toon boom news october 2007

The animation community platform

toonboom.comOCTOBER 2007

2 Toon Boom News october 2007

In addition to promoting environmentally friendly practices, Toon Boom is continually committed to developing easier-to-use products for professionals and novices alike. The release of Storyboard Pro, Digital Pro and Studio 4 provides users with more intuitive and convenient work spaces, as well as extensive documentation and training materials related to these powerful applications.

Ease of use for creative minds.

Toon Boom Corporate Headquarters+001 514 278 8666 7 Laurier Avenue East Montreal (Quebec) Canada H2T 1E4

Toon Boom France+33 (0) 1 40 18 77 9039 A rue de la grange aux belles75010 Paris, France

Toon Boom United Kingdom+44 (0) 20 7193 9114Town Hall Chambers35 Market Place, St Albans, Herts, AL3 5DL

This issue’s cover courtesy of Toot & Puddle Productions (Cycle I)

Printed in Canada

Celebrating Already established as a sponsor for animation events and festivals worldwide, Toon Boom launched its first Toon Boom Animation Festival in April 2007 and dedicated it to Singapore’s students. The contest is now over and we congratulate Boo James, Lim Ji Wei and Chin Shuenn Hua for receiving the highest number of votes with their animat-ed short, Ville d’Harmonie. The winning team will come to Canada for a one-month internship in leading Canadian animation studios. The International Animation Contest is underway and organized jointly with the International Animated Film Association (ASIFA). Between October 8th and 21st, 2007, the top ten selected entries will be posted on Toon Boom’s website for public voting. Winners will be announced on October 28th, 2007, on the International Animation Celebration Day. Be sure to participate!

On the RoadDuring the fall, Toon Boom’s presence at tradeshows will co ver Canada, Mexico and France with the Ottawa Anima-tion Festival September 19th to 23rd, Creanimax, booth 29, October 4th to 7th in Guadalajara, and MIPCOM, booth C1.05, October 8th to 12th in Cannes. We certainly hope to see you there!

Training for the global communityAs mentioned in previous issues, Toon Boom’s work in the Caribbean and Africa is going at full speed. Training sessions are scheduled in Kenya and Trinidad in October, studios are opening up in Ghana, and a Toon Boom office will be opened in South Africa. Toon Boom also has a speak-ing opportunity at the upcoming Animae Caribe, October 25th to 27th, and will offer a full day workshop on Digital Pro. The Toon Boom team feels privileged to be a catalyst in these emerging markets which have so much to offer to the global animation community.

Our Educational SideFollowing the announcement of its part-nership with FableVision, Toon Boom is gearing towards developing animation products perfectly suited for children and schools. Main-taining the educational component as a prime objective, these new products will also provide a fun and entertain-ing experience for the users. Additional consumer prod-ucts are also in development and will cater to the comic book, wireless and gaming markets. Visit Toon Boom’s website regularly for the latest announcements!

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3Toon Boom News october 2007

TOON BOOM STARThis section is dedicated to Toon Boom employees. In each issue, we will introduce you to the people behind the tech-nology and put a face to the voice you may have spoken to.Manh-Hung Doan joined Toon Boom in October 2006 as Senior Director of Research and Development (R&D), Strategic Products. He leads a R&D team for the develop-ment of the Toon Boom Studio and new strategic consum-er products. In order to achieve the new product delivery objectives, including the upcoming release of Studio 4, a number of internal projects are being carried out by his team. One of these projects is the restructuring of the Studio code to make it modular and ultimately be able to deliver faster software upgrades and derive easier-to-use products for consumers of all ages. In addition to that, a number of basic software engineering activities, such as design, design documentation, unit and integra-tion tests, are being incorporated into the development process in order to improve the quality and delivery of the final products.

Before joining Toon Boom, Manh-Hung spent over 20 years with Eicon Networks, now Dialogic Corporation and Phillips Information Systems. As Systems/Software Architect and team leader, he was involved in and led the advanced development projects as well as the develop-ment of commercial products in the areas of telecom-munication and office automation. Manh-Hung is a Ph.D. graduate of Chemical Engineering from McGill University. Manh-Hung and his wife Thi-Huong, a college professor, have three grown children and a granddaughter. They spend their free time socializing with friends and relatives and doting on their family.

DISTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT

Dison Computer Graphics & Image Co. and Toon Boom have been partners since 1995 and have shared wonderful experiences developing the animation indus-try in China. In the early days, Dison worked extensively in the field to help the paper-intensive ink and paint studios to adopt Toon Boom’s digital tools. Since then, Dison has contributed to the success of many local players and the Chinese animation industry has grown tremendously.

In the early 90s, 80 minutes of animation were produced yearly. In 2006, this number has gone up to 80,000 minutes! Dison is now pushing the digital enve-lope even further by promoting a complete paperless production pipeline, based on Toon Boom Harmony. Dison was founded by Mr. Johnchill Lee, who is now Chairman of the board. Daily operations are handled by Ms. Joan Ding, Managing Director and her capable team, out of their Beijing and Shanghai offices. Mr. Lee has built an excellent reputation in the industry and is also involved in education and in professional organiza-tions. Mr. Lee is the Executive Director and Executive Secretary General of the China Animation Association, as well as the Secretary General of ASIFA China. He is also Dean of the School of software of the Beijing Institute of Technology. The animation education market is also booming in China, with over 700 schools offering anima-tion curriculum. Mr. Lee aims at ensuring that academic programmes meet commercial requirements, focusing on animation, gaming, virtual reality and Web 2.0 devel-opment. Considering the high volume requests for local content by local broadcasters, the future bodes well for animation in China. Congratulations to Mr. Lee and his team on their great success!

