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Paperless workflow The release of Storyboard Pro testifies to Toon Boom’s commitment to deliver solutions that are powerful, efficient and green.
+ Strategic storyboarding
APRIL 2007
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Paperless
workflow.
Green is beautiful. 2007 is poised to be another exciting and eventful year for Toon Boom on all fronts. From a technological standpoint, the release of Storyboard Pro testifies to Toon Boom’s commitment to deliver solutions that are not only powerful and efficient but green as well. Since the release of Harmony, Toon Boom has promoted the benefits of a paperless workflow and is now going even further with Storyboard Pro. This digital storyboarding system enables users to do away with paper, working more collaboratively between boarders, directors and producers and delivering higher quality storyboards and animatics. Remaining true to this philosophy, new products are also in the works and will be launched during the course of the year.
Spring
In the field, Toon Boom is making headway in the new regions it is develop-
is certainly an actionpacked season for Toon Boom. The event line-up includes the following tradeshows, speaking opportunities and workshops: Tokyo International Anime Fair (March 22-23), the Canadian Animation Festival in Taipei (March 22April 6), FRAMES in Mumbai (March 26-28), National Association of Broadcasters, Booth SL2622, in Las Vegas (April 16-19), MIPTV, Booth C1.05, in Cannes (April 16-20), Carrefour de l’animation in Paris (April 28-29) , and FMX in Stuttgart (May 1-4).
ing. The Caribbean is gearing up to implement the first animation curriculum to train the next generation of creative professionals. Both The University of the West Indies and The University of Trinidad and Tobago will be trained on Toon Boom products to start their animation program as early as September 2007. Venturing over to Africa, the team will tour Ghana, Kenya and South Africa for a second time. The timing could not be better as Toon Boom will attend eLearning Africa, from May 28 to 30, to meet with high-level decision makers and practitioners from education, business, and the government. Toon Boom will also be involved in the Media and Children World Summit held from March 24 to 28 in South Africa. Toon Boom Studio workshops will be given to children to give them their first experience in animation.
On April 2, Toon Boom will also launch its first Animation Festival targeted at students based in Singapore. Thanks to the enthusiastic support of the Media Development Authority and the Canadian High Commission, the top team will win a trip to Canada to get hands-on experience working in renowned animation studios and will also receive a complementary copy of Toon Boom Solo.
We certainly hope to see you there!
THIS ISSUE’S COVER courtesy
of Calabash
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APRIL 2007
SPONSORSHIP As mentioned in the June 2006 issue of the Toon Boom News, Toon Boom Animation is proud to be sponsoring Mark Heese, a multiple medal winner in beach volleyball. This column will allow you to follow his progress towards the upcoming Games of the XXIX Olympiad – Beijing 2008.
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro is Released Toon Boom Storyboard Pro is the only digital storyboarding system for films, documentaries, gaming, advertising and animation projects. It offers advanced features for quality storyboarding, animatic creation in real-time and effective pre-production management. Easy to learn and use, Storyboard Pro mimics the traditional storyboarding process, navigating with just a graphic tablet pen in a userfriendly environment. NEW IN PRO True WYSIWYG multi-layer drawing engine • Use onion skinning for easy creation of key poses • Draw behind mode to paint behind contour line • Flip drawings or layers • Merge layers
Windows Tablet PC and Vista Support
Improved pipeline integration • Support AAF to export to editing solution such as Avid editing system, Adobe Premiere • Export to CSV to retrieve your storyboard into spreadsheet application such as Excel • Import and Export PSD layers and preserve independent layers in a panel • Enjoy enhanced PDF support with password protection, extended panel and new customization option added • Support foreign languages • Print time code over exported movie
Extended animatic features • Spread camera and layer motion over panels • Control ease-in and ease-out independently for layers and camera motion • Define camera and layer hold time at beginning or end of panels • Link Audio track to panel to always keep your audio files in sync Toon Boom Storyboard Pro is used by Nelvana, 9Story, Alphanim, House of Cool, Subséquence, Callitoon, and Kiwi Animation. Toon Boom Storyboard Pro is now available online at www.toonboom.com/products/storyboardpro/
The beach volleyball “off-season” is quite a misnomer. In order to maintain the fitness levels and skills needed to compete with the best beach volleyball players in the world, the off-season is anything but “off”. According to Mark , “Aside from the post-season three-week recovery period in November, the work we put in during the December - April period adds up to being twice the work of the actual season. We spend six to eight hours a week with our personal trainers, in addition to the ten hours a week in the sand doing competitive volleyball drills. In addition to the physical and tactical training, we have a mental training program, which include both individual and team mental training sessions on a daily basis. All this is necessary to properly prepare us for the intense competition we will face during this Olympic Qualifying season on the World Tour. Speaking of the season, it is quickly approaching, starting in May (Shanghai, China), and includes a stop in Montreal, Canada in early July! We look forward to translating all our hard work into solid results, and we hope you will cheer for us along the way! See you on the beach!”
