Cartoon Orbit - History

History

Cartoon Orbit was the brainchild of Sam Register, who was also behind the development of CartoonNetwork.com in 1998. He went on to become the creative director of the site as well as Cartoon Orbit from 2000-2001 before leaving to pursue television development with Cartoon Network in its Los Angeles studios. He came up with the idea for Orbit after seeing PBS's Sticker World. After Register left Cartoon Orbit, Art Roche became the creative director of CartoonNetwork.com, a post he continues to hold. Justin Williams was the project lead at Turner and Director of Community for Orbit until 2003, when he began working on other Cartoon Network interactive projects. Lisa Furlong Jones, Sharon Karleskint Sharp, and Robert Cass created content and wrote copy for Cartoon Orbit, while Noel Saabye and Brian Hilling provided art and animation.

The original name of the site was to be "Cartooniverse". This name can be seen in various early Flash animation and screenshots, but upon release, the name of the site was changed to Cartoon Orbit. The reason for this was because the copyright for it was held by someone else at the time.

Cartoon Orbit was originally built using parts of Communities.com's "Passport" software (not to be confused with the current Communities.com, which is unrelated). This software was a 2D, avatar-based chat server, where members could decorate their own spaces. Most of the chat functionality was removed, but the decoration part of the software was used extensively for displaying and editing cZones. Until the complete conversion to Flash, references could still be found in the HTML source code to passport "room servers," and links to technical documentation on Communities.com's web site.

Viant worked on the site as well, offering project and business management for the development and beta and back-end software development for the user and content management. Scott Gutterman served as the lead at Viant, and Stacie Spychalski, David Gynn, Chris Griswold and others managed plans, requirements and developed the code. Before being acquired and ultimately closing, Viant went on to work at several Turner Broadcasting/Time-Warner projects from 2000-2002.

For the first few years, the site was updated weekly. Beginning in mid-2005, it became apparent that Turner Online stopped maintaining the Cartoon Orbit site. Updates were ceased in February 2006, and many reported bugs went unfixed. On August 17, 2006, Cartoon Network removed the navigation for Cartoon Orbit from its main header. The link could now only be found on the bottom of the home page. This caused many users to speculate that Cartoon Network had nearly given up completely on Cartoon Orbit, and some anticipated its closure. The same users also pointed to the recent AP press release from Cartoon Network about developing a then-unnamed cartoon-based MMORPG as proof that Cartoon Orbit would soon be a thing of the past.

Starting September 29, 2006, users were no longer able to sign up for and create new Cartoon Orbit accounts. When clicking the "Join Now" button, the user was presented with a "Registration is Closed" page. On October 2, 2006 a notice that Cartoon Orbit would close was posted on the front page.

We regret to announce that Cartoon Orbit will be closing October 16, 2006.

Since the launch of Cartoon Orbit in 2000, we have been amazed and honored by the dedication of our fans. From the days of Orbit Worlds and cZone Spotlight to the introduction of gToons, it's been a memorable ride creating and developing this site for you throughout the years.

As a small token of our appreciation for your incredible loyalty, we would like to offer you a Thank You certificate featuring some of our favorite gToons. We'll automatically insert your username and first login date--just click below to print.

Cartoon Orbit officially closed in the early morning of October 16, 2006. The link that was placed at the bottom of the home page was redirected to Cartoon Network's Spanish site; however, directly linking to their web address showed that Cartoon Orbit was still online. The following day, the login was removed from the homepage, and anyone who tried logging in on another site page was disallowed. All links to Cartoon Orbit now redirect to the Cartoon Network homepage.