Manh-Hung Doan joined Toon Boom in October 2006 as Senior Director of R&D, Strategic Products.

Johnchill Lee with Joan Vogelesang, President and CEO at Toon Boom’s

Montreal headquarters


whAT’S NEw

Launched at SIGGRAPH 2007, Toon Boom Digital Pro is the only complete paperless animation software. Designed for professionals and freelancers alike, Digital Pro offers high productivity with low operating costs. Based on its Emmy award-winning technology, Digital Pro combines superior vector technology for content creation, real-time animation and compositing stages, all set in a multi-plane 3D space environment.

Productivity tools such as palette management, lip-sync, morphing and inverse kinematics enable users to unleash their creativity. Digital Pro is the tool of choice for animation projects ranging from the simplest to the most detailed, from digital to complete cut-out styles.

High Productivity with Low Operating CostsDigital Pro significantly reduces the operational costs with its integrated pipeline, leading-edge toolset and paperless pro-duction. These savings can be realized whether the produc-tion is an independent short or a feature length film project. Toon Boom Animation support personnel delivers custom-ized kick-start programmes, professional consulting services and timely support in several languages. The support team are experts in all animation styles and production workflows.

Kick-start ProgrammesDigital Pro is delivered with extensive documentation covering the complete workflow for cut-out and paperless animation production and provides recommendations based on the pro duction and studio size. Digital Pro also comes with more than four hours of video training and ready-to-use templates for a smooth learning experience. Dedicated support programs combined with a practical user forum are additional resources for timely assistance, all handled by the Toon Boom animation experts.

Toon Boom Digital Pro offers:

1. Superior Animation Tools with a rigging tool made for robust framework, morphing for automatic in-betweens, inverse kinematics for natural looking animation, automated lip-sync, a virtual light table and a rotary animation disk.

2. Asset Library to store animated cycles, sounds, effects, characters, backgrounds, props, templates for reuse and to maximize the drawing substitution tool to easily swap elements and create new poses and expressions.

3. Advanced Palette Management to create colour models with independent palettes, easily change colours of any element at any time during production, all in real-time.

4. True 3D Space to place elements at different depths and automatically preserve their perspective using the real-time multi-plane camera and easily add a depth of field effect for an even more realistic render.

5. Sparkling Effects and Compositing to apply any combi-nation of effects on elements instantly anytime during the production using the effect network, selecting from over 50 special effects and seeing changes implemented in real-time with interconnected windows.

6. Unparalleled Image Quality, relying on a state-of-the-art real-time vector engine and offering full resolution indepen-dence for outputs to every media, from web and handheld devices to film and HD.

7. Artistic Style Unleashed to develop any project from cut-out animation to frame-by-frame without having to compro-mise quality or style, and to mix cut-out characters with traditional vector animation over bitmaps of 3D rendered objects.

8. Integrated workflow, covering all the production steps from storyboarding to final rendering, working freely in a non-linear workflow.

Watch the Take a Tour video online at www.toonboom.com/products/digitalpro/

Animation pure and simple

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Animating 4ward Toon Boom Studio 4 is now released, bringing users to a new level of creativity. Developed by animators for animators, Studio 4 offers intuitive and easy-to-use drawing tools. Studio 4 also offers a wide range of innovative features to make you feel at ease when creating content.

what’s new 4 you? n Redesigned user interface for a seamless workflow and a smoother experience.

n Unparalleled flexibility to easily customize your most convenient workspaces.

n Extended animation styles to import, vectorize and animate photographs.

n Increased selection of brushes to create more impressive line styles (i.e. calligraphic painting).

n Enhanced design quality includes blurs and glows applied on drawings with the new Feather Edges feature.

n Improved motion to set more realistic moves with the new peg’s orient to path feature.

Over 30 New Features and ImprovementsNew features and improvements also include support of Adobe Illustrator layers, the Vectorize Preview window, improved drawing tools, Alpha Onion Skinning and support of Tablet PC OS (for Windows XP and Vista).

With the same dedication it has for delivering leading-edge technology to create animated content for chil-dren, Toon Boom committed itself to supporting Action Against Hunger, an outstanding initiative which tends to children’s well-being and basic necessities. For more than 25 years, Action Against Hunger has pursued its vision of a world without hunger, saving lives of malnour-ished children and their families while seeking long-term sustainable solutions to hunger. Action Against Hunger responds to emergencies caused by war, conflict, and natural disasters. Recent humanitarian assistance has aided the worn-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as countries affected by the South East Asian Tsunami, the earthquake in Pakistan, and devastating hurricanes in Haiti. Action Against Hunger is an inter-national, non-governmental, non-religious, non-profit organization that was created in Paris in 1979. Since

then, the organization has developed within the frame-work of an interdependent international network, with headquarters in Paris, Madrid, London and New York. The network is proud to have opened its Canadian head-quarters in 2005, based in Montreal, further strengthen-ing their efforts to fight global hunger.