TOONBOOMSTAR We introduce you to the people behind the technology and put a face to the voice you may have spoken to. Mariève Lapointe has recently been promoted to the position of Logistic and Receivables Manager. After joining Toon Boom in 2001, she started taking care of receivables. She has added several other administrative responsibilities over the years that led her to work closely with customers of both industrial and consumer solutions. Mariève also looks after the Toon Boom Studio resellers’ enquiries and orders worldwide. On the logistic side, she is directly involved in issuing licenses and keeping inventory of all sales and marketing-related items, such as user guides, dongles and demo CDs. She oversees shipping of all boxed orders, making sure all is sent out in a prompt fashion. At the end of the day, customer satisfaction is her foremost objective. Mariève is a graduate of Montreal’s École des Hautes Études Commerciales, specializing in management, international business and management accounting. After office hours, Mariève can be found socializing with her friends, attending parties and dancing to all beats and rhythms.
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LuxAnimation is a well-established and very active animation production studio based in Luxembourg. LuxAnimation applies its expertise to series and feature length projects and uses 2D, 3D and a combination of innovative new techniques. At present, they are completing the inking and painting, and compositing of the much awaited High Definition television series, The Large Family. This process is expected to take eight months. Co-produced by Indie Kids, GO-N Production, LuxAnimation, and DQ Entertainment, The Large Family is a TV series of twenty-six, 12-minute episodes and because the show is being produced in HD it is gathering a lot of publicity. Adapted from Jill Murphy’s best selling children’s book, The Large Family has already sold over five million copies in the United Kingdom. Targeted to an audience of four to six year olds, the series will be broadcast on TF1, Disney France, the BBC, and BBC Worldwide channels. The show brings viewers into the day-to-day life of a family of elephants and their four children; Lester, Luc, Laura and Lucie. Laurent Paqueteau, executive director, shares his experience on using Opus in the production of The Large Family: “With each release, Opus brings us more and more ease of use and practicality. For example, the optimization of rendering time and the greater speed of loading and saving files are greatly appreciated. We also look forward to the next release as it will enable us to apply an automated rendering filter to an entire environment. Keeping up to date with the technology places us on the leading edge as we can work with any studio worldwide equipped with Opus”.
textured backgrounds, a combination which posed problems for other software that was trialled. “Harmony has enabled us to achieve the specific textured look add fluidity to the style of Wobbly Land” said Cat Little, the creator and director of the series. “It is such a vast piece of software we have yet to use all its functions and really push it in different types of animation pipelines. It may seem daunting to people used to Flash but once you get used to Harmony the creative possibilities are far superior to other software on the market,” said Brian Gilmore, post production supervisor at Brown Bag Films. The first episodes of Wobbly Land will be showcased by HIT Entertainment at MIPTV in April 2007. “We are thrilled by what Brown Bag has achieved with Wobbly Land in Toon Boom Harmony. The animation is gorgeous, wobbly and tactile and we are confident it will be loved by broadcasters and pre-schoolers all around the world,” said Vici Woolgar, Supervising Producer for HIT Entertainment.
