Toon Boom News October 2006 by Toon Boom Animation

www.toonboom.com

STUDIO 3.5 With each release, Toon Boom Studio is injected with new advanced features that help users make the most of their talents and their time.

Discover the Workout Series The Toon Boom Animation Workout Series is to help users develop their techniques and skills.

September 2006

To serve the animation community better Following the announcement of the Pegs acquisition and the launch of Toon Boom Storyboard and Toon Boom Studio V3.5, activity at Toon Boom has soared to new heights. To sustain this growth, Toon Boom will continue to make the company even more efficient and accessible to the global animation community. With offices in Canada, France and the United Kingdom, Toon Boom is able to service its customer base around-the-clock. Building on its core competence in engineering and customer support, Toon Boom is more committed than ever to be the partner of choice in any animation project! _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Proud of its cutting-edge technology, Toon Boom is also dedicated to developing new markets and being involved in the creation of animation hubs. This time around, it will be in the Caribbean and Africa. Joan Vogelesang has been invited as a guest speaker at the Animae Caribe Animation and New Media Festival organized by the University of the West Indies St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad from October 5 to 7, 2006. She will promote the importance of high quality animation training in sustaining a vibrant industry and ensuring its viable future. Ms. Vogelesang will then go to Ghana, Kenya and South Africa to explore what programs can be undertaken to assist in local initiatives and help these countries become predominant players in the global animation industry. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

MIFA 2006 was extremely successful with the back-to-back demos at the booth and the ongoing animation workshops at the Imperial Palace. The team then continued to the National Educational Computing Conference in San Diego from July 5 to 9; to Siggraph 2006 in Boston from August 1 to 3; and to the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) from September 20 to 24. The OIAF is one of Toon Boom’s favorite events. The team always appreciates the caliber of the people attending this festival and the opportunity they have to showcase the latest technology to the animation community. Similarly, MIPCOM 2006 is a must on Toon Boom’s calendar and the team will be present at booth C1.05 to feature the new products and discuss the pipeline integration benefits, especially with the addition of Toon Boom Storyboard in the production workflow. Come by and see us!

Storyboard demo at MIFA 2006

THIS ISSUE’S COVER Located in Stockholm, Sweden, Adam Marko-Nord is a director, producer and animator at Alphaville AB. He directed four short films and over twenty animated commercials and music videos. He has also been teaching animation at several art and design schools in Scandinavia, authored the book “On Animation”, the first comprehensive book on the history of Swedish Animation and produced seminars on animation at the Swedish Film Institute. For the rebranding of the MTV Channel look, they chose to combine Toon Boom Studio and AfterEffects in order to give their animations a rougher look, using underlying layers of hand-painted colors that transferred to different layers of the animation. “I can’t even picture the amount of work we would have had if we would have done the MTV production the classical way, since we produced around forty films in a few months, with a team of three people. Without Toon Boom Studio, I’m sure we’d still be working!” shared Adam. http://www.toonboom.com/products/toonBoomStudio/userStories/stories2006_2.php?id=AdamMarko

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SEPTEMBER

technonews

CREATE CAMERA EFFECTS IN TOON BOOM STUDIO Even though you don’t use multiple cameras in Toon Boom Studio, there are a lot of ways to create camera effects to give momentum to your animation. For camera effects, we suggest moving around the camera, either with smooth panning or with quick cuts from one place to another on the scene. To do these effects, we can rely on two tools: the Peg element and the Function Editor. Check out the complete article at www.toonboom.com/products /eLearning/articles/camera.php

UNLEASHING STUDIO 3.5

TOON BOOM STAR

Toon Boom Studio V3.5 enables users to animate with more power and ease, bringing significant improvements to animation techniques, special effects creation and color palette management. In addition, V3.5 offers a more user-friendly interface with a Welcome Screen and Help wizards as well as timeline improvements. With each release, Toon Boom Studio is injected with new advanced features that help users make the most of their talents and their time. Now available on Toon Boom’s web site at

In each issue, we will introduce you to the people behind the technology and put a face to the voice you may have spoken to.

www.toonboom.com/products/toonBoomStudio/.

