Toon Boom News December 2006

www.toonboom.com

December 2006

Making Ruby GloomHarmony has been the key to the look, movement, and overall feel of this production.

2 toonboom news DECEMBER 2006

Addressing the Market Needs Throughout 2006, Toon Boom has invested signifi-cant resources not only to increase its presence in the industry, but also to have educational facilities train theirstudents on Toon Boom technologies. Leading institutions such as Seneca College and Sheridan Institute ofTechnology and Advanced Learning have implemented Toon Boom Storyboard and Solo in their state-of-the-art curriculums to provide their students with the creative and technical skills desired by the market place

Following its very successful road show and workshops in Brazil, ToonBoom has started to establish Authorized Learning Centers with major specializedart and animation colleges and universities in Argentina, Brazil, México, Ecuador,Chile, Venezuela and Colombia. México’s latest animated feature film, La Leyenda dela Nahuala, will be done with Toon Boom Harmony. Major Brazilian/Canadian co-pro-ductions for TV series will integrate Toon Boom Storyboard and Harmony in theirpipeline. Several highly regarded companies producing commercial animation foradvertising, the web and mobile phones are among the active prospects testingToon Boom technologies in Latin America. Toon Boom is also supporting not-for-profit animated projects in Guatemala and Brazil. Based on its proven track record,Toon Boom is proud to act as a catalyst to propel budding initiatives in new locations,such as the Caribbean and Africa where several activities are already underway. ________________________________________________________________________________

MIPCOM 2006 has given the team an additional opportunity to showcase ToonBoom solutions to producers and studios that are more interested than ever inpipeline integration and cost efficiency. 2007 is certainly looking very promising! Theteam is already preparing to attend FlashForward (January 8-9) and MacworldBooth N4014, in the digital media, multimedia, publishing solutions Pavilion (January9-12) in San Francisco, Kidscreen (February 7-9) in New York, National Art EducationAssociation (March 14-18) in New York, FRAMES in Mumbai (March 26-28) andNational Association of Broadcasters, Booth SL2622 (April 14-19) in Las Vegas.________________________________________________________________________________

As for animation festivals, Toon Boom has been extensively involved throughoutthe world and plans to be even more committed in 2007. Our paths will surelycross as Toon Boom is getting ready for another very animated year!

toonboomnews

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Committed to developingnew markets and creating anima-tion hubs, the Toon Boom teamhas traveled to the Caribbean,Latin America and Africa towork with the local players andhelp them build a vibrant andviable animation industry. Theteam attended Creanimax inMéxico, Anima Mundi in Brazil,Buenos Aires se Anima in Argen-tina, Animae Caribe Animationand New Media Festival in Trini-dad, as well as toured Ghana,Kenya and South Africa.

THIS ISSUE’S COVER courtesy of Nelvana

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

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toonboom news DECEMBER 2006 3

CUSTOM TOOLS FOR 2D/3D Integration in developmentThe need to have 2D/3D integration toolsis pressing and Toon Boom is already onthe mark and set to go. When studios look formore efficiency, productivity and creative freedom,the Toon Boom Research and Development teammakes it its priority to develop and provide the nec-essary solution. Whether studios want to create aunique style, reduce production costs or increase the ani-mation quality, the objective is to deliver the properprocess and set of tools that will enable them to continueto push the envelope. To make the most of 2D and 3Dintegration, several alternatives are looked into and spe-cial attention is given to pipeline management. Deve-loped in partnership with Nelvana to get direct feedbackfrom this leading and well-respected industry player, thisrevolutionary solution aims to offer as seamless and inte-grated a workflow as possible and set a new dimension inanimation production. Toon Boom prides itself on contin-uously delivering cutting-edge technologies that servethe needs of the animation and live-action industry, for allstyles, formats and users.

TOON BOOM STAR We introduceyou to the people behind the technologyand put a face to the voice you may havespoken to. Graduated from Universitéde Montréal with a Bachelor of Scien-ces in Computer Sciences in 1989,Marc Bégin joined Toon Boom eightyears ago and made his way throughthe Research and Development teamto become Director of Development, Industrial Solutions. Hewas first a Team Leader for two years on the product former-ly known as USAnimation, then moved on to Toon BoomStudio as Project Leader for four years and then to his currentposition. Marc is very busy at work and at home, too! Pascaleand Marc are the very proud parents of five children, threeboys and two girls, ranging from 2 to 12 years old. It seemsthat Marc’s days have more than 24 hours, as he also mana-ges to find time for his hobbies which revolve around sciencefiction, reading and photography.