Toon Boom Supports Action Against Hunger SPONSORSHIP

Watch the Take a Tour video online at www.toonboom.com/products/toonBoomStudio


CASE STuDy

Animex is a Mexican animation studio dedicated to produ-cing original content for television, feature films and video, for local channels and for export. Animex’ objective is to position México as a reliable and solid player internation-ally for animated content creation and production.

The highly creative team at Animex includes the following talents: Ricardo Arnaiz, Director and Producer at Animex, who has been creating characters and stories for more than 20 years. He founded Animex in 2000 to produce original series and feature films. He has created more than 15 original projects and he is developing two new movies. Jean Pierre Leleu, Producer, has spent his life in the film industry, working at United Artists, Warner Bros. and Televisa. Paul Rodoreda, Executive Producer, is in charge of all the production design, financial aspects, budget, assets, etc. He also developed all the computer systems and networks for the studio. Soco Aguilar, Co-Producer, has been a documentary freelance producer for PBS, Discovery Channel and Partridge Films. She has collabo-rated with groundbreaking Chicana filmmaker Lourdes Portillo and more recently with director Mark Becker on a film sponsored by the Sundance Institute. Nine-time Emmy Award winner Phil Roman, Creative Advisor, has been involved with the animation world since 1959. He has produced great series like The Simpsons, Garfield, and Bobby’s World, to name a few. He was also the director of Tom & Jerry: The Movie, and series and TV specials about Garfield, Charlie Brown among others. He is considered an institution in the animation industry. The rest of the team includes Eduardo Jimenez, On-Line Producer, Gabriel Villar, Audio Director/Music Composer, Oscar Aragon, Storyboard/ Keyframes, Pablo Guessi, Audio Designer, Salvador Dominguez, Character Design, as well as Omar Mustre and Toño Garci who are both writers.

Scheduled for a feature release on October 31, 2007, their current project is titled La Leyenda de la Nahuala.

This feature 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 young fearful boy. On the night of November 2nd, Day of the Dead, Leo’s brother is kidnapped by La Nahuala, an ancient and malevolent spirit. Overcoming all his fears, Leo embarks on a great adventure filled with strange creatures to save his brother and bring him back home.

Working with a team of 40 animators in Puebla, Leon and Mexico City, the studio has now become the largest Harmo-ny installation in Latin America. Of particular interest in 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.

Everything starts with the scene planning. Ricardo Arnaiz draws sketches and roughs of what he wants in a particu-lar scene, then sends these sketches to Oscar Aragon and his team in Puebla who take care of the layout and traces for the in-betweening of the final animation. At the same time, they are creating all the stages according to the char-acters’ position. Once this is done, the scene returns to Mexico City where they put together all the layouts and key frames on a video editor with the final voice track. At this point, they output small video files with the scene plan-ning, key frames, voices and time code that the animators use as a reference for the animation. With all this comes a control spreadsheet that enables Ricardo Arnaiz to review the project’s progress every two days. Once the animation is approved, it goes to inking and painting. Colourists use a colour palette already defined and approved for each character and then to compositing and staging. They start placing all the elements: backgrounds, over layers, special effects, camera movements, etc. Lastly, the final scenes that have been approved go to audio, where Gabriel Villar adds and edits the music and Pablo Guessi dresses the scene with Foley and incidental sounds.

Images courtesy of Animex

Mexican Culture Animated in Harmony


“Since we are running a paperless production, we have eliminated all pencil tests, clean up and scanning. That bring us a time-saving feature since each animator can review their animations on the run, we don’t have to wait for the scanning for each pencil test,” stated Paul Rodoreda.

When asked about how Harmony is used in the studio environment, Paul openly shared: “For our roughs, we use brush tools, and for clean animation, we use pencils, just because of the look we want to keep. As far as ink and paint is concerned, most of our animation is in plain color, but

we’ve used “paint texture” for some elements. Tools like “apply to all drawings” have become very handy to speed up painting and “paint unpainted” and “repaint brush” have proved to be very fast inking our characters. The fact of having one single colour palette for each character has been pretty useful. Before Harmony, we didn’t have that tool so, when we needed to change one colour of an element we had to repaint every single frame of the animation. Now, we simply change the colour values on our palette and that changes all frames of all scenes at once.

On staging and compositing, the features we use most are tones, highlights and shadows because they allow us to have a realistic finish on our characters with lights and shadows projected on them, all done in a very fast way. Also the multi-plane camera and “free view” have been very useful: we can create our camera and character moves

very fast and easily. Combining camera moves with math-ematical functions have allowed us to create special moves and complicated scenes in a few steps. Finally, lip-sync is another tool used on a daily basis. We have to mention that even in Spanish, it works great.

Toon Boom Harmony has proven to be a great tool for creating, animating and compositing our movie. We would have also used Storyboard Pro but our storyboard was already done when it was released. However, we expect to work with it in our next project. Toon Boom

Harmony has given us the possibility to produce TV series and feature films at low cost and highest quality. We are preparing our next movie about a girl whose befriends an elf and enter a magic world, based on a story developed by Ricardo Arnaiz. The team will be mostly the same for all the production.