QUALITY UNMATCHED Real-time Drop Shadow effect Animated elements • Palette import and export Improved Sceneplanning Select tool Multiple palette style capability between scenes EFFICIENCY UNPLUGGED Welcome Screen Wizard • Simplified timeline Improved tools such as Sceneplanning Select tool, Contour Editor as well as Texture and Gradient Mapping • Improved Color Transform Effect • New Project dialog box with preset animation properties Improved Export window CREATIVITY UNLEASHED Enhanced interoperability with other software using PDF export • Improved peg system Template color management OpenGL anti-aliasing capability Improved Contour Editor

Mathieu

Lavigne started working at Toon Boom in his early twenties as a Junior System Administrator. His keen interest in technology in general and web tools in particular quickly made him an essential member of the Toon Boom team. Mathieu was recently promoted to Toon Boom Studio Product Manager, due to his in-depth knowledge and understanding of this award-winning product. His thorough involvement in the Toon Boom Forum is a great testimony to his commitment to the Toon Boom community. Mathieu’s dedication towards the success of Toon Boom Studio is exemplary. This dedication is partly due to his military training which instilled in him the value of discipline and endurance. These qualities are certainly put to use at Toon Boom! Mathieu spends his free time with his family and friends, enjoying outdoor activities and playing guitar.

toonboom news

SEPTEMBER

Image courtesy of Toonz Animation India

harmony news

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toonboom news

SEPTEMBER

CBC and Radio Canada have agreed to produce 26 episodes (52 x 11 mins.) of Zoe Mae Productions and Subsequence Entertainment’s smart, funny, irreverent series Gofrette, scheduled to air in the fall of 2007. Gofrette, one highly enthusiastic, inquisitive, endlessly optimistic, somewhat eccentric and definitely happy cat, and his friends, Fudge (with “bad ear days”), Ellie Copter (a leggy bird with a propeller on her head) and Red (a “talking” refrigerator) make up the new series for preschoolers 4 to 7. Produced by the two Montreal-based studios, this series is based on the bestselling books from Doris Brasset and Fabienne Michot. All the creative work, including the scripts, design, original voices, storyboards and animatics will be done in Quebec. The book authors greatly contribute to the production as well by sketching the characters and backgrounds, which will then be drawn in Toon Boom Harmony by the C3 Image team in Trois-Rivières. This studio takes care of animating the first twelve episodes, while the balance is being done by Toonz Animation India. ___________________________________________________________________________

Image courtesy of Peach Blossom Media

Peach Blossom Media, one of Singapore most innovative and creative animation studios, has decided to produce The Incredible Adventures of Kika and Bob on Toon Boom Harmony. Co-producing with Low Sky Film BV (Netherlands) and Defamiliejanssen CVBA (Belgium), Peach Blossom Media will carry out most of the production in Singapore. “As we have developed a strong expertise in digital animation combined with traditional animation, we are convinced Harmony will enable us to produce animation of higher quality and more cost-effectively” shared Sung Lingun, Chief Executive Officer & Creative Director at Peach Blossom. Created by Vincent Bal and Colette Bothof, The Incredible Adventures of Kika and Bob is a television series of 26 thirteen minute episodes targeted for the 5-9 age group. During a daring Save-Your-Cat-Stuck-On-The-ChurchSteeple-During-A-Storm-With-A-Kite operation, Kika, a sturdy seven-year-old girl and Bob, a not too clever firefighter, are blown to the other side of the planet by a typhoon. Thus Kika and Bob must journey around the world and learn

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Courtesy of Zoe Mae Productions and Subsequence Entertainment

Toonz Animation India is now the largest Toon Boom Harmony installation in India. Toonz is planning to explore Harmony's wide array of capabilities to create traditional and cut-out animation in a fully integrated production pipeline. One prestigious project for which Toon Boon Harmony is presently used is Geeta Mahabharata, a first of its kind on Indian television, is a stylized musical series that aims to entertain children while educating them about the grandeur of the great epic Mahabaratha. It is being co-produced by Toonz Animation, Trivandrum, India and Impact Vision, Mumbai, India and will feature over 150 songs and over 650 minutes of 2D animation spread over 52 half-hour television episodes. It is the single biggest animation project undertaken primarily for the Indian market, the single biggest music project undertaken in India and the single biggest television project undertaken in India! Initially it is being produced in Hindi with dubbed versions in many Indian and international languages to follow.

about different places and countries to get home. Peach Blossom Media is working on eight new shows in coproduction with top US, Canadian, Japanese, Korean, Singapore, Australian and Chinese producers and broadcasters. Through their US, European, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and UK sales channels, they are well positioned to reap the benefits of growing recurring revenue from a range of fifteen top quality shows to be licensed to leading broadcasters in these markets.

