Coatimundi Studios was an illustration company headed by illustrators Ted Gadecki and Fran Lee. The duo have provided digital and traditional illustrations across various avenues, including advertising and children's books.
In late 1999, Coatimundi Studios was contracted by the Britt Allcroft Company to develop the official licensing style guide for the entire Thomas & Friends franchise replacing the Owen Bell artwork . They designed a trademark of Thomas to be used for copyright information on nearly every single licensed product to this present day . A colored version of this Thomas was used on packaging for serval merchandise lines until 2008. Various illustrations of the characters, props, scenery and packaging styles were developed by Gadecki for use as promotional material, book illustrations, Home Video Releases, merchandise packaging and references for licensees during the 2000s and early 2010s . Their style guide first debut with Thomas and the Magic Railroad merchandise packaging featuring Thomas , Lady , Spatter , Dodge , and Diesel 10 .
The company stopped illustrating for the franchise sometime around 2010, with some of their final contributions used for the official magazine. The style guide would later transition to use the updated CGI design of the show. However, their designs were still used on some rare cases in merchandise up to the late 2010s .Later on as part of the 80th Anniversary their designs started to be used on merchandise again .