained a cult...

and the B-52's

The B-52's

The B-52's are an American rock band, formed in Athens, Georgia in 1976. The original line-up consisted of Fred Schneider , Kate Pierson , Cindy Wilson , Ricky Wilson , and Keith Strickland . Following Ricky Wilson's death in 1985 Strickland switched to guitar...

. While the project did not go to series, it did lead to other long-form projects, including Wild Animal Baby, a series of six mixed-media 3D/Flash animation and live action direct to video children’s specials for the National Wildlife Foundation, co produced with Korea’s SunWoo Entertainment.

In 2001, Sony Computer Entertainment

Sony Computer Entertainment

Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. is a major video game company specializing in a variety of areas in the video game industry, and is a wholly owned subsidiary and part of the Consumer Products & Services Group of Sony...

of America hired S4 Studios to produce a series of Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

-animated webisodes to cross-promote Twisted Metal
Twisted Metal
Twisted Metal is a series of vehicular combat video games published by Sony Computer Entertainment, and developed by various companies during its tenure. The series began on the PlayStation in 1995 and currently features seven games, with an eighth installment currently in production...

: Black (often referred to as TM:B), the PlayStation 2 incarnation of the Twisted Metal series of car combat video games. This led to further diversification, and in 2002, the company began to work in concert with trailer houses such as Aspect Ratio and The Cimarron Group to provide visual effects shots for trailers. In 2006, a niche-marketed division, S4 VFX, was formed to produce MPAA-certified fixes such as object removal and replacement within trailers to accommodate a wide release of PG-rated motion pictures in American cinemas.

In 2007, S4 Studios established themselves in the emerging HDTV

High-definition television

High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...

market, creating a series of original branding campaigns for NBC Universal

NBC Universal

NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...

’s Emerging Networks division, including launches for Chiller Network

Chiller (TV channel)

Chiller is a 24-hour American cable and satellite television channel specializing in horror and suspense programming. conglomerate NBCUniversal.- Origin :...

, Sleuth

Sleuth (TV channel)

Cloo is a digital cable television channel with programming dedicated to the crime and mystery genres. It is owned and operated by NBCUniversal. It launched on January 1, 2006, replacing Trio...

, and Universal HD

Universal HD

Universal HD is an HDTV cable television network owned by NBCUniversal. The channel was known as Bravo HD+ until December 1, 2004. The network exclusively broadcasts in high definition 1080i...

, the division’s umbrella network. In 2008, the studio wrote and produced Fraidy Cat, their first self-created Flash Animation short film.

In 2006, S4 Studios partner Geoffrey Kater wrote and illustrated a pair of companion books, Design First for 3D Artists, through Wordware Publishing, and the Design First for 3D Sketchbook.