PVP Animation, the new division of Les Productions Vic Pelletier, is a full animation production facility with expertise in development, production and post production of films and series aimed at the TV market. After the success of its series Y paraît que..., done using Toon Boom Opus, the studio is starting production of an original TV special planned to air around Christmas 2007 on Teletoon. The show Stardust, is the action-packed adventure of an elf named Kobold who must travel around the globe in order to save Christmas. With this film, PVP Animation is upgrading all the Opus seats to Harmony. The studio plans to take advantage of Harmony’s capability to blend traditional and cut-out style animation in order to give the show a fresh look. “Due to the gain in productivity Harmony is providing us, we are now able to produce quality animation in house, right here in Canada. A thing almost impossible no more than two years ago,” says Sebastien Leblanc, production manager at PVP Animation. This confirms PVP Animation's commitment to empower its artists with the most efficient technology on the market.

Get fit with the Workout Series Touching on all aspects of animation creation, the Toon Boom Animation Workout Series is a dedicated program of exercises designed to help users develop the techniques and skills necessary to get the most out of the Toon Boom product family. To date, the Toon Boom team has developed several Workout titles, including: Animating, teaching the basics of drawing and scene planning, The Cut-out Character Design, addressing the fundamentals of cutout style animation, The Cut-out Character Rigging, showing how to build a cut-out character to animate it, The 2-Legged Walk Cycle Workout, covering the essentials of a perfect walk cycle. New to the series is the 4-Legged Walk Cycle Workout. In this workout exercise, users follow the instructions provided and set up all the necessary keys and preferences. Once this is done they will use the donkey character and be guided through the process of inbetweening where they will learn how to use peg segment, constant and nonconstant. Also they will find out about the use of onion skinning and how to use this as a reference to make sure

the size, angle and position of their character are correct. Users find out about cel swapping to fit the correct element to the correct pose. Finally they will go on to fine tune their work and complete the walk cycle. Stay tooned! Scheduled for the end of October, the next title in line is the Template and Production Management Workout. The Workout Series is designed to work with Toon Boom Studio or Toon Boom Solo, users must have one of these two products installed on their computer. This is not designed to work with Toon Boom Studio Express. Check out all the eLearning tools Toon Boom offers online at www.toonboom.com/products/eLearning/.

solo news

Image courtesy of Blurr productions

Tim Tyler of Cheshiresmile Animation in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Wanting to produce his next animation in Vancouver, David Doerksen, President and CEO at Waterfront, brought together an experienced team and started production in October 2005 with a thirty-two-week schedule. The production needed to work with a program that would help the team work quickly while keeping the quality of the animation high. Taking everything into consideration, the team agreed on Toon Boom Solo. It seemed like a good fit for a small production and was great for helping to stay paperless. The animators also had the opportunity to work with the 21" Wacom tablets, which worked well with Solo by allowing pre-production and production to move along smoothly and quickly. “Solo features such as morphing, the 3D space, camera movements and the special effects tools were a great help during production. The Toon Boom customer service was hands-down top-notch as any issue that ever arouse was dealt with right away,” enthused Karen Nielsen, Creative Affairs at Waterfront.

Blurr productions is a Johannesburg-based studio, specializing in corporate and commercial communication with an edge. When security company ADT/Tyco International requested a DVD as a handover tool for their new customers, educating them in alarm and emergency procedures, the animated adventures of a funny family was born. The distinctly 2D style decided on by director, Harry Ravelomanantsoa, in keeping with the original design of the ADT cartoon character, needed a mix of cut-out and traditional animation to meet the resources available to the blurr team. blurr thus became the first South African company to utilize the Solo software. An illustrator paperdrew the images which were then digitally scanned and animated by Rhoda Rutherford in Solo. Edited on Final Cut Pro and with additional compositing done on Motion, the flow between animator, compositor and editor was seamless. A high quality 15-minute 2D animation was delivered in record time! “The network tree was brilliant for selection, navigation and organizing my multitude of layers,” stated Rhoda. “The unique demands of this production made me realize how much Solo was essential to its successful delivery!” added Harry.