SERVICE PACK FOR TOON BOOM STUDIOStarting December 2006, Toon Boom Studio V3.5customers can log onto Toon Boom’s web siteand download the latest product Service Packfrom the MyProducts page. This Service Packaddresses known issues and will allow the user to get the maximum benefit when animating.

CONGRATULATIONS As part of the 2006 Animation Celebration, the French Animation Association (Afca) and ToonBoom launched an animation contest for the Web. The suggested theme was An Unusual Encounter. Between October 18and 25, 2006, online voting took place on Toon Boom’s website to select the top three animated shorts. Congratulations to

Luc Otter (Canada), Alexandre Dubosc (France) and B. Trémelet L. (France). On October 28,during International Animation Day, screenings were organized at the Cinémathèque québé-coise in Montreal and at Elysée Lincoln Theater in Paris to show the winners’ and finalists’shorts. Each winner received a personal copy of Toon Boom Solo as well as selected WorkoutSeries titles. Luc Otter is already well-known in the festival network as several of his shorts havebeen selected in prestigious festivals such as Cannes, Hiroshima, Annecy, Espinho, London,Taipei, Tampere and seen on TV in Europe and North America.

SPONSORSHIP As mentionedin the June 2006 issue of the Toon BoomNews, Toon Boom Animation is proud tobe sponsoring Mark Heese, a multiplemedal winner in beach volleyball. Thiscolumn will allow you to follow hisprogress towards the upcoming Gamesof the XXIX Olympiad – Beijing 2008.After gaining his ninth NationalChampionship at the end of August,Mark Heese was confident that hecould continue his winning waysonce he returned to the FIVB WorldTour for the last two events of the year. However, if he wasgoing to keep winning, it would have to be with a new part-ner. After meeting with national team athletes and coaches, itwas decided to switch some partnerships for the remainingevents of 2006, in Brazil and Mexico. Mark would now teamup with his partner from 2005, Ahren Cadieux. “It was theright timing for a change, and I am looking forward to re-unit-ing with Ahren, as I think we are capable of playing a high levelof volleyball.” In Brazil, as matches were quite competitiveand challenging, the team finished at 17th place. Following thiscompetition, they worked on their “end-of-match” skills bydesigning some specific drills to work on, as well as doingsome useful mental training that targeted the end-of-matchmindset. This training paid off in huge dividends in Mexico.Mark and Ahren beat two top-ten teams in the WorldRanking, including the top team from the U.S.A., and finishedat 9th place. Toon Boom congratulates Mark on his efforts thisseason and looks forward to more beach volleyball actionover the next two seasons, as we draw closer to the 2008Olympics in Beijing. Happy Training in the off-season, Mark!

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� Over 2000 to 2004, Alphanim was France’s undisputednumber 1 producer in volume and market share. Foundedin February 1997 by Christian Davin, the studio producesand distributes audiovisual and cinema programs.Considering the success of the first RobotBoy’s series,Alphanim has started the production of the second series,which includes 52 thirteen-minute episodes. CombiningToon Boom Storyboard capabilities with Opus productionpower, Alphanim makes the best use of its integrated solu-tion. “On multi-site productions, we put great emphasis onquality consistency and production efficiency. We makeToon Boom’s advanced technologies part of our strategyto reach our objectives and continue delivering successfulanimation programs. Now with Storyboard and Opus partof the same pipeline, we foresee an even greater perform-ance in our production unit,” shares Jean-Pierre Quenet,Director of operations at Alphanim.___________________________________________________________________________

� AQ Design’s been cartooning in Manhattan since 1986and The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers. More recently,the studio has played a part in Courage the Cowardly Dog,and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and has played a rolefrom A to Z on owner Peter Roos’s production company,Phase Four’s Kenny the Shark, and Mr. Pig & Mr. Duck, with

co-producer Winnie Chaffee. “We work a lot with overseasanimation studios, where Opus and now Harmony are thesoftware of choice,” says Roos. “For us, the timing was per-fect on Toon Boom’s latest releases. We were looking for abetter fit between our development/pre-production andoverseas on Mr. Pig & Mr. Duck when Solo came out.” Helikes the animator-friendly exposure sheets, and recentlypurchased Storyboard for some projects currently in devel-opment. “We can start in Storyboard, get our timing down,and for less time-critical jobs and development, finish inSolo, or scale up to overseas delivery. The key is pipeline,we’re not recreating any steps, and the metadata getspassed along every step of the way. I don’t know of anyother 2D solution that scales from boards to a networked100+ seat overseas animation studio.”___________________________________________________________________________

