Walsh Family Media

Walsh Family Media, LLC is a privately held animation and multimedia production studio located in New York, NY. Walsh Family Media was formed by Patrick M. Walsh Jr. in November 2002.
Walsh Family Media has produced a variety of animated and live action projects starting with a CG/live action music video Keep It Running in 2007. The studio completed an original live action webisode pilot entitled Cooking with Sally Sue Shenanigans in the summer 2008.
WFM Services, a subsidiary of Walsh Family Media was created in 2008. A 7 minute short film Club Kid'doo: The Adventure Begins was produced in 2008 for New Jersey based Makin' Fun Inc. Walsh Family Media produced 3 children's books for Makin' Fun Inc. as well in a series entitled The Adventures of Kevin Bonbevin.
Walsh Family Media is currently in production of two full length CG animated feature films, The Cool Beans: We Need a Hit and The Cool Beans: Humbucket Caper. The release dates have yet to be announced. The Cool Beans property, initially conceived by Walsh in the late eighties has sparked the development of multiple feature and short films as well as merchandise and a clothing line in production under the daughter company KissUp Industries.
History
The inspiration for the Cool beans property came to Patrick Walsh at a very early age. An early fascination with video games like Pong and cartoons like Woody Woodpecker, Bugs Bunny and Popeye, coupled with humorous childhood experiences growing up in New Jersey would serve as the groundwork for the creation of the Cool Beans and their world.
In the early nineties Walsh teamed up with award nominated artist Dan Lavery (Tonic/ The Fray) and began writing and recording children's songs in his Lower East Side apartment in Manhattan. It was during this time that Walsh further developed the idea of making an animated world that revolved around musicians. Walsh began writing the script for the Cool beans movie in 1992 and the resulting screenplay was entitled The Cool Beans: Humbucket Caper, about 2 brothers learning that music comes from the heart. Walsh, who was originally a computer science major at the University of South Carolina before switching to Business, purchased a Macintosh Quadra 840 AV in 1993 and began figuring out the computer graphics capabilities with hopes of independently producing the Cool Beans film. Using his own funds, Walsh began working with different artist to design the elements of the Cool Beans world, a world largely inspired by New York City, as well as the characters that inhabited it.
The Cool Beans title characters were originally designed to take advantage of motion capture technology, utilizing slender bodies that would interpolate the point data well. In 1998 Walsh worked along side college buddy Matt Madden and Candice Alger of Giant Studios, the studio responsible for the motion capture in movies such as Happy Feet, King Kong, Lord of the Rings and The Polar Express, exploring the capabilities and feasibility of creating the animation for his screenplay in this way. Walsh executed some of the earliest animation test with the Cool Beans characters using Motion Capture. Some of these early test would later appear as dance cut-aways in the company's first short film Keep it Running (2007). The Motion capture technology was later abandoned in favor of key frame animation of the characters in the computer allowing for a more exaggerated animation style reminiscent of old Chuck Jones and Tex Avery cartoons.
Patrick started Walsh Family Media, LLC from his Upper West Side Manhattan apartment in November 2002. There, he and a small team of young artists continued moving the project forward using mostly Walsh's personal funds and investments from close family and friends. Walsh moved his team to Brooklyn in 2005 where they set up shop in a 4000 square foot 3rd avenue garage. The team battled the elements, running space heaters and working in gloves in the winter and constructing a bubble inside the space attached to an AC duct to pump in cool air and keep mosquitoes out during the summer months. Patrick actually lived in the studio as well.
After only a year the studio moved once again to the Boerum Hill area of Brooklyn into a creative loft space in 2006. The team continued to expand, but progress on The Cool Beans: Humbucket Caper was temporarily put on hold while the team produced a music video featuring The Beans as well as live-action footage shot on green-screens entitled Keep it Running. The music video showcases the CG animated Cool beans going head to head against rival band The Bad Seedz (played by live children performers) in a Big Wheel race. The original plan was to shoot live footage at an actual Big Wheel race that the studio hosted in Myrtle Beach, SC in the summer of 2006. Weather complications led the team to acquire the footage of the children on green screens back in New York. The film was completed in 2007 and appeared in several film festivals across the US including the 2007 San Diego International Children's Film Festival, Comic-Con 2007 (San Diego) and the 2007 Brooklyn Kids Film Fest.
It was also around this time that the studio began production on a short film that would serve as a prequel and promotional piece for the Humbucket Caper. The Cool Beans: We Need a Hit was originally conceived as a film trailer, but as the characters developed and the team saw potential to establish a strong back story to the first script, the scope of the project grew. It was ultimately decided in 2008 that The Cool Beans: We Need a Hit would be developed into a full length feature to be produced and released before the completion of The Humbucket Caper. The release date has not been publicly announced for The Cool Beans: We Need a Hit.
In 2007 the studio wrote and developed a pilot webisode called Cooking with Sally Sue Shenanigans. This 10 minute live action piece featured a lead character Sally Sue, an adult character who responds to mail received by children with questions regarding food. Sally shows up at the children's houses and directs them in creating delicious recipes that are healthy and fun. Though predominantly live-action, the series would incorporate a hand animated character named Boxy who delivers the Mail to Sally Sue. Conceived as a series, only one episode was produced and remains unreleased.
In 2008 Walsh formed WFM Services, LLC, a subsidiary of Walsh Family Media aimed at generating revenue and increasing the companies technological and artistic know how. WFM Services produced a 7 minute promotional short for Makin' Fun Inc., a New Jersey based start up entitled Club Kid'doo: The Adventure Begins. This project marked the company's first completed fully CG film. Patrick Walsh wrote and directed the film and the WFM Services team designed and created all of the assets for the film, including in-house sound production. Three children's books were produced for the same company as part of a series entitled The Adventures of Kevin Bonbevin that same year. The books were made available for sale online and in high end children's stores including F.A.O. Schwartz in New York City. WFM Services also produced the storyboards for a zwinky.com promotional ad in 2008.
In 2009 Danish illustrator Thomas Warming joined the Walsh Family Media Team to help with the production of the Cool Beans Films
Current Production
* The Cool Beans: We Need a Hit CG feature film (release date not yet publicly announced)
* The Cool Beans: Humbucket Caper CG feature film (release date not yet publicly announced)
* Clothing and cosmetics line for girls being developed by fashion designer Mary Apple The line is being produced under Walsh Family Media's subsidiary Kissup Industries, LLC.
* Danish documentary filmmaker Tao Nørager is currently in production of a film documenting the journey and the struggles of Walsh Family Media.

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