Image courtesy of Studio Mitaka

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Image courtesy of Waterfront Pictures

Located in Vancouver, BC, Waterfront Pictures is a production company which recently took a leap into the animation world. Its first one-hour 2D animated children’s Christmas special, A Fairytale Christmas, was directed by

toonboom news

SEPTEMBER

Studio Mitaka was founded by Nicolas Tenz, a passionate and creative maestro who has composed and directed several musical pieces for TV stations, production companies and animation studios in France, Brazil and lately Japan. Nicolas worked closely with Gaumont Animation and Luc Besson on the Fifth Element video game production. He recently collaborated with Hayao Miyazaki at Studio Ghibli. Studio Mitaka has undertaken a unique project entitled Requiem for Darkness. This tells the story of Count Dracula and his bloodthirsty quest for immortality. Currently, the team is hard at work creating the pilot using Toon Boom Solo. The music, lyrics, character designs and storyboards are written and created by Studio Mitaka. ”Solo was the obvious technological choice for us as this is the only animation software solution that runs on a Mac and enables us to go through the complete animation production process using a single tool,” explained Nicolas Tenz. Once the pilot is completed, Studio Mitaka will be looking for funding to make this 70-minute musical project a movement for a new genre.

studio news

Image courtesy of Dr.C.L.Schmidt

“Studio is great as you can draw up cartoon elements that can be scaled, colored, exported to JPEG format and then imported with ease into Photoshop. It is possible then to utilize Photoshop to create backgrounds, layout, and text and end up with some spectacular results. I like to use the pencil drawing feature in Toon Boom Studio as I can scale the vector drawing element and the thickness of the pencil to create required line thicknesses. The ability to layer drawings is very helpful as I am able to create rough shapes and position them to show position of limbs, etc., and then convert them to finished sketches. The other thing I have found is that practice makes perfect and the more I draw the better I get. I feel like I am on a new journey with Toon Boom Studio and cannot wait to see where it leads,” said Peter.

Dr.C.L.Schmidt has his practice in Bad Essen, Germany.

Image courtesy of Peter Griffiths

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Based in South Africa, Peter Griffiths enjoys writing children’s poems and has found that Toon Boom Studio has at last allowed him to express that talent. He uses three programs to achieve this: MS Word to write the text, Toon Boom Studio to draw picture elements and Photoshop to create background and add text.

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Image courtesy of Roger Scott

He is an Ear-Nose-Throat (ENT) specialist who focuses on neuro-otology which deals with the diagnosis and treatment of vertigo, equilibrium disorders etc. The main diagnostic tool in this field is recording and analysing eye movements. He also teaches students and employees at specialized equipment firms which produce or distribute the equipment for neuro-otological laboratories. All this inspired him to make a film dealing with the main topics of eye-movement analysis with regard to anatomy, physiology and clinical aspects, including a virtual laboratory. This is where Toon Boom Studio was put to use. The film is almost finished and will be distributed by one of the specialized equipment firms. Dr. Schmidt has been working on this project for five years, starting with 3D animation. “Only at the very end, I realized that 2D has a lot of advantages, not for all, but for many of the treated topics. So, I redrew greater parts of the work”, he shared. Dr. Schmidt recently purchased Toon Boom Solo to bring his animation a notch higher. “Looking back, I would say that doubtlessly, I would have saved about two years of work having known Toon Boom Studio from the beginning. And so there is a lot I could say how Toon Boom Studio has facilitated the work in any respect, drawing as well as animating. One main aspect is that the program is quite easy to learn in its basic functions and then with growing experience, it offers an equally growing, practically unlimited variety of painting and animation possibilities,” Dr. Schmidt added.

