In September 2008, the CG Cookie website (http://cgcookie.com) was launched. By 2010, Jonathan and Wes established the company behind it, naming the venture "CG Cookie, Inc."
Over the years since, the team at CG Cookie, Inc. expanded and spearheaded additional Blender ventures within our network, including The Blender Market and Orange Turbine.
However, distinguishing between the CG Cookie educational platform and the overarching company has sometimes led to ambiguity, both internally and in the community. 🤷♂️
To clarify this and pave the way forward, CG Cookie, Inc.—the team behind http://cgcookie.com and our other initiatives—will now be rebranded as Autotroph, Inc.
It's not merely a shift in name.
This rebranding marks the beginning of our upcoming innovation and refining of how we communicate amongst ourselves and the world.
Autotrophs are neat organisms that produce complex organic compounds using energy from simple substances. Producing their own food using light, water, and carbon dioxide, they’re self-sustainable and typically called producers.
Being a bootstrapped company from the beginning, it feels like home adopting this as our identity. ❤️🦠
Our purpose remains to foster and elevate creative people within the Blender community.
Discover more about Autotroph on our official company website: https://autotroph.com/.
What does this mean for you?
Daily activities continue as usual for our customers, creators, and members. As time progresses, you might notice the name 'Autotroph' appearing in project footers and in our communications.
Consider this announcement as a touchstone for clarity. 😎
To be clear, projects under the Autotroph umbrella—including Blender Market, CG Cookie, and Orange Turbine—remain untouched by this corporate rebranding.
In Conclusion
Our small but mighty team has come a long way since 2008, and we couldn't have done it without the support from you and the Blender community over the years.
Introducing Autotroph, Inc not only gives us as a team a platform to share more about what we believe in, and are building together. It communicates a structure and purpose for the projects within it.
Thanks for sharing. I do think a lot of people will miss the well-known name of CG Cookie. "Twitter" will always be "Twitter" to me, never "X". As for the new web domain, personally I think that using the full name "Autotroph" and ending with .com or .io would be better, since "autotro.ph" both visually truncates the name and implies your company is based in the Philippines, since .ph is the primary domain used there (of course, if you are based in the Philippines, then that's cool!). Anyway, just my 2 cents, and I certainly wish you guys all the best. :-)
Thanks copperplate! When writing this, we didn't have the autotroph.com, but now we do! ;) Over the next couple weeks we'll be hooking up the domain.
A Phillippines location would be cool!
To be clear this site cgcookie.com is not being renamed, just the overhead company. Happy Blending!