Also in the planning table is a spin-off from a sequence of La Leyenda de la Nahuala, about two characters who live extraordinary adventures in an old library of an old house. These characters are a crazy old Spanish ghost, Don Andres and the Alebrije, a mythological creature from Mexican folklore. Also on the works is a third season of an Animex original series Roncho the Bad Luck Dog”. With such a full slate of unique projects coming up, Animex is certainly true to its corporate and creative mission which Toon Boom is proud to be part of.

The highly creative team at Animex includes (from left to right): Phil Roman - Creative Advisor, Jean Pierre Leleu - Producer, Gabriel Villar - Audio Director/Music Composer, Paul Rodoreda - Executive Producer, Pablo Guessi - Audio Designer, Oscar Aragon - Storyboard/ Keyframes, Ricardo Arnaiz - Director/Producer, Toño Garci - Writer, Soco Aguilar - Co-Producer, Eduardo Jimenez - On-Line Producer.


Having delivered hundreds of hours of animation and family entertainment to television and theatres worldwide, Mercury Filmworks offers full script to post services from concept and creative development to design and production. Specializing in animation, puppets, and hybrid techniques, Mercury is one of Canada’s premier family entertainment companies with facilities in Vancouver, British Columbia and Ottawa, Ontario.

Constant quality, utmost reliability and proven efficiency make Mercury the partner of choice whether providing production services or co-producing a project. Mercury’s track record testifies to its reputation. Since 1998 Mercu-ry’s client list has grown to include some of the finest companies in the world, recognized in the industry for their commitment to quality television and feature enter-tainment. Among many others, Mercury is proud to be associated with: BBC, Breakthrough Films & Television, Cartoon Network, Cartoon Network Studios, CBC, Clas-sic Media, Cookie Jar Entertainment, Corus Kids/Nelva-na/YTV, Disco very Networks, Disney Television & Feature Animation, DreamWorks Animation, MTV Networks/Nickelodeon, National Geographic, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Television & Feature Animation.

Mercury has been using Toon Boom’s products since the USAnimation days and has kept up with the technol-ogy to this day. Considered as a Toon Boom Harmony exemplary set-up, Mercury has mastered this powerful solution to fully maximise its benefits and reach new heights efficiency-wise and quality-wise.

Their last recent projects are worth highlighting due to their uniqueness and importance. The first one is Gerald McBoing Boing, one of Cookie Jar Entertainment’s high-profile properties. This property has a very long history and Cookie Jar trusted Mercury to animate it remaining true to its original stylized design. The team recently completed the delivery of this 52 half-hour series. A second project is titled Weird Years. Jason Hopley and Jamie Shannon known as the Grogs, created this property and along with Jack Lenz, they were looking for a studio that could do justice to their vision. As Weird Years has a distinct look, the goal was to preserve the rough feel of the lines and create a design that has never been done in digital animation before. Mercury co-produced this series with Lenz Entertainment and has again met, if not surpassed, expectations.

Their next project will certainly draw a lot of attention. Based on the stunning and whimsical series of illustrated books by celebrated author and artist Holly Hobbie, Toot & Puddle will now become a 26 half-hour animated television series. Mercury acquired the television rights to the books from National Geographic Kids in order to develop and

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Tooting high in the sky with Harmony

From left to right: Clint Eland, Gerry Popowich, David Merritt, Bryan Popowich and Christian Larocque

Images courtesy of Toot & Puddle Productions (Cycle I)


produce the series. Toot & Puddle will air on Treehouse, Canada’s only dedicated preschool network, as well as Nick-elodeon US’s NogginNetwork, Nickelodeon UK, Nickel-odeon Germany, Nickelodeon Australia, TV2 Norway, ABC Australia and there are hopes to soon announce a presale in France. The series will be produced in High Definition and available in all standard world formats. Each episode will air in Canada as a 22 minute episode comprised as two 11 minute stories. Internationally, the episodes will be avail-able in both the 22 minute and 11 minute formats National Geographic TV International in London is the designated sales agency and will surely garner a lot of interest from broadcasters worldwide.

Targeted for a pre-school audience, Toot &Puddle will charm even the older kids and parents. The show follows the adventures of two fun-loving, inquisitive, but very different best friends. Toot is a young pig on-the-go—a globe-traveling adventurer. He loves to explore and is constantly on the lookout for a new chal-lenge. Puddle is the backyard explorer of the pair. Although he enjoys traveling, he is more interested in finding fun clos-er to home and paying meticulous atten-tion to all of life’s little details.

First and foremost, Toot & Puddle is about friendship and all of the happi-ness and knowledge a lasting bond can bring. The fun and adventurous show is designed to encourage exploration and adventure both at home and afar by piquing kids’ natural curiosity about the world around them.

The team assigned to this high-quality project includes Clint Eland, Executive Producer, Marianne Culbert, Super-vising Producer, Jerry Popowich, Creative Producer, Bryan Popowich, Associate Producer, Stu Krieger, Story Editor, Tara Sorensen, VP, Development for National Geographic Kids, Donna Friedman Meir, President National Geograph-ic Kids Entertainment, Delia Leandres, Treehouse Produc-tion Executive and Bonita Siegel, Treehouse, Director of Original Production, to name a few.

