companies
Toonstar
AI-assisted animation studio that produces and distributes original kids' and adult cartoon franchises for YouTube and streaming.
Toonstar was founded in Los Angeles in 2015 by John Attanasio and Luisa Huang, former Disney and Warner Bros. digital strategy executives who set out to build cartoons the way social platforms actually consume them: fast, serialized, and shaped by what the audience does next. The studio's breakout show, StEvEn & Parker, has passed 10 billion views across more than 200 episodes on YouTube and Snapchat and is profitable on its own. Toonstar built its production pipeline, called Ink & Pixel, around AI tools trained per-show to keep artwork original and copyright-clean, cutting the time and cost of animating an episode compared with traditional studio workflows. The company has since signed with talent agency WME, partnered with FOX on creator-led animation, and struck a deal with HarperCollins to adapt book titles — starting with the Friendship List series — into animated shows.
- Founded
- 2015
- Headquarters
- Los Angeles, United States
- Sector
- consumer
Tools
- Ink & Pixel
Ink & Pixel is Toonstar’s internal machine-learning and generative-AI system for producing animated content.