All Things Video

John Attanasio and Luisa Huang are the co-founders of Toonstar, a mobile app that allows creators to live stream as cartoon characters. John and Luisa are veterans of the Hollywood studio system, who prior to Toonstar, spent 15+ years developing franchises for Disney, DreamWorks, and Warner Bros. After discovering a gap in animation programming for teens and tweens, they designed Toonstar as a mobile app for young audiences to easily create and share cartoon content, unencumbered by the expensive and time consuming process of traditional animation. In this episode, we discuss what motivated these traditional media alumni decided to launch a business at the intersection of technology and new media based on their thesis that future entertainment franchises would emerge from the digital ecosystem. We also discuss how to harness live video to create “destination viewing” experiences, new media trends to make content more snackable and interactive, and Disney’s recent acquisition of FOX at a time when traditiona