� Mumbai-based PMI Entertainment (India) Pvt Ltd andHyderabad-based Green Gold Animation Pvt Ltd haveformed a joint venture company, PMI Green GoldAnimation Pvt Ltd, to produce animation feature films, TVseries, and live action children’s programming. Their firstepisode of a four-part TV feature, Krishna: The Birth, pre-miered on Cartoon Network in August 2006 on the occa-sion of Krishna Janmashtami. This 75-minute long, 2D ani-mation movie chronicles the events and incidents accompa-nying the birth of Lord Vishnu as Krishna. This is CartoonNetwork’s second acquisition from Green Gold AnimationStudio, the earlier one being Vikram Betal in 2005. Over100 animation specialists worked on this quality project,which took almost a year to finalize from pre-production,with production taking six months. “The purpose of usingHarmony for our whole production process was to alleviatethe need to use multiple software. It has helped us inautomating lip synching, thereby saving us a good amountof time. Harmony gave us the flexibility of using camera ormultiple cameras in a 3D environment to set action as wehad the option to view side and top to plan which helpedour creative director to implement his input on the digital


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side. We have a good amount of characters in this seriesand Harmony helped us streamline our color styling pro-cess too,” shared Rajiv Chilakalapudi, Founder andManaging Director at Green Gold Animation Pvt. Ltd. Thesecond feature, related to Krishna’s childhood, premiers onCartoon Network in December 2006. The studio is alsoproducing an animated series of Chota Bheem and two ani-mated feature films. ___________________________________________________________________________

� MoonScoop is one of the leading producers in animationwith a slate of six series per year. Its distribution catalogueincludes over 2,000 half-hours of programming across 100titles airing in over 100 territories worldwide. MoonScoopaims to build its worldwide presence by focusing on proj-ects with international appeal and longevity. Its key proper-ties for this year include Code Lyoko, a fast-paced 2D/3Dshow currently airing in the US on Cartoon Network andinternationally; popular 3D alien adventure series Pet Alien;The Fantastic Four based on the classic Marvel comic-bookheroes; and, evergreen character Titeuf (Tootuff). For the2D animation and ink and paint done in the latter projects,Pegs has been the tool of choice by Moonscoop. TheFantastic Four offers a very well done combination of tradi-tional 2D with 3D animation that is true to the originalcomic book look and feel.

� Michael Astrachan,Creative Director atXVIVO, first saw ToonBoom Storyboard at thelast SIGGRAPH and im-mediately recognizedthe many benefits ofthis program. At XVIVO,they focus primarily onmedical and scientificanimation. Due to me-dical legal reviews andscientific approvals, theirstoryboards are subjectto many revisions.“Toon Boom Storyboardallows me to make the revisionssimply, often saving dozens ofhours over the course of a pro-ject. Another feature that at-tracted me to Storyboard isthat it is an integrated animaticprogram. The animatic can becreated by the click of a button,again, saving hours of preciousproduction time. Storyboardalso works on my Tablet PC.This allows me to work any-where and anytime,” sharedMichael. Often their production process begins with ascript. Michael follows a well structured workflow that ma-ximizes Storyboard’s capabilities: “I record a rough (readscratch track) and import that into Storyboard. Next I im-port the script’s .txt file into Storyboard. Once the audio fileand associated .txt file are imported, I begin to layout theshots needed to depict the action by adding shot andscenes as needed.

Finally the sketching begins, as I either draw directly inStoryboard with my Tablet PC, or on paper. Sometimes stan-dard pencil sketches are needed and Storyboard allows meto easily scan and import them for use as backgrounds.Storyboard also allows me to sketch in the “actors” which inmy line of work, are often cells and proteins. I can save theseactors to a library where I can drag and drop into shots asneeded. Storyboard’s camera and motion tools allow me tostart to think about the camera moves and the editsextremely early in the production process. Additionally, themotion tools let me plan how moving elements will transitionfrom shot to shot. Once the storyboard is finished, I outputto both a .pdf file and an animatic for client review. Well, itwouldn’t be a client review without changes. And happily,making changes in Storyboard is a breeze. From initial con-cept to planning an entire production, Storyboard allows methe flexibility needed to deliver more - and in less time thanI ever thought possible,” concludes Michael. Im