Pre-production started in September as the team worked mainly on the design stage. Scripts will be finished by the end of January 2008. ”Harmony has been an essen-tial tool in creating our latest project, Toot & Puddle. It’s the closest we’ve come to creating a traditional, hand-drawn show, while increasing productivity,” shared Jerry Popowich, Executive Vice President of the Ottawa Studio. There are three main characters and five secondary ones. Specific poses will be developed by the Lead Animators and multiple backgrounds will be created to set the char-acters in breath taking settings.

On Toot & Puddle, the team will be producing 26 episodes 22 minutes of animation over a 60 week produc-

tion schedule, 30 of those weeks in animation alone. The Toot & Puddle production team consists of 92 people operating on two shifts between 7:00 a.m. and 12:00 a.m. The Toot & Puddle production team includes one Direc-tor, one Assistant Director, two Animation Directors, one Art Director, one Technical Director, four Animation Leads, 36 Animators, six Key Animators, four Compositors, four Technical Setup Artists, three Designers, two FX Design-ers, eight Layout Artists, eight Storyboard Artists, two Key Colour Background Artists, four Background Painters, 2 System Administrators, one Production Coordinator, and one Production Assistant.

To meet deadlines, Mercury takes advantage of Harmony’s integrated workflow, powerful scene planning, sophisticated effects, compositing tools and seamless 2D and 3D integration. Here’s an outline of how Mercury has achieved Harmony in its studio:

PRE-PRODuCTiOn This stage provides definition to the animator’s vision.n The script determines the final design and number of characters, backgrounds and props.n The storyboard is an essential reference for produc-tion. It contains a graphic representation of what will be animated. Several drawings can be used to illustrate what is going on in a shot.n Corresponding dialogue and additional information are written under these drawings as a guide.n The dialogue of each character is recorded and mixed to obtain the voice recording.n Music that needs to be in sync with the animation should be recorded at the same time.n Using the storyboard and the voice recording, an animatic on which final animation will be based can be created. The animatic, essentially a draft version of the animation, provides a sense of the scene planning and timing of the animation.


PRODuCTiOn Artwork n Rough character and prop designs are traced off and cleaned up as vector lines on a Wacom Cintiq tablet in Harmony by the Key Animator.n The clean-up process also includes breaking the charac-ter down into separate parts or elements i.e. head, eyes, pupils, torso, arms, hands, etc.n The Key Animators analyze the storyboards to create all variations of parts needed to fully animate the character or props i.e. speaking mouths, various hands, eye posi-tions, parts to accommodate different angles.n Once all the parts are drawn, the artists use an approved colour reference guide to add final colour to all the char-acter’s separate parts.n The key animator is also responsible for the final charac-ter construction.n Construction includes assembling all the raw vector artwork onto motion tracking “pegs” and putting them into cohesive limbs that all rotate and distort (stretch and squash) properly. The character is then ready to be placed in an animatable scene.

Setup n A project folder for each episode is created in the Harmony database. Each project contains a number of scene folders which match the scene count in the story-board and leica reel.n An approved leica reel is broken down into separate Quick-time movies for each scene, and imported in Harmony.n The Quicktime gets separated onto two tracks: audio and image.n The imported leica and storyboard are used as refer-ence to set the stage for each scene.n All appropriate background elements and props are imported to the scene and arranged to match the estab-lished board panels.n Characters are then imported from a network based library, placed and scaled to fit into the scene.

Animation n An animator is assigned a scene and opens it from the database using Harmony.n He/she uses the leica’s broken-down audio and images as reference. The animator manipulates the characters much

like a virtual stop-motion puppet to create all the key poses needed for the scene.n The key poses are approved or sent back for revision by a senior animator. Once the key poses are approved, the rest of the animation is completed.n All camera moves and pans are able to be created at this stage.n Any additional FX needed for a scene is created by an effects animator. The approved scene is opened and the FX are animated in a traditional style using a Wacom Cintiq tablet to draw directly into the digital environment.n The completed scene is submitted for approval from the animation director and supervisors. Any final revisions are addressed by the animator or directly by the supervi-sors and the scene is sent to compositing.n Ramp up time for the animators to hit quota (35-50 sec/wk) is 4 to 6 weeks.

Compositing n Integrate animation, backgrounds and traditional effects.n Adding digital effects to 2D elements (lighting, shad-ing, blurs, etc.).n Adding digital lens effects (depth of field).n Adding 3D elements (toon-shaded props/characters, CG sets, particle effects).n Doing all final camera work (pans, trucks, multi-plane, etc.).n Last pass check for continuity (animation and backgrounds).n Overall show quality control.n Render scenes for edit.

Offline Editingn Loading rendered sequences.n Conforming rendered output to leica.n Finalize pacing of show.n Adding digital transitions (cross dissolves, wipes).

Mercury has always adopted the latest Toon Boom tech-nologies to rely on the most advanced animation techniques and tools. “With Harmony, we have furthered our level of efficiency within our pipeline and simultaneously, increased our standards of producing quality animation,” openly shared Bryan Popowich. Mercury might be known as the smallest planet in the solar system but in our animation universe, it certainly shines high in the sky as a strong industry leader that we can look up to.