Image courtesy of Brown Bag Films
Image courtesy of The Large Family © 2006 Indie Kids, GO-N Production, LuxAnimation, DQ Entertainment
INDUSTRIAL NEWS
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Cinemon Entertainment, Hungary’s largest animation studios is renowned for their high quality productions putting them amongst the top of their field in Europe. The studio is completing production of Princess of the Sun, a seventy-eight minute animated feature film scheduled for theatrical release in April 2007, and, at the same time, embarking on the production of The Wumblers. With a fall 2007 debut on both the Trinity Broadcasting and Smile of a Child networks, the production of this preschool series undertaken by Gravity Visual Effects Inc., executive producer Zviah Eldar, is done using Toon Boom Harmony and cut-out techniques. Supervising producer, Reka Temple, is leading her creative team, among which Hanan Kaminski,
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Academy Award ® nominated animation studio Brown Bag Films are currently using Toon Boom Harmony on their pre-school animation series Wobbly Land. Wobbly Land was created and directed by Cat Little, and shortly after a presentation made at the Cartoon Forum, it was acquired by HIT Entertainment and put into production as a co-production with Nick JR UK. Running at 26 fiveminute episodes, this is the first High Definition animation series to be produced in Ireland. Established in 1994, Brown Bag Films produce a wide range of TV series and TV commercials, the move from Animo and Flash exclusively to Toon Boom Harmony was carefully considered. Wobbly Land features a mixture of vector based characters on real
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Image courtesy of Cinemon Entertainment
called LAVA KUSA – The warrior twins, based on the legendary epic Ramayana. Seen as one of the most important productions in the history of Indian animation filmmaking, this feature is slated for theatrical release by this year end. LAVA KUSA is a home-grown production wherein the project is carried out indigenously. “At RVML, we develop our own content and have a few projects in the pipeline, on which we are currently planning for the pre-production. We use Toon Boom Harmony for our compositing and storyboard needs, as we found this solution to be user friendly, that its output quality is better and that overall, it has translated into significant time savings for us,” shared Mr. Sudhakar, CEO of RVML.
to create this phenomenal programme. The Wumblers’ imaginative storylines, engaging music, and sophisticated animation lets children take these characters into their lives, hearts, and homes, This preschool series offers an entertaining and educational path, making the world a better place for all children and families both today and in future generations. “Exceptional creative minds today joining forces and countries for a better tomorrow...It seems we are already setting the example!”, shared Laura J. Wellington, creator and CEO of The Giddy Gander Company LLC. ___________________________________________________________________________
The NetSmartz Workshop is an Internet safety resource from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children that uses the latest technology to create high-impact educational activities for even the most tech-savvy kids of any age group. The goal of NetSmartz is to extend the safety awareness of children and empower them to make responsible decisions online and in the real world. NetSmartz enhances the ability of children to recognize dangers onand offline, encourages children to report victimization to a trusted adult, and supports community education efforts. When NetSmartz wanted to expand their 3D animator’s toolbox with a 2D package, they turned to Toon Boom Harmony. “Toon Boom allows NetSmartz animators to achieve the same visual consistency natural to 3D animation in a fresh 2D style. By putting Storyboard at the front of the workflow, writers and animators can work though scripts collaboratively, creating animatics that let both teams shine. Also, the centralized asset library allows animations to be shared with the marketing and web teams. At NetSmartz, Toon Boom Harmony helps all teams work better together while fostering creativity and collaboration”, shared Roarke Lynch, Technology Specialist at NetSmartz.
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Animex, one of Mexico’s leading animation studios, has adopted Toon Boom Harmony to produce its first featurelength project titled La Leyenda de la Nahuala. Working with a team of forty animators located in Puebla, Leon and Mexico City, the studio has now become the largest
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Image courtesy of Rayudu Vision Media Ltd
Image courtesy of Animex
Considered one of the leading animation studios in India, Rayudu Vision Media Ltd (RVML) started its operations in 2005 with a vision to offer unlimited entertainment worldwide. RVML is a one-stop shop where all the requirements of animation productions are integrated under one roof to render quality services to its clients. Having worked on various international TV Series, the RVML team is currently working on a feature length 2D animated movie
Harmony installation in Latin America. Of particular interest is the paperless workflow Animex has implemented: animators create frame-by-frame animation digitally, all relying on the Harmony pipeline to maximize its fully integrated pipeline. Scheduled for a feature release on October 31, 2007, La Leyenda de la Nahuala aims at promoting the rich Mexican culture with its art, literature, folklore and customs. Set in 1807 in the town of Puebla de los Ángeles, New Spain, the story revolves around Leo San Juan, a fearful, young boy. On the night of November 2nd, Day of the Dead, Leo’s brother is kidnapped by La Nahuala, an ancient and evil spirit. Overcoming his fear, Leo embarks on a great adventure filled with strange creatures to save his brother and bring him back home.