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� Based in San Francisco, Nicholas Da Silva is the founderof ZOOLOOK, LLC, a new media agency established in1996. It utilizes Adobe creative suite of products as a sto-rytelling medium to produce original flash-based enter-tainment properties that promote a multicultural experi-ence. He is currently working on a new animated serieswhich is actually a two-hour movie broken down into 2-3minute mini-episodes. The series is entitled The GreatestStory Never Told and features the Cave Dudez and CaveBettiez of Planet Rock. Toon Boom Studio will play a majorrole in the production of this series. “The ability to reuseassets like facial expressions and lip sync cuts your time inhalf. Also, the lip sync features and the 3D sceneplanningare features that any animator should not be without. ToonBoom Studio is definitely a great program and a must-havefor any serious animator or studio. It provides certain fea-tures which aren't available in Flash that are a necessity tothe serious animator,” commented Nicholas.___________________________________________________________________________

� Nik Nilsson is the creativecoordinator at Heritage Moun-tain Community Church inPort Moody, British Columbia.Nik has found humor to bethe single most effective toolfor reaching people; laughter

opens the mind and allows the writer heaping dollops ofinspiration. One thing small churches don’t have is a pool ofsolid acting talent. “Our videos were often limited by this,and you can only do the Monty Python dress-up thing a cou-ple of times before people begin to realize that the womanwith the beard is actually Graham in a dress,” shared Nikwith a smile. Nik adopted Toon Boom Studio very recentlyand plans to create clips no more than two to seven minu-tes in length. Stylistically, the animation will be simple, as theyare usually looking at lead times of two months to a coupleof weeks. Characters have to be ready to go and sceneryeasy to draw. “The camera controls alone are a life-saver, asis the lip sync tool. Using it doesn’t feel like work; this is thehighest compliment I can give an application,” added Nik. ___________________________________________________________________________

� Mike Goubeaux and Andrew Muto have teamed up tocreate Trains, a very impressive music video produced anddirected for a band called Summerbirds in the Cellar. Thisvideo was a winner at the last Scion xPress Fest, which is a

national student filmmaker competition that matches film-makers with indie bands. They quickly realized that ToonBoom Studio was going to be the only piece of softwarethey could use to get their animation project finished ontime and on budget. “The software and the interface wereso user friendly that it freed me from worrying about thetechnology and concentrate on the animation. The color

swatch function and the brush size function were featuresI was using every few minutes and increased my producti-vity. Most importantly, the ability to fill shapes not only onone frame, but through multiple frames in a stack with onebutton click. This saved hours every single day,” enthusedAndrew. Both Mike and Andrew are Savannah Collegegraduates and are now settled in Los Angeles developingnew film and music video projects.___________________________________________________________________________

� Craig Olsson is a student majoring in animation atInternational Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa,Florida and working part-time as a graphic artist at api(+),an architectural firm. He likes creating animation with a“Looney Tunes” sense of fun and action, where anythinggoes. Craig enjoys the ability to play with a variety of linestyles and thicknesses to create his characters. “The factthat Toon Boom Studio is vector based and has an excellentbrush tool allows me to create a line that, I think, is betterthan what is seen in many animations,”stated Craig. Hescans in his rough pencils and uses a Wacom tablet to doall the line work in Toon Boom Studio with the brush tool.After he colors the animation, he’ll go through and adjustthe exposure of the individual cells on the x-sheet. Craiggenerally likes to vary the timing throughout to get amore natural feel to the animation. “Going paperless withthe inking process has decreased the work time consider-ably,” he added.

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He is also a painter whose work is included in numerous cor-porate and private collections, as well as often appearing onthe sets of feature films and television series. Some of theseinclusions include feature films from Paramount, Castle Rock,Disney and Fox. His work has appeared on the sets of week-ly series such as I'm With Her, My Wife and Kids, Six FeetUnder and Four Kings as well as others.

