AI firm Cartwheel has emerged from closed beta, promising to help make the 3D animation process smoother and accessible to a wider range of creative workers.

The company was co-founded by Jonathan Jarvis and Andrew Carr. Jarvis, who is CEO, spent nearly seven years at Google and also runs animation and gaming studio Universal Patterns. Carr, who is Chief Scientist, interned at Google and later worked at OpenAI.

Staffers at the company include Pixar alums Catherine Hicks and Neil Helm, along with veterans of Riot Games and Sony’s Spiderverse franchise.

Along with its emergence from beta, the company revealed $10 million in new funding led by David Sacks’ VC firm Craft Ventures, bringing its total funding to $15.6 million. Participants in the latest funding round include existing investors like Katzenberg’s WndrCo, Ben Feder’s Tirta, Accel, Khosla Ventures, Human Ventures and established AI firm Runway.

Cartwheel focuses on 3D animation, in particular aiding the process of how animated characters move, and says 60,000 people have signed up for the waitlist to gain access to its set of tools. During the closed beta, the company’s tools were used by creatives at companies including DreamWorks, Duolingo, Sony and Roblox.

The company says it can turn video, text and large motion libraries into production-ready 3D character animations that can be moved, edited and downloaded directly into current workflows. Along with prototyping ideas or refining their work, animators can also tap Cartwheel’s library for a motion to fit or inspire their scene. Even non-pros can use Cartwheel to generate video clips, and designers and developers can turn their character animations into files to be added to apps or websites.

The co-founders compared their company’s impact on the field of animation to that of the iPhone on photography.

“We’ve developed a new way to simplify the animation process, putting creatives in the drivers’ seat as they dramatically accelerate their workflows, eliminate tedious tasks, free up budget for more creative exploration, and enhance control over their final products,” they said. The company’s impact will be felt across animated films, anime, gaming, advertising and storyboarding, social media and other areas, they said.

At Pixar, Hicks was animation director and worked on more than 15 movies, including the Oscar-winning Inside Out, Coco and Toy Story 3. She is Cartwheel’s head of animation innovation. Helm, who is the head of interactive animation at Cartwheel, focused on motion and crowd elements at Pixar, working on Inside Out 2, Turning Red, Lightyear, and the third and fourth Toy Story installments. 

“Cartwheel has changed the entire paradigm of animation by introducing a new toolset that builds on the artistry of animation, making productions more efficient so more stories can be told,” Feder, Managing Partner at Tirta Ventures. “Where concepts could take days, weeks, or months to visualize, Cartwheel’s technology makes the process virtually instant, unleashing an entirely new world of storytelling possibilities.”