Last week, we reported that animation veteran Norman Grossfeld, who co-wrote and produced many of the movies from the Pokémon anime franchise and came up with the famous tagline “Gotta Catch ‘Em All,” has launched a new label, in conjunction with Korea’s Aanaxion Studio, called Konfetti Studios. The L.A.- and Seoul-based outfit will focus on the kids’ entertainment facet of the global K-content boom, with its starter development slate including Nanopop, in which the “biggest pop stars in the world have a giant tiny secret”; Sumomojo, a collectible creatures format; and magic-infused preschool musical series Hugglebops.
Grossfeld was previously Executive Vice President of Animation for Legendary Entertainment and was the longtime President of 4Kids Productions, where he works on many aspects of the Pokémon brand and helped drive the worldwide success of franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Winx Club and Yu-Gi-Oh! He was kind enough to speak to Animation Magazine about Konfetti’s animation plans for 2025 and beyond:
Animation Magazine: Congrats on the launch of Konfetti. Can you tell us how this whole venture begin?
Norman Grossfeld: In early 2024, I heard through an old friend of mine that Seoul-based Aanaxion Studio was interested in investing in an animated concept that somebody had brought to them. My friend knew about my experience in animation. So, he asked me to take a look at this idea and see if it was worth it for Aanaxion to get involved. I highly recommended that they shouldn’t do this project, and gave them a bunch of reasons why! But in the process, we hit it off, and I really liked them. I told them if they want to to invest in properties, why not make them their own. I said, “Here are a few things I’m just noodling with for myself,” and one thing led to another and we started working together. So, that was kind of our origin story. We made this announcement about the company because we wanted people to know we exist. We’re reaching out now to a lot of creatives and animation studios out there to work with us.
What are some of Konfetti’s goals?
As we mentioned, the plans are to think about this business as franchise first, so we’re swinging for the fences. For everything that we’re developing, we’re thinking about long term brands with lots of legs to it. This is going to be out there for merchandise, licensing, digital content as well as long-running foreign TV shows record albums, feature films. So when we’re developing a project, we’re looking how to go big wild. We announced the slate that we are working on right now, and I probably can’t tell you too much more than we’ve already put out there, because a lot of it is proprietary.
We have this preschool concept called Hugglebops that I’m very high on. I have such a great job because just this morning I was busy working on the theme song for the show. We have a music project called Nanopop, for which we have already produced five songs. It’s not kids’ music, it’s pop music that you hear on the radio, but with a concept that works for kids as well as for tweens and teens. Then, there’s a wacky battle collective concept called Sumomojo, which is this in-your-face battle brand with this wacky Sumo-inspired comedic events that we put on.
Are you taking these projects to the fall content markets like MIPCOM?
I don’t know yet, but I think it might be a little too early for us to be out there with these shows. One of the reasons why we wanted to get our name out there is because we’re starting to reach out to licensing people as well. We want to build up a critical mass of content before we go out there to the consumers.
Do you already have your animation production partners set up for these projects?
No, that’s one of the reasons why we’re looking right now. We want everyone to know that we’re open for business. Our intent really is to let people know that we’re here.
Are you open to receive pitches?
We already have plenty of projects, so we’re not looking for new concepts. We’re self-funded, so that was one of the big attractions for me. The financing comes out of Korea, so one of the things that’s great about the way we’re looking at is that we’re not really beholden to the gatekeepers to get our content out there. The more you do research on the kids business, you know that YouTube, for example, is where kids are going to get their content first.
We’re looking to build up critical mass for our shows. We want to get enough content for our show — let’s say Hugglebops — so that when we launch, we can have a big drop of content over a number or weeks or months, so that we can draw an audience. That’s not to say that we don’t want a bigger network or streamer that might want to commission a series, but we don’t need that to get going.
You have such a wealth of experience in animation, especially with all your years overseeing 4Kids, writing and producing the Pokémon movies as well as show like Cubix, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Winx Club, Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Sonic X and One Piece (and writing the theme songs for those shows). What is your take on today’s animation climate?
I think it’s a lot easier to get a show out to the public. We had to jump through so many hoops to get something going because there weren’t that many places to go with you content. I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth repeating: We got the rights to Pokémon back in 1997 and we did shop it to all the networks and there were only a few networks at that time that would be a buyer for this in the States. Everybody turned it down and they’d tell us that nobody wanted to look at that kind of animation and that it was too rudimentary, not competitive enough, etc.
So what we had to do was to syndicate the show ourselves, market by market. But back in the day, the premium time slots for kids programming were very narrow (7 to 8 a.m. before school or between 3 to 5 p.m. after school). Fox Kids and Kids’ WB! were programming those hours already. So we had to put Pokémon earlier, at 5 and 5:30 in the morning. Luckily for us, the show became a hit, and it beat the premium time slots’ ratings. But that was a lot of work to get that concept on the air. After that at 4Kids, we had to make this great effort to to lease the Saturday morning spots from Fox, and we had to pay a tremendous amount of money just to own the airtime to get our content out there.
Today, you can produce 30 to 40 short-form videos and launch them on YouTube without a barrier. There is a lot of content out there, but it’s easier in a way if you good, quality content that kids are going to respond to. It all comes back to quality and understanding your audience and giving them what will work for them. In a way, it’s easier as long as you’re able to fund the projects.
Did you always want to work in this business?
When I was a young kid, I thought I’d be a musician. Unfortunately, I played the trumpet back in the day! I was pretty good, but then I got braces and my lips were bleeding when I was playing, so I couldn’t be in the school band anymore. But the only other class that was available at that time was a video production class that nobody else was taking. So, I was one of two or three kids in this video class, and we learned everything about the business through middle school and high school. By the time I went to NYU to study film and business, I was already working in the business.
So, that’s how you ended up writing all the theme songs for all those shows too! OK, any final words about Konfetti?
Looking back at the 4Kids experience, what was great about that was that it was like family. Everybody loved coming to work every day and it was just a fun atmosphere, but it became very big. I don’t want anything that big because I think you can lose control.
So, what we’re trying to become is like a boutique studio that we staff up. We’ll put the money up on the screen and not in the infrastructure. So, keep on watching for us, because I think you’re going to be surprised by the work. Everything is going to have a bit of a unique twist since our roots go to K-content and some of that is infused into everything we’re doing. Everything will have its own unique look and style, and we’re very excited about that.
To contact Konfetti Studios, visit konfettistudios.com.