Roger Scott began his professional production career in

New York City in 1974. He now runs his own studio called Roger and Company. Roger has produced hundreds of national, regional and local TV commercials, invented toys for major toy companies, produced educational materials and in 2002 created a museum for a Native American tribe. His personal skill set includes animation and special effects production for TV, interactive media, and the web. In June 2006, he purchased a Cintiq to draw directly into Toon Boom Studio and “the speed of production went through the roof”, shared Roger. “I think when I began thinking of it as an animation production tool for HD and Film rather than a flash creation tool everything changed. Not being constrained by the speed of the processor for playback by writing out QuickTime files using the Targa compressor and send the entire project off for a print to film at full film resolutions, and all on a lowly desktop platform. That’s very exciting,” he added.

toonboom news

SEPTEMBER

solo case study

Image courtesy of NoEvil Productions

talented team assembled, they can create work of a far higher caliber than might be expected from a little “mom and pop” shop. “I push pretty hard sometimes”, says Kat, “but what can I say, I’m from the Southside of Chicago. Besides, I want everyone to do their best, and to keep getting better, because the goal is to move beyond shorts and make full movies. To do that the team needs to be at their best and to have the right tools” Before finding Toon Boom, Kat and her head animator Sai Ming Yui had been using Maya, LightWave, Photoshop, AfterEffects, and Flash, but still they wanted a dedicated digital 2D NoEvil Productions, is a mom and pop, international micro-conglome- animation tool. Then she found Toon rate headquartered in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City with operations Boom, and Kat not only found the digiin England, Sweden, Catalonia, Bosnia, Gujarat, Vancouver, North Dakota, tal animation tools they needed (the Wisconsin, and New Brunswick. Building on a background in greet- camera alone sold her!), but a compaing card and e-card design, NoEvil has achieved enough visibility in ny totally dedicated to digital 2D anithis area to allow it to expand development into animated shorts mation production and the producer. When Harmony arrived she immeand other web content forms. diately saw the production possibiliMom is Kat Caverly whose background is in photography ties it provided and began setting up some of her artists and greeting cards, and who has taken to computer tech- with the program. Since the Dreamteam was a network of nology and the Internet like an electron to copper. Pop is satellite artists, she also needed software that plugged her husband, Thomas Reeve, a photographer and writer them into the Harmony production pipeline. That’s where who, after years of crewing in the film industry, is now Solo came in. “Another dream come true,” says Kat, who can working for NoEvil full time, bringing his knowledge of really get excited about these things. “The beauty of these motion picture storytelling to their increasingly ambitious powerful tools is that they can do the little projects that projects. Kat is the key. Seeking to translate her years of are feeding our studio, but then they can scale up to handle experience in paper cards into the exciting new world of anything and everything that comes along. When we are reathe Web, she learned her way around and began estab- dy to do the big one, we will already be experts,” says Kat. In building a far-flung network where artists need to lishing contacts with talented people she found online. She built websites, studied the new tools, and studied the collaborate on scripts and visual concepts, the usefulness market. She began producing e-cards and hiring artists to of sketches and storyboarding is obvious. When Kat heard that Toon Boom Storyboard was in pre-release to studios work with her through the Internet. One by one she assembled what she calls her with Harmony she called for a copy immediately, and then “Dreamteamsters”; graphic artists, illustrators, animators, turned around and bought two more. She finds it a permusicians, actors, writers and programmers who are fect addition to the tool kit and currently has five Storyspread right around the globe into tomorrow. She holds it board licences, one each for four animators, and one for together across the time zones with virtual office space Thomas, the director, to communicate when words don’t forums and conference rooms, I M, e-mail and once in a do it. Kat loves the way it all plugs together into the same while she uses a telephone. Oh yes, and at times odd hours are called for. An idea that starts in Wisconsin might be scripted and recorded in New York, sent to England for musical scoring, to Stockholm for animation, and back to New York for graphic design and editing. A sentiment from Dakota may be illustrated in India if that artist’s style best suits those words. It all goes through Kat’s computer in New York. Sometimes all at once! With Kat as producer and technology director, and Thomas as writer and theatrical director, and now with a

toonboom news

SEPTEMBER

Image courtesy of NoEvil Productions

Changing the world one pixel at a time

Image courtesy of Cynthia Goode

Animation lover Cynthia Goode has been in animation since 1966. She first worked for Hanna-Barbera and was trained by Evelyn Sherwood, a Scene Planner at Disney for many years who utilized the multi-plane camera. During her thirteen years at Hanna-Barbera, Cynthia worked her way up to Lead Scene Planner and the Head of Animation Checking. Having reached this point, she started her own company with Bob Story called the Story Company located in Hollywood where she was the Production Manager, Scene Planner and Casting Agent. After four years, she decided to join Bill Melendez Productions in Hollywood where they produce all the Peanuts specials, features and many commercials. She worked there for ten years and after adopting a daughter, freelanced from home. In 1993, Cynthia joined Walt Disney Feature Animation in the Scene Planning department and worked on The Lion King and all subsequent features until the doors closed to 2D in 2003. Today, Cynthia works out of her home studio called Pencil2Post and at several other studios in the Los Angeles