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Image courtesy of Tony White
CONSUMER NEWS
Image courtesy of Andreas Paleologos
Director, Animator, Author and Fulltime Teacher, Tony White is a multiple-award winner, starting with a 1978 British Academy Award for Best Short Factual Film Hokusai - An Animated Sketchbook. Tony’s impressive career includes twenty years at Animus Productions / Entertainments as president and founder, seven years at Richard Williams Animation Limited, as personal assistant to Richard Williams on A Christmas Carol (Academy Award) and director, designer, animator of numerous projects, and five years at Halas and Batchelor, as Head of Design, Commercials, Short Films Jackson Five and TV Series, Tomfoolery. Tony has written two highly praised books. The Animator's Workbook, published by Watson-Guptill in 1988, sold almost 80,000 copies world wide; and Animation from Pencils to Pixels ~ Classical Techniques For Digital Animators was published by Focal Press in August 2006. “Toon Boom Studio was a real revelation for me. That is why it was my program of choice when teaching students in a digital, filmmaking environment. It very much reflects the traditional world that I apprenticed from and had so much success with but I don’t think its full potential has ever been fully appreciated, even now! If I were able to make a full-length movie or quality TV Special in the future, I would definitely place Toon Boom Studio at the top of my wish list!” shared Tony.
Hanne Hukkelberg is also a great piece of art. “I think Toon Boom Studio is the perfect application for rocket starting a drawn animation project. It’s just right on target, with no obstacles or technicalities to think about. I really enjoy the pure and simple drawing animation right into Toon Boom Studio with onion skin and light table, the use of colours as instances to the palette, the management of camera, drawings and backgrounds in 3D depth, the auto gap and the import and export of colour palettes.”
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Image courtesy of Shawn McInerney
By the age of five, Kenny Lentine was already drawing everything he could. Being the son of parents who work in the printing industry, Kenny always had a great surplus of scrap paper to draw all of his favorite characters from the Ninja Turtles, Looney Tunes, or Disney, as well as some of his own characters. Kenny is currently a Time Arts major at Northern Illinois University. He was introduced to Toon Boom Studio by his teacher, Kurt Schultz, in his 2D Animation class as a good way to put together images with the onion skins and as a good program to use the Wacom tablets with. Kenny shares on his experience: “The vectorization function creates fast, very clean, professional-looking animations. We also went over the lip-synching tools, for a great simple way to analyze an audio file visually.” He made a short film in his Advanced Animation class entitled A Fish Out Of Water. This cartoon was shown at the 2006 Illinois International Film Festival and was met with an appreciative reception from the audience. “I try to use Toon Boom Studio as often as possible. I used it in my web design class, interactivity class, advanced animation, independent study, and I plan on using it for my senior project, too.
Image courtesy of Kenny Lentine
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Shawn McInerney began his career as a freelance illustrator/animator in 1993. Since then he's worked at Will Vinton Studios for many years animating M&M's, Doughboys, Frosted Mini Wheats, and numerous other talking snacks. Then he moved to Sony where he worked on The Polar Express, Open Season, Surf's Up, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. But Shawn's ultimate goal has always been to run his own animation studio. So in late 2005 he opened MooseMouse Media animation studio in Los Angeles. Toon Boom Studio is his main animation tool to create frame-by-frame drawn animation. “I do all most of my sketching on a Wacom Cintiq so I like the feel of the pen pressure on opacity of bitmap style graphics software for thumbnails and pencil testing. I really appreciate the ability to easily combine peg animation and drawn animation is great for creating limited animation that does not look like cut-outs,” commented Shawn.
Based in Oslo, Norway, Andreas Paleologos founded his own studio called Studio Palegolas in 2003 and creates short animated films, music videos, game design, animation for mobile phone games, traditional illustration and graphic design. Andreas has been a Toon Boom Studio user since version 1.2. His recent animated music video projects are truly worth watching. Andreas created the animation for MTV for the song titled Once We Were Penguins, which has been running worldwide on MTV. His latest project, a music video titled A Cheater’s Armoury for
Image courtesy of Dinamo
CASE STUDY
Harmony Flies through Edutaining Pre-School Series