CASE STuDy (COnTinuED)

Images courtesy of Toot & Puddle Productions (Cycle I)


COnSuMER nEwS

Julian Kok Joon Wen is 23 years old and was born in Ipoh, a little town in Malaysia. His passion for anima-tion started in his early childhood and has never left him. After graduating from The One Academy of Communication Design, he worked for INSPIDEA Animation as an animator and layout artist doing animated series on a six-month contract. This is where he started to use Toon Boom Studio to animate instead of his previous method of cel animation. After that, Julian went abroad to obtain his degree in Animation at the University of Wolverhampton where he gave birth to Mimos and The Egg which earned him a first class Honour Degree. He is now working in an animation studio called RJDM Animation in Northampton, UK as a freelance 2D animator and concept artist doing commercials. Julian loves exag-gerating the characters and playing with squash and stretch possibilities in his animations. “I want to create an animation with a traditional feel using Toon Boom Studio. This applica-tion gave me more confidence while doing animation simply because of the convenient tools it has to make my produc-tion go faster,” explained Julian.____________________________________________________________________________________

Both Ethan Long and Tom LaBaff graduated from the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida in 1991. Since then, Ethan and Tom’s careers took a very creative path that led Ethan to children’s books, illus-

trating and writing for many major publish-ers, and led Tom to animation production servicing the advertising, television, gaming and motion pictures industries. Tom has thirteen years experience and has worked on the pre-production of many shorts

and feature films, such as Walt Disney’s John Henry, Home on the Range, Brother Bear and My Peoples. In 2004, he founded the Scribbles animation studio. Scribbles partnered with the Ethan Long Studio, Inc. to create three 15-second station identities for Viacom, which are airing on Spike TV. Toon Boom Studio is the main animation tool. “The painting feature is pretty deep for a low priced software program. I like the opacity adjustments and colour sampler makes fixes and patches a cinch” shared Tom. “We could adjust cel posi-tioning globally without having to go back and mess with each one individually. I love Studio. It was a huge component in the work that we produced,” concluded Ethan.

While studying Fine Art at Wits University in Johannesburg, Dale Newton took a Power Animator Course at Silicon Studio Sub Saharan Africa. After graduating, Dale joined The Worx Digital Graphics as a CG Animator, where he cut his teeth on countless commercials, including several award winners. In 2000, Dale moved to the UK, where he headed the development department for BAFTA award-winning animation company Pepper’s Ghost Productions before joining Framestore-CFC in 2003. As Senior Animator and Animation Supervisor in Framestore-CFC’s 3D commercials department, he has su pervi sed and animated many succe-ssful commer cials over the last 3 years, includ-ing the multi-creatured Rexona / Sure commer-cials, Renault Hector and Vauxhaul C’mons. Lux Neon Girl is the latest in his work there. For this 3D project, Dale chose to use Toon Boom Studio to create the clean vector lines which could be adjusted quickly and fed into Houdini and rendered, allowing an uncompromised creative work-flow. Having seen the final result of a particular version of the animation, he could return to it with successive refine-ments. “Because Studio allowed us to continue drawing and work with clean lines in a simple animation environment we were able to retain creative control in what would have been otherwise a technically heavy project,” commented Dale.____________________________________________________________________________________

Will Reinhardt graduated from college in 1997 with a Computer Art degree, but almost immediately started doing web programming. He worked his way up to a lead techni-cal position doing database analysis for marketers, and left that in 2006 to follow his dream and become an animator. Animation has given him the chance to approach artists he has long admired from afar and ask them to let him animate their characters. They usually jump at the chance. He has had some of his work noticed online, and it’s slowly opening up other opportunities for him. Will uses Toon Boom Studio for 98% of his work. “I do more drawing than many of my peers, choosing to use Studio’s easy drawing utilities to simulate a pen on paper effect. Instead of simply putting a hinge on an arm and swinging it around, for example, Studio allows for more subtle acting to shine through by simply draw-ing the arm in its various poses. I find myself more efficient

today mostly through the diligent use of the library. Slowly build-ing a pool of assets to pick from is a key aspect of making the animation take less time,” stated Will.

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Based in downtown Toronto, House of Cool is a pre-production studio focused on content, specifically Story Development. Their business is built on transforming their clients’ most valued properties into compelling market-able products. House of Cool is culture-driven with an emphasis on a symbiotic approach between artists and clients. “We love to hear a good story and are fortunate to have careers in telling great stories”, shared Wesley Lui, Director of Operations at House of Cool. “Whether we are working on our own projects or our client’s, Toon Boom has become an essential ingredient to the success of House of Cool. It has allowed our studio to be creative-ly efficient and artistically effective by streamlining the production process, allowing our artists to be focused on what they do best: creative imagination”, he added. With an ever-growing affinity to produce captivating content, House of Cool looks forward to its journey with their clients and the Toom Boom team. “We don’t just want to help our clients make ideas; we want to make them Cool. We appreciate all of the support from the animation industry, especially all of the creative minds that have worked relentlessly at House of Cool,” concluded Wes.______________________________________________________