area. “I love animation and although I am not an animation artist, I love helping directors, animators and art directors realize their dreams in a creative way. I like to choose the most elegant yet cost-efficient approach to any scene that comes across my desk,” she said. When animating, Cynthia usually takes the scanned pages of a storyboard into Toon Boom Studio after she has converted the images to comply with the vector program requirements. “I love that you can do titles right inside Toon Boom Studio so I do not have to import anything from Photoshop or another program. I build the board right inside Toon Boom Studio and give each panel 24 frames. If I am doing a half hour show, then I use Toon Boom Solo which holds more memory. Then I deliver a QuickTime movie to the editor and he adds the track and timing, unless I am given the timing in advance by the Director. I can use fewer frames but sometimes a scene will get skipped in the editing program. Also, I use Studio for the web short.“ “The vectorization options in Studio are fine for any welldrawn line and convert well. I use an older Epson Expression scanner and have an extra one just for back up. The web shorts that you would most likely see are on the Bill Melendez Production website: www.billmelendez.tv” Currently, I am working on three commercials simultaneously using Solo. After the storyboard is approved, I scan the pose test, then the color models. At this point I scan the pencil test in a lower resolution to keep my files smaller to ship to the client. After the pencil test is approved, I move on to the actual animated scene. I scan the drawing in high resolution directly into the Solo exposure sheet, after I have checked the scene thoroughly for errors or missing art and lines not closed off. I scan the Background separately and color-correct it in Photoshop. Then I import it into Solo. I can easily adjust timing and color very quickly as changes are inevitable in this business. I then save the frames and a QuickTime movie to post to the client or to put on DigiBeta”.

toonboom news

SEPTEMBER

Image courtesy of NoEvil Productions

has found a way to really work together. Perhaps their most ambitious single project to date is called Subpoena Power and is as much a political satire, and (gasp!) civics lesson as it is a fully realized action game. They hope that people find it thought-provoking, but entertaining because ultimately NoEvil Productions is about good fun done well. When Kat isn’t changing the world one pixel at a time, she spends time with Tom and her cats, BB, Bill and Rosie in New York City. When Kat isn’t telling him what to do, Tom spends time pondering the Fibonacci sequence and claiming he is sleeping.

Harmony pipeline, so she can really network efficiently and keep things flowing. Her people can work together, side by side in real time, though they are separated by thousands of miles. One project that exemplifies the NoEvil team at work with their Toon Boom pipeline is Tic & Tac, a pair of characters who debuted in e-cards, and are making plans to move on to other venues. Beginning as a simple character drawing in Spain, then bounced around in discussion, written into scripts by Tom and with voice characterizations invented by actors in New York, Tic & Tac then went to England for sound editing and musical score, and back to Spain for full animation. Tic & Tac then went back and forth a few more times for refinement. The artists just loved these characters and were able to easily share their contributions using the Toon Boom tools. Whatever the fate of Tic & Tac and their soon-to-be-introduced pet Toad, the Dreamteam