Back in October 2005, Dinamo used ToonBoom Harmony to complete the Cwm Teg (Happy Valley) pilot and started promoting their concept to broadcasters. The series was finally commissioned by S4C in June 2006, which triggered the start of a wonderful adventure in Happy Valley. Targeted to pre-schoolers, Cwm Teg offers enchanting and captivating stories that are not only entertaining but also educational. After the approval of the scripting, outline, character design and storyboard, the production was ready to start in October 2006 relying on an entire Harmony pipeline. The team includes two lead animators, four animators and one compositor. The workflow was therefore pretty straightforward. Ben Cawthorne describes how the team is currently working: “Overall, the animation style is based on cut-out techniques. As the story is set in a large valley with several landscapes, we make full use of the multi-plane camera to give actual depth when the camera travels throughout a scene which creates more eye-catching environments. The initial design is drawn on paper and scanned into Harmony. The lead animators start creating the key poses that are rendered and put back into the animatic to check the timing and make the necessary adjustments. Once all is approved, the animators start building the library of assets. Each character has its own section, with its artwork, rigs, movement cycles and outfits for each season. We have created an enormous multi-plane valley, based on a bird’s-eye view map I designed to build the entire background for the series. Thanks to the palette manager, it was easy to adjust the colors and adapt the look of the valley for each season. We also have developed a library of props like umbrellas or the schools whiteboard on which concepts are explained to the children, such as how rain helps flowers grow. Harmony also enables us to work with several animation styles: there is the reality of the village, then, there is the look specific to songs and dreams and finally, the rough pencil look used on the white board. Some special effects are inclu-
Image courtesy of Dinamo
Based in the Welsh capital of Cardiff and founded in 2004 by award-winning animation directors Aron Rhys Evans and Owen Stickler, Dinamo are producers of high quality 2D and 3D digital animation and visual effects. Their credits include S4C’s CNEX, CGI and compositing for S4C’s flagship drama series Compassionate, both series and the Christmas special of O na y Morgans! (a sitcom that mixes live action and animation). They have produced many interstitials and graphics, the BBC’s BAFTA winning Double Yellow title sequence among them. Aron and Owen, with the Dinamo team of top graduates from Wales’ animation and film courses are currently producing Cwm Teg, a series of twenty episodes of five minutes for S4C.
ded in this project, such as reflections and glows. All water effects are hand drawn in Harmony. We use also morphing where it suits. We have a scene with a jumping fish, a perfect opportunity to use that feature. We try to keep all of the production within Harmony to be more efficient” concluded Ben. As Managing Director, Owen contributed his operational point of view on using Harmony: “Before buying Harmony, we had a cumbersome 2D pipeline as we used to rely on several applications. At one point, it became fairly complex to keep track of a production as the filing system was very complicated. Harmony manages the production all within one application, this was essential to me. As far as reuse is concerned, it was interesting to see that after four episodes, it already started to pay off. It is working out really well. Walk cycles are reused over and over and they don’t even look like they are! This project pushes the use of multiplane camera to the fullest. By tweaking the global palettes settings, we adapt the look and feel of the landscapes without a lot of effort. I am really happy with the results. At the beginning, it was taking two and a half weeks to complete one episode. Now, as we are completing the fifth episode, it only takes one week and half to complete one episode. At this rate, I am confident that we’ll reach even greater productivity gains as we still have fifteen episodes to deliver!”
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APRIL 2007
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Image courtesy of Callitoon
CASE STUDY
Strategic storyboarding Calligram (PCG) is a Swiss publishing house established in 1993 by Christian Gallimard, specializing in books for children and, more specifically in edutainment. Calligram’s most famous book series is Max et Lili with eighty titles and sales of one million copies per year.
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specialist at Warner Brothers Feature Animation. She then worked as a visual effects supervisor on Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys, a TV movie. Back to Europe in 2004, she joined BUF studios as a senior graphic designer to work on Luc Besson’s CG kids feature movie, Arthur et les Minimoys. The success of the Max et Lili book series, created by Dominique de Saint Mars and Serge Bloch, has resulted in the development of a TV series targeting children from 6 to 12 years old. This superior quality 3D animation project
Image courtesy of Callitoon
In 2006, a production company called Callitoon was created in order to broaden its activities with their holding company PCG. Calligram and Callitoon’s shared vision is to develop close links between the worlds of publishing, audiovisual and multimedia. Their objective is to create cross-platform concepts and products. With this objective in mind, Calligram and Callitoon started to expand the Max et Lili concept into different areas. Callitoon’s creative team is built around the TV director, Virginie Jallot and a digital specialist, Pauline Gallimard who works closely with the modeler Anders Ehrenborg and two designers, Alex Boudon and Ahmed Guerrouache. Virginie Jallot graduated from the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Over the past 21 years, she has been involved as an artistic director, director, and line producer in the production and direction of numerous shorts, music videos, CDROMs and animation series. She has been very involved in the development of animation digital technology, working with the 2001 company for the creation of TicTacToon, a “paperless” animation software. In 2000, she took helm of Studio Ellipse, where she supervised the production of several TV series and feature films, including Kong, Nick & Perry, Agrippine, Xcalibur, Funny Little Bugs, Bécassine and Corto Maltese, encompassing a wide variety of styles and 2D and 3D techniques. In 2003, Virginie joined TeleImages Kids, to produce and co-direct the Atomic Betty series, season 1, 2 and 3 (156 x 13 min). Pauline Gallimard graduated from Miami International University with a Master’s Degree in 3D Computer Animation. She first worked in San Francisco on various TV commercials as a visual effects artist. After training on 2D animation software, she moved to Los Angeles to work on The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie as an ACME digital