The Art Institute is a private, for-profit post secondaryinstitution with 29 schools throughout North America. The ArtInstitutes have provided career-oriented education programsin design, media arts, fashion and culinary for over 35 years,and has more than 125,000 alumni. They provide bachelor’sand associate’s degrees in Culinary Arts, Game Art & Design,Graphic and Industrial Design, Interior Design, Media Arts &Animation and Multimedia & Web Design. In the Media Artsand Animation program, students begin with a substantialfoundation in drawing, color, design, video production, andcomputer applications. From this foundation, students devel-op advanced skills in various aspects of computer graphicsand animation. Students learn to use the tools of the compu-ter animation profession, ranging from computer operatingsystems to 3D modeling and desktop video production.These tools enhance students’ flexibility and creativity, andenable them to produce an individualized digital portfoliothat demonstrates their practical and technical abilities topotential employers.

As a part of the Media Arts and Animation curriculum,students take a class in ink and paint that utilizes Toon BoomStudio. This class focuses on animation, background and lay-out, scene planning, compositing and story-telling. MikeTracy has taught a section of the class for more than threeyears and draws on his feature animation experience to pro-duce a series of exercises that help the students acquire bothconceptual understandings of each of the important activitiesin a typical production environment as well as exploring theuse of this technology in pursuit of story-telling.

During the eleven–week Digital Ink and Paint course,students are introduced to the technical production proces-

ses of putting animation toget-her. The lessons explain theprocedure of importing hand-generated art, converting drawnanimation into cleaned-up,vector-based art and paintingit. The class will also explorethe nature of scene-planning,which is the process of com-positing vectored animationwith raster-based painting ele-

ments, and creating the camera moves, including a pan,repeat pan, truck in and out, and multiplane required to tella story. Students primarily use Toon Boom Studio as the plat-form for this work, in combination with other applications.“The difference with Toon Boom Studio, however, is that ituses a very similar interface design to the ones used in main-stream animation production”, shares Mike. The elementsare assembled in an X-sheet format, then composited in acamera window using pegbar elements to execute the sceneplanning activities. “Toon Boom Studio is an excellent alter-native for small, quickly executed films, in a sense, you couldconsider the application as a moving ‘sketch-book’ for youranimation ideas. For this reason, we will execute everythingin Toon Boom Studio this quarter”.

In addition to their skills evaluation, the grading system isbased on the students’ understanding and proficiency inusing the Toon Boom interface, creating small, full-color filmclips utilizing cuts, trucks, pans and multi-plane camera movesas well as their overall quality, complexity and thoroughnessof their work. The final project is a one to two-minute animat-ed film, complete with sound and dialog that shows theirability to produce cleaned-up, vectored animation with ras-terized background elements in a series of camera moves.

“Toon Boom Studio is an ideal platform for the needs ofour students because it utilizes real world tools such as thex-sheet and peg assemblies while maintaining a fairly easylearning curve. Most students get results right away.”

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Real world tools Mike Tracy has taught at the Art Institute of California - Orange County for sixyears. Prior to that, he worked as a layout artist in both feature animation and TV. He began his animation careerat Walt Disney Features working as a layout artist on Fantasia 2000 and went on to work on Emperor's NewGroove, and did layout on additional footage for Beauty and the Beast. He worked on several TV productions asa freelancer, doing layout, workbook and lighting guides for shows at Sony, DIC and Film Roman. He did layoutand development work at Warner Brothers for the films Iron Giant and Osmosis Jones.

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case study

“I did it. I came back to 2D from 3D, and my timing could-n’t have been better! The advances in Toon Boom’s latestanimation system were the key. Whenever a work meet-ing would take me for a wander through the Nelvana 2Ddepartment, I would always look over the shoulders of fel-low employees to see what the current state of the medi-um was and ask myself “do I miss that?” The first year theanswer was “not yet”. The technological advances in the3D realm had kept me intrigued. I felt the nostalgic pangof seeing people sketching and erasing away, but at thetime 3D felt right. It felt like the future. The second yearthe answer was still “not yet”, but something seemed onthe horizon. Something big. Fast-forward a few years (andseries) later, I was venturing through the 2D domain one

day and saw then what we now call ‘Harmony’. When Istopped to see the endless possibilities it offered, onlyone word went through my mind- “Now”. Harmony’stechnology really offered the tools to effectively blur theline between the 2D and 3D realms”shares Darin.