studio case study

Image courtesy of the Bristol School of Animation

the degree provision, the school offers a range of vocationally-orientated courses specifically designed to prepare students to enter different aspects of the Animation Industry. As the only independent training unit of its kind in the U.K., the Bristol School of Animation provides a unique opportunity for European animators to experience first hand the methodologies and professional practices of the U.K. animation industry. The school is currently involved in a LEONARDO funded research project looking into the potential of animation as a tool for teaching science, history and language skills together with other main curricular components to school pupils. Working with partners from Denmark, Spain, Portugal and Estonia, the project has involved trai The Bristol School of Animation is a professional training unit affilia- ning teacher trainers and student teachers ted to the Bristol School of Art, Media and Design at the University of the in all the partner countries. They learn to use West of England, Bristol. The school has a national and international animation and are supported in the delivreputation for the provision of high quality teaching and training in all ery of standard curricular subjects through aspects of animation direction and production, set design, sound design, the use of short animated sequences and interactive multimedia and CG animation. The range of courses available films. The project has engaged teachers with has been designed and developed over the past ten years to meet the the use of a number of different animation needs of an ever widening constituency from around the world wishing techniques and software packages including Toon Boom Studio. All student teachers to study aspects of media production and animation in the U.K. were introduced to a number of animation BAFTA Award-winning, Bristol-based Aardman Animation techniques including cut-out, drawn animation, 3D animaLtd. recently signed a unique agreement with the Bristol tion techniques and the possibilities afforded by the mixing School of Animation to create unparalleled opportunities for of live-action pixillated sequences with more traditional student animators and practicing professionals in Bristol. methods. Student teachers appreciated the flexibility Based on years of informal collaboration, this infrastructural afforded by Toon Boom Studio when working with cut-out agreement has been put in place to formally recognize the sequences. Having gone through a basic workshop with a potential benefits of a fully articulated relationship between number of teachers in each of the partner institutions, facileducation, training and the demands of commercial enter- itated by representatives from the Danish Animation Workprise. The agreement recognizes the strength and depth of shop, it was left to those teachers to select the appropriate Bristol as a center for the development of the media and methods and software packages for their particular project cultural industries in which the regional animation industry and student group. At the Bristol School of Animation, they have developed plays a leading role. The undergraduate courses offered by Bristol cover all portable animation “suitcases” which can literally be carried aspects of animation and media production. Students study from one school or classroom to another. Toon Boom for three years full-time in order to gain a Bachelor of Arts Studio plays a critical part in that initiative. This has cut costs degree in one of the following: BA (Hons) Animation; BA to the trainers and means that in the future, animation as a pedagogical tool could become a regular and integrated (Hons) Graphic Design with Animation; BA (Hons) Illustration with Animation; BA (Hons) Media Production with Anima- feature in contemporary classrooms throughout Europe. Additionally, in Bristol, they are very aware that the lantion; BA (Hons) Media Production. The school offers a broad range of joint opportunities to meet the needs of students guage of animation and interactive media is increasingly of varying ambitions and skills and to cater to students from that of the very young. They offer courses for learners from different cultural backgrounds. Last year, over 200 students eight years onwards in the hope that they can encourage from 21 different countries came to study at the Bristol gifted young people to realize some of their potential and explore their ideas outside the U.K. national curriculum. School of Animation. At postgraduate level, students may opt to study in any Adding Toon Boom Studio to Bristol School of Animation’s of the following Media related disciplines: Animation, Inte- toolset has proved to be a great asset to initiate and train ractive Media, Screenwriting and Video Arts. In parallel with animation lovers of all ages.

A broad range of opportunities

toonboom news

SEPTEMBER

Image courtesy of The School of Film and Television at Loyola Marymount University

The mission for the School of Film and Television at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) is to serve as a beacon of light for master visual storytelling grounded in humanism, innovation and diversity. The Animation Program represents a broadband approach to animation education within a liberal arts framework. There is coursework in both traditional and digital animation, plus studies in experimental, interactive storytelling, and alternative forms of the medium in small classroom settings. Each student sets his/her own direction. Therefore, films range from conceptual to cartoon, from object animation to computer. In four years at LMU, animation majors move from a traditionally-based foundation in animation production techniques during the first year to digital film-making and computer animation during the second year. The third year is devoted to the study of multimedia and alternative forms of animation. During the senior year, students produce a thesis film/project. “We decided to buy Solo after a knockout demo that Toon Boom representatives offered us earlier this year. It was very obvious that Solo is a unique piece of software and offered great possibilities for our educational needs,” related Jose Garcia-Moreno, Animation Coordinator at the School of Film and TV, Loyola Marymount University. ___________________________________________________________________________

By the time this newsletter ships, Huntington University

will be fully immersed into the second year of their Digital Media Arts curriculum. They introduced the program in the Fall of 2005 and have received an overwhelmingly positive response. As one of the first Christian Universities to offer a Digital Media Arts program, they shouldn’t be too surprised. Their program begins by engaging students with traditional animation media in a wide variety of forms. From there, they move into the digital world of both 2D and 3D animation. Since creative exploration is the heart of their program it was important to find a 2D software that encouraged the same spontaneity that students experienced working with traditional media. “Briefly put, it was the creative openness of the Toon Boom Harmony environment coupled with a wide variety of production tools that has allowed us to integrate it so seamlessly into our current curriculum,” shared Stephan Leeper, Digital Media Arts Instructor at Huntington University.