ground, the boarders won’t have to create any backgrounds axes and angles. It is directly on top of those rendered backgrounds that the boarders will create the sketches. For pre-timing purposes, the boarders will also be given the recorded voices as it is easy to add sound tracks in Storyboard. The boarders will then be able to sketch over the 3D backgrounds and synchronize the sound tracks to estimate the final timing. Of course, the dialogues will also appear in Storyboard for each shot. Finally, we will also include the director’s notes and any necessary comments for that animator to work with. All things considered, those types of control should translate into significant time and financial savings for the entire production. Storyboard will also incorporate valuable production data. For each shot, it will include information such as the list of used characters, the camera angle, the background and props used to complete each shot. Based on this data, Storyboard’s digital capabilities will be further put to use as we are planning to automate the data transfer between Storyboard and Motion Builder to improve the
Images courtesy of Callitoon
will run for fifty-two, 13-minute episodes. The pilot for this project was completed in September 2006, and served as a test bed for new pre-production techniques and organization, to be used once it got the green light With a MIPCOM deadline of less than six weeks looming, the two-minute pilot production took an interesting turn right at the pre-production stage. Virginie Jallot and Pauline Gallimard recall their experiences: “We wanted to streamline the process by going straight from a shooting script to a 3D animatic using Motion Builder. After some struggling, we successfully met with our objectives. However, once the 3D animatic was done, we realized that for organization and communication purposes, it was difficult not to have a classic 2D storyboard at all. At this point, it became clear that Toon Boom Storyboard would be the perfect paperless solution. We simply rendered frames from our 3D animatic and incorporated them into Toon Boom Storyboard. We also added all the necessary details such as dialogues, shot duration, director’s notes or camera direction.
“At this point, it became clear that Toon Boom Storyboard would be the perfect paperless solution. We simply rendered frames from our 3D animatic and incorporated them into Toon Boom Storyboard. We also added all the necessary details such as dialogues, shot duration, director’s notes or camera direction.”
All in all, it had become clear to us that not only the process of storyboarding was indeed time-saving but that Toon Boom Storyboard would address several of our objectives. As a result of this great experience we decided to incorporate Toon Boom Storyboard in our pipeline for the upcoming series production. Our intention to streamline the pre-production process is even easier to attain as Storyboard is a digital solution, enabling us to save significant time and resources knowing that the boarders will have to adjust working with a paperless medium. We have tested the import of 3D rendered right into Toon Boom Storyboard on the pilot and decided to use that astounding feature. To reach utmost efficiency and productivity at the pre-production stage, we’ll determine predefined camera axes and angles for each background. By selecting among predefined camera angles for each back-
speed and efficiency of 3D files generation. We are currently developing a plug-in that will enable us to recover the storyboard data once it has been validated, and create the animatic sequences within Motion Builder. We are also developing a setup that will allow us to freely exchange animation between Maya and Motion Builder. For us, Toon Boom Storyboard is not only the most suitable software to create a paperless storyboard but it also allows us a smooth transition toward 3D animatic. The character main design pack is also ready and contains characters created with a 3D look based on the 2D graphical look of the book. The team is now in the process of getting the script adaptation approved by the author, Dominique de Saint Mars, to make the jump into the series production. At this time, we are fine-tuning the production planning process and still finding ways of maximizing the use of Storyboard.”
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APRIL 2007
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CASE STUDY
Calabash Animation takes a digital leap with Harmony Founded in 1985 by Monica Kendall and Ed Newmann, Calabash Animation is an impressive animation studio based out of Chicago, Illinois. The company is now owned and managed by Sean Henry, Executive Producer, and Wayne Brejcha, Animation Director. Calabash has a full-time staff of eight animators, and employs as many as twenty freelance artists to create some of the most compelling and creative character animation being done today.
