to life. While racing, Muir sits atop a large, liquid-filled globe, containing the body of its mate. It is also revealed that the tentacles on Muir's back allow it to communicate telepathically and appear to be highly prized as a hunting trophy. Muir chooses not to take part in the final race after learning the Avatar doesn't have the power to resurrect his mate. After the race ended he returned to his home planet. Development Dissatisfied with his previous experiences as a screenwriter in the animation industry, Savin Yeatman-Eiffel wanted to create a distinctive kind of show, one that would revive the type of emotions he had felt as a kid watching the classic Japanese anime series of the 70s. In short, he wanted to stress the emotional side of his characters and story, something that he felt had totally disappeared from Western animation productions. Working on that idea, he created his own company "Sav! The World Productions", which released in 2001 a short movie entitled Molly, Star-Racer, produced in part by Sparx Animation Studios and set to a Y&Co. remix of Ayumi Hamasaki songs. The trailer already showed a mix of 3D and 2D though at the time 3D was still predominant. It featured many of the characters with unfinalized designs including Jordan, Don Wei, Maya, Aikka, Satis, Toros, Sül, Ondai, Ning & Skun, Furter and of course, Molly racing across various places in the Oban landscape featured later in the series. This short movie won the 2001 LEAF Awards and was nominated for best editing in the 2002 Imagina Awards. Leaked on the internet, it quickly became extremely popular among animation fans, generating hundreds of thousands of downloads on various sites - a rarity at the time. The pilot is produced using Alias Wavefront Maya 3D software. In spite of the success of the trailer, the search for financing for the series was a long process since Yeatman-Eiffel had a clear vision of where he wanted to take the show - more realistic and more emotional than the original trailer - and refused to negotiate with a party that would have tried to bend or change the artistic choices at a later stage (including, as was offered to him by an important North American production company to change the main character into a boy). Savin was also dead set on producing the series in Tokyo in collaboration with