“Luis Lopez, a Senior Technical Producer at Nelvana,offered me the chance to learn Harmony for a new 2DDigital series called Ruby Gloom and act as its SupervisingTechnical Director. Luis was about to revamp and imple-ment new production pipeline procedures for our 2Ddigital department and he wanted me to be part of thatteam, so I snatched up the opportunity and haven’tlooked back. We knew that Harmony was a solid applica-tion ready to handle any challenge we threw at it. In thislatest version, the software has taken a huge leap forwardin the level of visual story telling. Our most recent produc-tion, Ruby Gloom has implemented this technology, mix-ing it with the fundamentals of traditional animationmovement, and the results are fantastic. We are lookingfor a cartoon, with all the zip and snap found in the shortsof the forties and fifties. Harmony has been the key to thelook, movement, and overall feel of this production.”

“By designing our show with Harmony’s strengths (andweaknesses) in mind, all the fluid stretch and squashfound in traditional animation is possible. A major factorto the successful movement is found in the timing. Forexample, violent, snappy movement is absolutely brilliantwith this system. Subtle anticipation before a major move-ment, along with a settle into a hold following that violentmove, disguises the stretch and distortion of the moveitself. We want to feel the fluidity more than see it.

Darin Bristow is currentlyRuby Gloom’s SupervisingTechnical Director

Making Ruby Gloom in Harmony Darin Bristow has worked at Nelvana for over 12 yearsserving in a variety of 2D and 3D capacities. His 2D skills can be seen on such series as Eek! The Cat, Samand Max: Freelance Police, and his 3D skills on such projects as Rescue Heroes: The Movie, Miss Spider, andHandy Manny. Darin is currently Ruby Gloom’s Supervising Technical Director and offered us these observations.

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Understanding these animation fundamentals of early“limited” animation from historic studios like UPA andHanna Barbara are crucial in harnessing the strengths ofHarmony. The characters are quite flat and 2D, but byusing the techniques of snappy animation coupled withthe 3D set, the limitations are virtually non-existent.”

The story ideas set by producer Merle Anne Ridley andstory editor Carolyn Hay required an animation approachthat allowed complete flexibility. Massive zoom-ins, zippans, or the more subtle movement such as slow movingclouds and atmospheres are no problem. With carefulattention to pre-production and of course the animationitself, strong character performance is very achievable.

“We all knew from day 1 that this show was going tobe fresh, fun, and inventive. Combined with our WACOMCintiqs, Harmony offers the technological sum of every-

thing that was great about traditional 2D animation of thepast, mixed in with all that is great about digital anima-tion of the present, and then adds the heavy dose of thefuture. The result is something new and visually cuttingedge. No matter what the visual challenges demanded bythe director, Harmony would handle it. The visually pop-ping the graphic, stylized art direction of the Ruby Gloomcharacters took us into the land of using highly detailedpainterly Photoshop Backgrounds Designs. Many of thesedigital bitmap paintings contained upwards of 10-15 layers,all at 150 dpi, making them quite large- but yet Harmonyhandled them with ease. So easy in fact, we soon foundthat we could increase our source BG resolutions up to300 dpi to maintain visual integrity in order to supportRuby Gloom’s high-definition composites, and zany zoom-in camera moves.”

The Ruby Gloom character designs also proved a 2Ddigital challenge themselves, Director Robin Budd wantedto maintain the ‘no-outline’ look of Ruby’s initial designs,yet have a percentage-colored line form only when twoidentical colors passed over one another, and have anoffset character ‘rim light’ throughout animation. Thefundament art direction mantra was ‘light against dark’for maximum character ‘pop’, but that became an issuewith some of the established dark costume against thedark backgrounds. “Using Harmony’s highly advancedNetworks and tools, we were able to avoid a potential ani-mation nightmare by simply rigging all these featuresright into the character models, thus keeping it off the ani-mators’ shoulders, and production friendly. It allowed theanimation team to just work freely, and due to how werigged each character up front, the rim light would makeitself by offsetting the animators key frame’s and notworry about it.”

The sheer creative freedom Harmony offers the RubyGloom team has helped create a very unique and visuallystunning product that has, and is, commanding the world-wide attention it deserves.

Robin Budd has been passionately immersed in the

animation business for 29 years. The seventies and eighties

were focused on full, fluid traditional character animation of

television specials for Nelvana, and feature films both in

Toronto and Tokyo. In 1989, he directed his first television

series, Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, and won an Emmy for most

outstanding series. Years of feature development followed,

for both Nelvana and Paramount Pictures. He joined Disney

studios in the late nineties and directed the sequel Peter

Pan, Return to NeverLand. The focus then shifted to story-

board work on a variety of television series, such as Sam

and Max, Clone High, Jacob Two-two, and 6Teen. His most

recent work is development and direction of Gerald

McBoing Boing and Ruby Gloom.


