Flying Rhinoceros was a Portland-based animation studio founded in 1994 by Ray Nelson, Jr. after he left Will Vinton Studios (now Laika), also in Portland. It produced children's entertainment products for the religious-owned Tommy Nelson, Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt and other companies, but is best known for creating Flying Rhino Junior High for the Canadian Nelvana. Many other employees from Vinton began showing up at the studio, including Barry Bruce (who died in 2021 from cancer) and Douglas Kelly, the latter of whom was involved in the production of books published by Nelson. In 1998, the studio released Flying Rhinoceros Amazing Brain Online Optimization Machine (FRABOOM), an edutainment website which was described as an online children's museum with a similar format to those like educational rivals StarFall and ABCmouse. Ranjy Thomas served as an executive producer for the studio since 2003 and replaced Nelson as CEO in 2009. A few years later, Flying Rhinoceros ended its contract with Tommy Nelson and absorbed all of its operations into FRABOOM, which remained active while continuing to use the Flying Rhinoceros name, until 2016 when it was shut down. In 2018, Nelson published a website for a new studio titled "Really Big Creative", but it's unknown if he, or the studio, is still active or not, though he does continue to sell books.
Visuals: On a gradient blue background, there is a drawing of a grey rhinoceros wearing brown pilot gear and a pink scarf riding a yellow bi-plane. He is smirking and giving a thumbs up. The whole drawing is enclosed in a blue triangle with a red, v-shaped banner underneath, which reads "FLYING RHINOCEROS" in Arbitary Bold, with the "R" in a different font and placed in the middle of the banner. Above the logo is a red/orange/yellow banner reading "Entertainment." The logo zooms in slowly.
Trivia:
Variants:
Technique: Zooming effects. For the website variant, it's Flash animation.
Audio: The sound of a jet, followed by a 9-note xylophone tune, likely stock music as it was also used in the Lego sponsorship bumper from the funding credits for PBS's Arthur back in 2000.
Availability: Seen on Horned Avenger: The Battle Against Von Boredom, as well as On the Farm with Farmer Bob DVDs.
Visuals: On a white background, a black stick figure is standing on a grey hill. A smaller stick figure, presumably a child, runs up to it and is held up. The camera zooms out, revealing the hill to be a rhinoceros similar to the one from the previous logo, but he's undressed and no plane is shown. To the right of him is a light blue rectangle reading "flying rhinoceros" in black, with a "Connecting Parents and Kids" slogan in white underneath. The rhinoceros bops its head a bit.
Trivia: The rhinoceros was created to promote the release of FRABOOM in 1998. The kid running and the father standing and hugging the kid is actually based on the concept of the "Father and Son" design for Nick Jr.
Variants:
Technique: Flash animation done in-house.
Audio: A violin tune (composed in F major), accompanied by the child giggling, followed by a xylophone/trumpet tune (composed in D major) when the camera zooms out.
Availability: The rhinoceros first appeared on FRABOOM in 1998, but the logo was not used until the release of Horned Avenger: Brainfreeze Drawing a Blank in 2006. It later appeared on Gigi: God's Little Princess DVDs. It doesn't plaster the previous logo on some versions of their websites, books nor box art, though.
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