With drops of humor, action and scien ce fiction, Cordélicos is an entertaining mixture of Samurai Jack and Deus e o Diabo na Terra do So, an internationally acclaimed Brazilian film. Set in the northeast of Brazil,

a desert-like place where gangs wear leather hats and carry knives, the Cordélicos were a small gang facing the bandits of Cangaço. Produced by 44Toons of São Paulo, Cordélicos is a series using 2D animation techniques that ally traditional and cut-out animation concepts, all done digitally. Created entirely using Toon Boom products, the series is one of the first animation series produced in Brazil. “Thanks to the animation work optimization provided by Harmony, the production time and costs per episode were significantly reduced, making the series proj-ect possible. Harmony integrates all the production stages, from drawing to scene compositing in one interconnected workflow. This way, animators can work faster, producing

two minutes of final animation per week each,” shared Ale McHad-

do, Creative Director at 44Toons. Before this

project, the f i f t e e n -

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studio was working on simple traditional animation proj-ects, creating short films like The Killer Lasagna, voted best animated short by the Brazilian Film Academy. “Harmony enables us to reduce the level of traditional animation we do while developing more cut-out animation. That is a perfect solution for us. Not only do we save time and money throughout the production, but also, we remain true to the unique Cordel engraving art style,” concluded Ale. ____________________________________________________________________________________

December 2008 will see the world premiere of the first all-digital feature-length animated movie from the Phil-ippines. Entitled Dayo (The Wanderer), the comedy adventure film from Manila-based production outfit Cutting Edge will feature a combination of 2D and 3D animation. “The animation industry in the Philippines is rapidly growing and has yet to produce animation content geared towards the Filipino audience,” says Dayo producer and Cutting Edge CEO Jessie Lasat-en, a multi-awarded veteran in the entertainment and advertising industries in the country. “But the future looks bright with all the talent that’s coming out and an increasing interest from various sectors.” He notes that Cutting Edge shifted from traditional to full digi-

tal paperless animation after seeing vast improve-ments in the quality of the group’s outputs as well as in the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of its operations when it started using Toon Boom Digital Pro and Toon Boom Storyboard Pro on Wacom Cintiq screen tablets. Being the first all digital animation studio in Manila, the company has since widened its investment in digi-tal animation equipment and has expanded its pool of animators. Dayo tells a tale of the thrilling adventures of a boy as he attempts to rescue his beloved grandpar-ents from an underworld populated by creatures from Philippine mythology and folklore. The film is slated to open in local theaters in December and in select Asian countries in 2009.

In Argentina, Encuadre produced the irreverent animat-ed series Nada que ver, created by Sony Entertainment Television. The 25-minute twelve-episode series refers to show business and political characters in a satirical, “politi-cally incorrect” light. Opting for the cut-out animation style, Encuadre created the backgrounds and characters

in vector graphics, where Harmony’s advanced drawing capabilities helped the animators tremendously. “It automatically interpolates from one pose to another and also has a great versatility to quickly produce animations. Our animators felt freer and more creative,” stated Rosanna Manfredi, Director at Encuadre. After their in-house training, the animators were set and started working on the project. ”We value the Customer-Server environment that offers us an orderly and centralized production library, helps manage all the scenes and projects, distrib-utes information efficiently as well as schedules programmed backups easily. On the creative side, we have met our quality requirements thanks to Harmony’s flexibility and really appre-ciated not to have to use external programs. It is a very powerful tool to be recommended to big

and small productions,” concluded Rosanna. ____________________________________________________________________________________

Based in San Jose, Costa Rica, DART and Estudio Flex have adopted Toon Boom Storyboard Pro in their pre-pro-duction process. These studios produce projects ranging from web animation to documentaries, movies, shorts, TV series, TV mini-series and TV commercials. The team is quite excited about their current project with Motion Pixel Corporation (MPC) of Miami, which consists of an animat-ed version of a popular Bollywood movie − their first proj-ect using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. India-based Pritish Nandy Communications has signed a five film deal with MPC to re-make selected titles into animated features, the first being Ek Khilaadi Ek Hasina. The team has quickly

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SChOOLS On BOARD

Motivated by the lack of qualified professionals in the animation field in Chile and the completion of an animat-ed feature film, in January 2004, Emu Films, a production house dedicated to animation, proposed the creation of an Animation Vocational Training program to UNIACC University. The school was born. What makes it so special is the fact that Emu Films moved into the Univer-sity and is in charge of the school, making it easier and more attractive for the students to be in contact with the real world of production. Even though the industry is very technological and technology evolves so rapidly, their curriculum is focused on the traditional concepts and disciplines of animation. Students learn to apply these concepts through different software, such as Maya, 3D Max Studio, Toon Boom, Motion Builder, Combustion, Flint, Storyboard Pro, among others. “In the classroom, our students discover a fascinating way of bringing the tradition of animation to a digital and competitive level: with the help of Wacom Cintiq tablets and Toon Boom software, they keep the romanticism of 2D anima-tion while learning how to meet the standards of actual production in terms of quality and speed,” said Victoria Amunátegui, Coordinator at UNIACC.____________________________________________________________________________________

Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design (RMCAD) is located on twenty-three wooded acres at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Lakewood, Colorado. RMCAD’s animation program merges the arts of writing, storytell-ing, design, illustration, sculpture, theatre, photogra-phy and filmmaking with the technology of computers. “Toon Boom Animation Inc. has opened a world of new possibilities for the students and faculty of the 2D Animation BFA program. In addition to using Toon Boom Studio and Digital Pro in our curriculum as the main vehicle for the digital production of 2D computer animation, we recently acquired license to incorporate Storyboard Pro,” declared Shari Fleming, an instructor at RMCAD. “Studio is an excellent entry-level program that introduces our students to the time-saving bene-fits of a digital workspace. Students are taught to use

the tools of Studio to produce traditional and paperless animation, ink and paint their films, and output these films at various levels of broadcast quality. Digital Pro is the outstanding upgrade that provides our students with a more extensive tool set and greater options. The Camera Module is an excellent place for students to learn some of the finer aspects of visual direction. Digital Pro is the program of choice for students in our Thesis and 2D Computer Animation Techniques cours-es. We are excited to integrate Storyboard Pro into the curriculum because it will offer an immediate advantage to our Thesis students in producing their independent films. These programs are used for independent, as well as collective, student films – and all are highly intuitive, accessible to our students, and set an industry standard for the production of 2D animation. The technologies of Toon Boom Animation Inc. are, without question, the best digital tools we can give our students to provide

them with what they need to produce creative, inno-vative, and excellent animation. In combination with a high standard of teaching and program excellence, Toon Boom technologies help make the 2D Animation curriculum at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design one of the foremost programs for 2D animation in the nation” concluded Shari. ____________________________________________________________________________________

Adding to what they do at their Bakshi School of Anima-tion and Cartooning, Jess Gorell and Eddie Bakshi are now also teaching at The Creative Media Institute of the New Mexico State University (NMSU). This four-year Bachelor degree programme covers animation basics and advanced concepts relying heavily on Toon Boom Studio in the 2D track. “As we knew the learning curve and success rates were strong with Toon Boom, we knew that by using it we could be freer to focus on the artistic aspects of animation” shared Eddie. At the end of 2006, NMSU approached the talented team to develop and implement their new animation curriculum. They started teaching in January 2007 and had Studio installed in their lab before beginning instruction. During the first fifteen-week semester, students learn the animation basics, create storyboards and animate their scenes up to final animation in Studio. “We often use complementary illus-tration and sound applications that work well with Studio to develop aspects of the students’ projects” added

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Eddie. In progressing semesters, students are introduced to more advanced animation and drawing techniques, apply special effects and spend more classroom hours on timing, motion and solid character development, ultimately build-ing professional digital portfolios.____________________________________________________________________________________

CityVarsity in Cape Town, South Africa has been running a traditional animation course for nine years. This is the first accredited course in South Africa to use Toon Boom prod-ucts to help in the teaching of animation. Their students are drawn from all over Southern Africa and surrounding countries, and this year, CityVarsity launched the Johan-nesburg chapter in their new premises in Newtown. The core of this programme is the principles of traditional 2D animation and Toon Boom Studio has been used as a training aid for the last four years. “It is a fantastic tool to help students appreciate the art of film making with the least amount of pain. The student is allowed to experi-ence the different facets of cartoon film making, which therefore allows them to focus on their strengths and weaknesses from an early stage. The final product is of a high quality, and is used for the students’ show reels,” shared Gary Kachelhoffer, Senior Lecturer at CityVarsity. The highlight of the first year course is the production of a one minute film, based on a given theme. This is produced by the students in nine weeks, and is intended to walk the student through the animation production process, using Toon Boom Studio. In the second year of the program, the student is given an advanced course in Toon Boom Digital Pro, to prepare for Harmony which is used in industry.

come to understand the critical role Storyboard Pro can fill for them. ”Its professional presentation and the possi-bility of a quicker response from our clients are huge time-savers. We upload our storyboards and animatics to our FTP and obtain immediate feedback!” confided Osvaldo Sequiera, co-founder of Estudio Flex.”Storyboard Pro has proven to be cost-efficient and time-efficient, it takes us less than half the time compared to our old system and it’s easy to use,” he added.____________________________________________________________________________________

For the past five years, Infinite Frameworks has cultiva-ted a strong focus on bringing animation from intellectu-al property development to production and distribution. As part of their growth strategy, they ensure that they are constantly up to date with animation technology and production software. “So it only seemed natural to prog-ress from research and development in to full blown 2D character creations with Toon Boom’s tools and features,” commented Mike Wiluan, President and CEO at Infinite. Infinite’s latest projects include a character design called Dr. Love and Indonesian shadow puppets revealing the hidden secrets of an ancient decree in their upcoming animated feature Sing to the Dawn, a short animated piece entitled The Monkey from Indonesia’s third Presi-dent, Jusuf Habibie, who is still dedicated to helping his country master technology. “Through co-production arran gements, key partnership relationships in Canada, Europe and Asia, Toon Boom’s products continue to assist us in going beyond the limits as we continue to build a significant client base, by pushing the boundar-ies of artistic and technical processes in house. It is the intention of our key production personnel, who are from Canada and Europe, to continue working closely and call upon the support of the Toon Boom technical team, as we venture into new productions and begin working on the expansion of our third studio, within our existing Batam facilities in Indonesia,” Mike concluded.

inDuSTRiAL nEwS (Continued)


Designed for professionals and freelancers alike, Digital Pro offers high productivity with low operating costs. Based on our Emmy award-winning technology,

Digital Pro combines superior vector technology for content creation, real-time animation and compositing stages, all set in a multi-plane 3D space environment.

Productivity tools such as palette management, lip-sync, morphing and inverse kinematics enable users to unleash their creativity. Digital Pro is the tool

of choice for animation projects ranging from the simplest to the most detailed, from digital to complete cut-out styles. Check it out at toonboom.com

See you at OIAF 2007 and MIPCOM 2007!

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