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Gilbert also produced his first feature film for a young audi-ence called Urban Odyssey. Another Mayer Films release isthe animated short Ralf the Rat: Toulouse Lautrat which wasshown at the national Festival of Swiss Films in Solothurn. Hislineup of projects is quite impressive and includes Rien ne vaplus, an animated series about an old peoples’ asylum, TheNew Kasper, a children’s series with hand puppets and 3Dbackgrounds, Bearytales, animated stories for children aboutthe nightly activities of Teddy bears, mobiletoonland.com,downloadable content for mobile phones and Origin (working

title), his next feature film. “Toon Boom Studio is my centralsoftware for the whole production, although I shall be usingSoftimage XSi, Photoshop and Vegas as an editing software.For Rien ne va plus, I'll be drawing all characters on paper andeven coloring them with Ecoline water-based liquid layout col-ors. This gives me a rich textured look with flickering colors,when characters are animated. I'm a bit of a traditionalist,being in this business 35 years.

Of course I use Toon Boom Studio’s drawing tools foradditional bits and pieces, like blinking eyes, flying insects orwhatever small moving props are necessary. My hand-paintedcharacters are scanned in as images in this special project. I haveto consider the maximum resolution, as I work with pixels. Themaximum output of the film will be HDTV 1080p (1920x108016:9 ratio) and the minimum a PAL widescreen 16:9 resolution.I use the smaller resolution for editing and change the fileswhen ready for release. My backgrounds are sets done in a 3Dpackage. In Toon Boom Studio, I make cut-out puppets frommy scanned characters. I put the characters together in a hier-archy. Usually, they consist of body, head, upper arm, lowerarm, hand, upper leg, lower leg, foot, separate mouth shapesand eyes. I give all the elements a parent peg, put themtogether in a hierarchy and finally arrange them from fore-ground to background. I switch then to the Pegbar OnlyMode for more convenient working with the pivot points.

Normally with a cut-out character all movements are rota-tions around the pivot points. Sometimes, I let Toon BoomStudio calculate all the in-betweens from one key frame toanother. In other cases, I draw every frame to create a more

jerky and sometimes more funny movement. The character itselfis fixed to a general Pegbar, which could be used for an up anddown movement during a walking cycle. This movement canbe cycled also. This up and down pegbar is again fixed to aPeg, which is responsible for translations in all directions. Likethis, I have complete flexibility of movements. Good namingfor all elements and pegs is essential to keep track.

Besides moving the limbs in cut-out animation, you needto exchange elements. Toon Boom Studio has this great time-line, where you can just slide through all the drawings whichare grouped in one single element. So I can have a whole setof hands with all needed positions and gestures. By simply set-ting a key frame and choosing the cell at that frame, I can ani-mate by swapping in ultra high speed. Again, good planningof the drawings and their pivot points is essential for a success-ful workflow. Rien ne va plus is a film full of dialog. So I use thelip sync feature to a great extent. Any head I draw for a char-acter has a set of the seven standard mouth positions, whichfit the lip sync generator of Toon Boom Studio. It's a matter ofseconds to get the first viewable result, which can easily beedited by hand for further improvement.

The next much appreciated feature is the library in ToonBoom Studio. Once a character or a walk cycle is created, it issaved in the library and can be used again later. It is a greattime saver! I sometimes put a whole scene in the library, toreuse it and change only the animation or the lip sync or theposition of the camera. Whenever a scene consists of severallayers like foreground, midground and background, I lay it outin 3D. Whenever I decide to make a camera track, dolly orpan, the scene is ready for an impressive multiplane effect.When I used to work on our 2000-pound Oxberry master ani-mation stand, it was such a pain to plan these shots, that I usedthem very rarely. But with Toon Boom Studio, it’s just at yourfingertips. If Walt Disney had known this...

Although my characters are hand-painted and scanned infull color, I use the color correction tool a lot to get better com-positing. Why should I wait for post-production when everytool is in Toon Boom Studio already? Sometimes, I put a colorcorrection between each multiplane layer and get the effect ofdepth fading. I always render single images in TGA format, intwo or three resolutions to edit up to high-end HDTV and therender quality is good. Even the vector lines from scanned inline drawings (pencil or ink) have an acceptable style.

