Their animations may make you smile, but Emily and Ryan Simmons weren't fooling around when they formed Cartoon Solutions a mere eight months ago.

Since launching their company in September of 2004, they had a clip from their cartoons featured on NBC's Today show, won 1st place in a UVSC business plan contest, and won runner-up in a statewide business plan competition.

Oh, and they have been working nonstop on orders from around the country and abroad.

What exactly does Cartoon Solutions take orders forfi

Cartoon Solutions is an animation company for small businesses. They create animated mascots and other characters, animated logos, animated TV commercials, and animated E-cards and Web cartoons.

"But we do a lot of custom projects too," Emily Simmons said. "Anything creative, animated, illustrated ... anything that needs art, we can do."

Prices vary with how time consuming each project is. But generally a character design or logo is $400, an E-card $800-$1,000, and a 30 second TV commercial is $4,500.

TV animation takes longer and professional voice actors are used, which all contribute to the price, Emily said.

She runs the business side of Cartoon Solutions. She started taking business classes at UVSC last September to learn how to make Cartoon Solutions a success.

"The professors have been so willing to help in every aspect, encouraging me to see a bigger vision of my company than just one man working in his basement," Emily said. "With their vision I was able to really see that we can be a large studio."

The classes seem to be paying off.

She prepared the business plans that did so well in the UVSC and statewide competitions, winning her and Ryan a total of $8,000 plus in-kind services like Web site design.

Cartoon Solutions had an innovative idea, a good niche in a growing market, and a very good chance of success, said Brian Wells, student chair of the Utah Entrepreneurial Challenge, which announced Cartoon Solutions as one of their runner-ups on April 21.

Emily has always been an entrepreneur.

If Cartoon Solutions had not come about, she would have come up with a different business idea, Ryan said.

Ryan runs the animation side of the business and has been drawing since he was a kid.

Following in the footsteps of his father, he went into animation and spent more than nine years working for Warner Brothers and then for Dreamworks.

"The only downside about working in that industry is that if they don't have a new project they can't keep you on staff," Ryan Simmons said. "It just doesn't work out financially, especially if you have a family."

After getting out of the feature film industry, he learned how to animate with computers. He said he animated some Star Wars spoofs and put them on a Web site he built called starwarsspoofs.com.

"It's my portfolio disguised as a fan site," Ryan said.

His site received attention, resulting in steady freelancing, which lead to the formation of Cartoon Solutions.

After working in feature films and feeling like "one cog in this big machine," Ryan said he enjoys his new role in Cartoon Solutions.

"I really like offering these services to businesses because I get to help make the scripts, and then I'm a storyboard artist, and then I get to work in color design, and I get to be an editor as well, and I'm animator, and I'm a character designer," he said.

INFO BOX

Name: Cartoon Solutions

Start date: September 2004

What they do: Animation for small businesses

Workforce: 2

Web site: www.cartoonsolutions.com

This story appeared in North County on page A5.