style and traditional techniques, Toon Boom’s vector-based capabilities have always been critical to us. Two additional major benefits we thrive on in Opus relate to the automated inking and painting features as well as the built-in effects and compositing power. We like combining various styles, be it 3D animation and live-action with our traditional animation to create a unique look. Opus has proved to the most efficient tool to blend these styles together. The overall speed and efficiency we experience simply make Opus our number one solution of choice,” added Sean. Back in October 2006, Calabash animated a 30-second commercial for the prestigious Chicago International
Image courtesy of Calabash
Since the beginning, Calabash’s primary focus has been commercial production. Their first commercial account of national significance was Coors Light beer (FCB Chicago), a series of spots about a Silver Bullet Beer can that zoomed around wreaking happy havoc. In no time, Calabash was animating Tinkerbell for Disneyworld, the Tiny Toons characters for McDonald's and creating original characters for the Illinois Lottery, Pupperoni Dog Treats, Marshall Field's department stores, Cragin Federal Bank, and Sears. Calabash’s track-record certainly testifies to the quality of their work, as the studio has continued to work on numerous major commercial campaigns, such as Trix Rabbit, Lucky the Leprechaun and the HoneyNut Bee, the Keebler Elves, Cap'n Crunch, Quisp, Mastercard and Mr. Clean. Major customers include leading advertising agencies, namely Cliff Freeman and Partners, GMI, Saatchi & Saatchi NY, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Leo Burnett, FCB/Chicago and RSCG Tatham and Campbell Mithun. Knowing the advertising business is highly competitive, Calabash has always focused on great storytelling and robust technology to make its work unique, distinct and appreciated. “We make sure to
Image courtesy of Calabash
“Considering our animation style and traditional techniques, Toon Boom’s vector-based capabilities have always been critical to us. We thrive on the automated inking and painting features as well as the built-in effects and compositing power.”
keep the advertising agencies up to date with our latest projects to show them how far our creativity can go,” stated Sean Henry. In addition to commercials, Calabash is also involved in animated shorts and features production. One can’t resist mentioning Stubble Trouble, the witty short that got nominated for “Best Animated Short” at the 2001 Academy Awards. Calabash has a new ten-minute short in the works titled Botnik. As soon as this short is finalized in spring 2007, it will hit the festival route to gain exposure and hopefully reap some well-deserved awards. As a traditional animation studio at heart, Calabash has made sure to rely on a technology that would support their creative ideas while being completely transparent throughout the process. The team has been a loyal and long-time user of Toon Boom products, beginning with USAnimation and continuing on with Opus. “Considering our animation
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Toon Boom News
APRIL 2007
Children’s Film Festival. “As the budget was extremely tight, we felt we had to take the digital turn to be able to deliver this project. We decided to add Harmony to our pipeline to keep the quality high and fully maximize the use of cut-out animation techniques. The project was based on Bill Mayor’s work, the famous illustrator, well-known for his illustrated monster characters. Done in 3D animation, the main CG character would be surrounded by cartoon monster characters done with a cut-out method in Harmony. Used in conjunction with Wacom Cintiqs, Harmony proved to be very cost-effective, significantly facilitating the combination of these different animation styles. The result speaks for itself.” “This project gave us the perfect opportunity to explore Harmony’s capabilities and showcase what Calabash is able to create digitally. In addition to working on new commercials for the Trix and Lucky Charms brands, we are also revamping our web site with character animation created in Harmony, and looking into new opportunities on the internet, such as “webisodes”. Harmony has enabled us to streamline the production process, moving toward “paperless” productions, and delivering higher quality animation for the web. We remain totally committed to the art of storytelling, drawing from various sources of inspiration and always striving to develop a unique look. We are excited about all of the new possibilities with Harmony as our main animation pipeline,” concluded Sean.
SCHOOLS ON BOARD
Go-Motion Studios is dedicated to providing current and effective training in the latest software, techniques and technologies relevant to the Film, Television and Video Game industries. They offer students a unique opportunity to learn important industry practices through their courses in Digital Media and especially in Film Animation. Their goal is to help bridge the gap that exists between education and industry. Their special team of industry experts contributes and shares their many years of experience and knowledge, helping to create a rich and unique learning environment. In the past two and a half years, over 300 students have attended Go-Motion Studios’ Animation courses. In that time, Director Roslyn Dobelsky and Animator Ross Gathercole (ex Disney, Cartoon Network), both Toon Boom Studio devotees, have been teaching it in the 2D Animation courses and the students have found Toon Boom Studio extremely user friendly and exciting to use. “Our popular 10 week ‘Animation Film Making Project’ offers students an opportunity to become film makers and the results for us have been very exciting. We teach the students how to use Toon Boom Studio to create the films and the variation in style in each of our films to date is a reflection of the versatility and adaptability of the software. We were thrilled that our films screened at the Australian Effects and Animation Festival in 2006 and will screen at the “Little Big Shots” Kids Film Festival in June 2007. Our mission is to offer possibility to students’ young and old who, when watching cartoons, ask the question How did they do that?”, shared Roslyn.
