Disney Jr. and French AI-powered animation company Animaj have quietly released Ozzy Fox this week a new series for preschoolers, developed jointly by two companies. The first two episodes debuted on YouTube and YouTube Kids on Wednesday and are approaching 800,000 cumulative views in just two days.
Ozzy Fox was created by Jennifer Oxley, whose works include Peg + Cat, Wonder Pets!And Little Billand developed Pocoyo co-creator Guillermo García Carsi, who joined Animaj as creative director in 2023. Chen Ne’eman, Kat Rende and JP Rende wrote songs for the series.
The musical show follows a five-year-old fox whose imagination turns ordinary childhood routines into games and adventures. Its first two parts, “The floor is lava! The Squeaky Cleaning Game” and “Potty Dance Break!” are dedicated to cleaning and toilet training.
There was no official press release about the show, and we were told that the companies wanted to let the launch speak for itself. Instead, Animaj co-founder Sixte Voplane took to LinkedIn to celebrate the launch.
Notable here, though not surprising, is Disney’s decision to develop an original series directly with Animaj, making AI central to both the production model and brand identity. The two companies already have a commercial agreement under which Disney has signed a deal with Lumee, a kids-focused YouTube advertising venture created by Animaj and Hasbro Entertainment. Lumee now features select advertising properties across multiple Disney Channels, including Disney Jr., Disney Kids, Star Wars Kids, Marvel HQ and Nat Geo Kids.
For its part, Animaj is pushing its own pipeline using tools like AI-powered sketch-to-pose predictions and in-between motion, which it says can significantly reduce production time and costs. The company uses this channel for large children’s properties, including Pocoyo And Maya the Bee.
Neither company explained what role Animaj’s artificial intelligence tools played in creating Ozzy Foxalthough this kind of disclosure is becoming less and less common as artificial intelligence tools become more common in studio pipelines. Just yesterday, Netflix said it had already used genAI tools in nearly 300 games this year, but only mentioned three by name.