Every week, I learn more and my affection for this fantas-tic software grows. My plan is to upgrade to Solo. I think itwould be a good investment to raise the production value ofmy films with the stunning special effects, the better render-ing and the more integrated workflow Solo offers. ToonBoom Studio is a complete and convincing piece of software.I am confident that Solo would bring the quality of my anima-tions to the next level.”

To the next level Based in Basel, Switzerland, Mayer Films was founded by Gilbert Mayer in2005 with the aim to produce independent feature films and animation for cinema, TV, DVD and Internet.Up to that date, Gilbert was mainly working in the field of commissioned work for the industry includingcommercials and image films, be it animation or documentary.

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schools on board

� The mass communication department at Iona Collegein New Rochelle, New York has recently started an expe-rimental course in Computer Animation for Video. It com-bines the history of animation and storytelling theory withhands-on experience using computer animation pro-grams. Students learn basic computer drawing and ani-mation techniques and will ultimately edit their animationinto video projects in which they themselves enter thestory and interact with their animated characters, remi-niscent of the work of early animators, such as MaxFleischer, Paul Terry and Walt Disney. The program’sarchitect, Dr. Nancy-Jo Johnson, chose Flash and ToonBoom Studio software applications for this new coursebecause, “Flash offers accessible drawing and tweeningcapabilities, while Toon Boom Studio leads students toa higher level with sophisticated drawing tools and 3Dcamera moves. Not only are both applications integrat-ed, they also enable students to animate on the first dayof class! In fact, they have just finished their first animat-ed story on a Halloween theme using Toon Boom Studiocharacter, scenery and prop templates. They need topractice their storytelling skills, but they’re not yet at thecharacter animation level. The Toon Boom Studio tem-plates offer them a jump-start and inspiration to crafttheir own characters for their end-term project. The stu-dents love these programs! They are also learning fromthe Toon Boom Studio Workout Series, which metho-dically leads them through complex procedures, makinga novice animator look like an expert.” The animationcourse is successful thus far and has been put on thebooks for next year.___________________________________________________________________________

� Opened in Jerusalem in 1906, Bezalel Academy of Artand Design is the most prominent academy of Fine Arts,Design and Architecture in Israel. The essence of itsimpressive achievements lies not only with its history thatis spread throughout the landscapes of Israel, but alsowith the spirit of those who populate the academy. Theuse of animation in all media is continually expanding.Every day new inventions emerge that make elaboratemeans and tools for artistic expression available to cre-ators in the field of animation. Bezalel has adopted ToonBoom Studio and Solo to prepare its students for careersin animation, developing their artistic and creative capa-bilities while maximizing the use of technology.

� Seneca College's Animation Arts Centre (AAC) is awing of the School of Communication Arts under the Facul-ty of Information Arts and Technology of Seneca College.The AAC specializes in four areas: traditional animation,3D character animation, 3D game design, and visual effectsfor film and television. The centre is located on the SenecaYork campus in a dedicated facility in the TechnologyEnhanced Learning Building (TEL) on the York Universitycampus in Toronto, and features state-of-the-art produc-tion technology available to students 24-hours a day.Faculty at the AAC consists of world-renowned animationindustry professionals. Previous production partnershipsinvolving the AAC include the Academy Award® winningshort animated film, Ryan. During the week of October 23,

16 students fromthe AAC participa-ted in an intensivetraining workshopon Toon Boom Solosoftware. The stu-dents completedthe workshop veryexcited about thepotential of thesoftware for 2Danimation produc-

tion, noting that many of the concepts and operations inSolo act as a good bridge for their training in 3D animationsoftware. Seneca College is looking forward to exploringfurther potential partnerships with Toon Boom.___________________________________________________________________________

� Located in Château de Dampierre, Angoulême, France,the École des Métiers du Cinéma d’Animation (EMCA)offers a state-of-the-art animation program that stimulatesthe students’ creativity and provides them with the techni-cal expertise the market place requires. The curriculumcombines the animation techniques training with a person-al creative experience that concludes with a film productionat the end of the second year. EMCA puts great emphasison teaching Western and Asian animation styles and onoffering hands-on practical production experience through-out the entire process to prepare their students for a careerin animation. Two internships in animation studios comple-te the curriculum to ensure a thorough understanding ofproduction environments. Their animation lab includes both

Pegs and Soloto expose stu-dents to tradi-tional and digi-tal animationp roduc t ionusing the mar-ket- leadinganimation soft-ware solutions.


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Documents

Toon Boom News December 2006