Animation Magic
Animation Magic (Russian: «Магия анимации», romanized: Magiya Animatsii) was a Russian-American animation studio founded in Gaithersburg, Maryland in 1991, with offices later added in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a 100%-owned subsidiary in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The company developed animations for CD-based software. It was acquired in December 1994 by Capitol Multimedia. The assets and rights that Capitol owned would be sold to Davidson & Associates in April 1997. By 1994, Animation Magic had 90 employees, including 12 software engineers and approximately 60 animators, computer graphic, background and sprite artists. Its video games included Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam, Pyramid Adventures, I.M. Meen, King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, Darby the Dragon, and the cancelled Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans.
| Industry | video game industry  |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1991 (Massachusetts branch) 1992 (Saint Petersburg branch)[1] |
| Founders | Igor Razboff and Dale DeSharone |
| Defunct | 2001[2] |
| Fate | Dissolved by Vivendi Universal |
| Headquarters | Gaithersburg, Maryland, U.S. |
Number of locations | 3 |
| Products | Video games and animation |
Number of employees | ~150 |
| Parent | Capitol Multimedia (1994–1997) Davidson & Associates (1997–1998) Vivendi Universal Games (1998–2001) |
| Subsidiaries | ООО "АМИ" |
Animation Magic (Russian: «Магия анимации», romanized: Magiya Animatsii) was a Russian-American animation studio founded in Gaithersburg, Maryland in 1991, with offices later added in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a 100%-owned subsidiary in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The company developed animations for CD-based software. It was acquired in December 1994 by Capitol Multimedia. The assets and rights that Capitol owned would be sold to Davidson & Associates in April 1997.
By 1994, Animation Magic had 90 employees, including 12 software engineers and approximately 60 animators, computer graphic, background and sprite artists. Its video games included Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam, Pyramid Adventures, I.M. Meen,[3] King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, Darby the Dragon, and the cancelled Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans.
Legacy
[edit]Circa 2006, Animation Magic video games were major source materials for YouTube poops, with the most notable being Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and I.M. Meen.[4]
On September 6, 2020, over 200 animators collaborated to reanimate 21 minutes of cutscenes of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (both 1993).[5][6][7]
References
[edit]- ^ Puffer, Sheila M.; McCarthy, Daniel J.; Satinsky, Daniel M. (2018). Hammer and Silicon: The Soviet Diaspora in the US Innovation Economy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 152–153. ISBN 978-1107190856.
I went back to computer design and computer manufacturing, and in 1991, I started my own business in multimedia called Animation Magic. When I started that business, Russia opened up and my partner, who was also from Massachusetts but originally from California, suggested that we should probably hire some animators from Russia because that would make us more competitive in the marketplace. We would have better animation and therefore more success, so I went to Russia and we opened a business there in 1992.
- ^ Игорь Варнавский (Igor Varnavsky) (January 31, 2008). Закрытые страницы истории. Крупные игровые компании в России были еще в 90-е, но мы об этом не знали. Igromania (in Russian). Vol. 1, no. 124 (published January 2008). Retrieved May 22, 2017.
- ^ Brad Cook. "Test of I.M. Meen". Allgame. Archived from the original on March 6, 2013. Retrieved May 22, 2017.
- ^ "Inside YouTube Poop, the nonsensical genre that invented meme culture on the internet". Screenshot. Retrieved 2022-08-28.
- ^ "Someone's remade the Zelda CD-i games, and they're kind of good now". PCGamesN. 28 November 2020. Retrieved 2022-08-24.
- ^ The Zelda CDi Reanimated Collab!, 6 September 2020, retrieved 2022-08-24
- ^ Muñoz, José David (2020-09-08). "Los Zelda CD-i se han reanimado de una manera gloriosa gracias a los esfuerzos de varios fans". Hobbyconsolas (in Spanish). Retrieved 2022-08-24.
External links
[edit]- Как создатели мемных спин-оффов «Зельды» изменили российскую индустрию игр и анимации (lit. How the creators of Zelda's meme spin-offs changed the Russian gaming industry and animations) (in Russian). DTF. November 25, 2021.
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