Canada’s prestigious Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, internationally renowned for its classical and computer animation programs, has decided to install Toon Boom Storyboard and Toon Boom Solo in its animation labs. Students started learning animation using Toon Boom’s advanced technology as recently as September 2006 and will do so throughout the four-year Bachelor of Applied Arts - Animation program. The first graduating class to use the Storyboard and Solo solutions is scheduled for April 2007, right on time to meet the growing demand for animators trained on Toon Boom technology.
Image courtesy of USC School of Cinematic Arts
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Image courtesy of Republic Polytechnic
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Republic Polytechnic, one of Singapore’s most hightech and cutting-edge Institutes of Higher Learning, has decided to provide 2D animation facilities for its students utilizing Toon Boom Storyboard and Toon Boom Studio. New Media students will start learning and producing 2D animation using Toon Boom’s advanced technology as soon as April 2007, with the first graduating class to use the Storyboard and Studio solutions scheduled for March 2008. “In Singapore, the creative industry is seen as one of the nation’s next waves for success and stability and the government is providing huge support to propel growth. Our school decided to adopt Toon Boom products to prepare the next generation of creative professionals with the most advanced 2D animation technology available,” said Graham Perkins, Assistant Director, Capability Development, School of Technology for the Arts at Republic Polytechnic.
The USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA), renowned for its excellence in cinema, television and new media, has enhanced the learning experience by adding Toon Boom Storyboard and Toon Boom Solo to its animation labs. Toon Boom products provide students with the unique opportunity to work within one integrated animation production pipeline similar to the system adopted by the leading animation studios. As Toon Boom technology is completely transparent throughout the production process, students can enjoy total creative freedom while storyboarding, drawing, scanning, inking and painting, lip synching, laying out animation in a 3D space, and adding stunning special effects. As of September 2007, students will start learning animation using Toon Boom’s advanced technology in their first year and will do so throughout the four-year B.A. and three-year M.F.A curricula. Catering to the leading animation studios in California, Toon Boom and the School of Cinematic Arts combine both their technology and industry knowledge for the immediate benefit of the students. ___________________________________________________________________________
Headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, Little Black Dot Studios (LBD) has been appointed as Toon Boom Authorized Training Centre for the SADEC Region. Following an intensive training in Toon Boom premises and at Nelvana early 2007, Harry Ravelomanantsoa, founder, director, and lead instructor at LBD, gained invaluable experience learning Toon Boom’s software solutions and working in a prestigious studio environment. LBD is currently offering courses on Toon Boom Studio, Solo and Storyboard on a group or individual basis. Courses can also be tailored to address special requests. LBD is also working in close collaboration with Toon Boom towards the development of a sustainable South African animation industry. As of March 2007, LBD animators are the most experienced Toon Boom professional users in sub-Saharan Africa.
Toon Boom News
APRIL 2007
11
To cross the Rubicon - to embark on a mission from which one cannot turn back
From concept to completion “Technology has made location irrelevant; the only thing that matters these days is talent, something we most certainly have� Randa Ayoubi, CEO Rubicon, June 2006 Rubicon is a leading regional production company in interactive multimedia, 2D & 3D animation and high powered CGI productions. Our creative and technical competencies have allowed us to firmly establish ourselves regionally as well as ascertain ourselves internationally in the development and production of animated, educational and multimedia products. With the use of cutting edge, state of the art technologies, Rubicon's mission is to create a new generation of high quality, value-added products and services that make education entertaining, and entertainment educational. Our imaginative, creative and innovative entertaining and educational solutions allow us to offer our customers a superior and exceptional product and service that appeal to organizations of every size and an audience of all ages.
Rubicon - Jordan P.O. Box 5296 Amman, 11183 Jordan Tel. : +962.6.4655300 / 4655400 Fax.: +962.6.4616800 Rubicon - Dubai Dubai Internet City, Building No. 3 P.O. Box (500009) Dubai - UAE Tel. : +971.4.3914990 Fax.: +971.4.3916877 http://www.rubicon.com.jo http://www.benandizzy.com http://www.tareqwashireen.com