Image courtesy of The Arts Institute at Bournemouth

schools on board

The Arts Institute at Bournemouth, a specialist arts, design and media university has adopted Toon Boom Harmony for use on its BA (Hons) Animation Production degree. The degree requires a high level of practical skill, technical proficiency and a wealth of theoretical knowledge and understanding. It looks at animation production in a broad and holistic way, providing a thoroughly intensive team based experience, offering the closest experience possible to that of the professional animator in industry. Toon Boom Harmony will help to maintain the high quality of graduation films at the Institute as the expectations and ambitions of the students grows. Professor Peter Parr, Course Leader on the BA (Hons) Animation Production degree commented “Harmony has stepped into the animation frame at the Institute enabling an enthusiastic collaboration for the next levels of animation excellence.” The highly regarded course at the Institute has achieved Skillset Accreditation, and is also part of the Bournemouth Screen Academy, a recognized ‘Centre of Excellence’ in film education and training. ___________________________________________________________________________

Cathy Landergan, a teacher at Marblehead High School and an oil painter at heart, bought a copy of Toon Boom Studio recently and had two students try the tutorial. It was a huge success! She decided to offer a one semester cartooning and animation class this September, furnishing her classroom with Toon Boom Studio courtesy of a grant from the Friends of Marblehead Public Schools. Amongst other subjects, the Visual Arts department offers technical drawing and pre-engineering. Intro to Technical Drawing is a pre-requisite to all other classes and covers visual geometry and simple orthographic projection. Students can then pick different classes including Architecture, Pre-engineering and Model boat building, and Advanced Mechanical Drawing. Her personal interest is the connection between art and technology. She finds that technical drawing is a perfect platform from which to make cross curriculum connections between the arts and many other subjects including math and science. ”While I integrate art into all my classes as a way to make the subject less dry and to connect to the visual learners, I wanted to have a class that was more art and thought about animation and cartooning in particular as a natural way to connect to English language arts and to teach to existing knowledge. I think that students will find Toon Boom exciting and I’m sure that the animation and cartooning class will become a hit,” Cathy ventured.

toonboom news

SEPTEMBER

SPONSORSHIP Toon Boom Athlete Strikes at Canadian Championships As mentioned in the June 2006 issue of the Toon Boom News, Toon Boom Animation has decided to sponsor 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. The team of Mark Heese and Rich VanHuizen brilliantly won the Canadian Championships late August. To complete this outstanding achievement, Volleyball Canada hosted a ceremony to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the Olympic Bronze Medal Mark Heese and his former partner John Child won in 1996. Capturing the Canadian title for the ninth time, Mark Heese is a true accomplished athlete. Considered Canada’s best, Heese/VanHuizen have now met the initial criteria for government funding that will help them pursue the intensive training that is needed to compete with the best in the world. “We had a challenging World Tour until now. So to come back home and win so many games in a row at the Canadian Championships, it can’t help but make you feel like you're doing some things right, and it gets you into a groove of winning, which hopefully we can continue when we get back on the tour in the fall”, shared Mark. Indeed, the team had to face their first major obstacle quite early in the 2006 season. Just days before the first event in China, Mark pulled his hamstring in practice. He was forced to sit out a whole month, missing out on valuable playing opportunities, and important ranking points. They finally returned to competition in early June and posted a 13th place at the Portugal Open. This was a promising finish considering the lack of preparation in the month leading up to the event. Despite another 13th place result at the tournament in Montreal, which was highlighted by a crowd of Toon Boom employees cheering them on, they were unable to play well enough to meet their expectations during the next events in Europe. They did, however, crack the top ten at a recent stop in Poland. A solid 9th place finish brought their World Ranking into the top 25! And in light of their recent victories, it appears they are on track to further improve that ranking during the last two events of the season in Brazil and Mexico. Toon Boom wishes them luck as they continue to work towards qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Check out Mark Heese’s page at www.toonboom.com/markheese.