Toon Boom News Winter 2008

toonboom.comwinter 2008/2009

2 Toon Boom News winter 2008/2009

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This year, Toon Boom once again made a point of celebrating Inter-national Animation Day on October 28, by taking part in anima-tion celebrations from South Africa, to Egypt and Korea. The team organized a screening of Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure in Cape Town, led an animation workshop for children in Seoul along with ASIFA Korea and organized an industry discussion in Alexandria. It certainly was an animated week!

Animating the worldToon Boom is maintaining a strong presence in the field, covering many continents. In addition to several road trips, the tradeshow line-up for the Winter 2008/2009 looks impressive, with the Forum International des Technologies de l’Animation in Angoulême, France, December 3-6, Asia Television Forum, Booth B24, in Singapore, December 10-12, Macworld, Booth 3526-D, in San Francisco, January 6-9, Florida Educational Tech-nology Conference, in Orlando, January 21-24, Texas Computer Education Association, in Austin, February 2-6, KidScreen in New York, February 11-13, Design Inda-ba in Cape Town, February 25-27, FESPACO in Ouaga-dougou, February 28-March 7, Cartoon Movie in Lyon, March 4-6, and the Game Development Conference in San Francisco, March 23-27.

Make sure our paths cross soon and have a wonderful and animated 2009!

With the release of Toon Boom Animate, time has come for all digital animators to experience animation creation following the Three F Formula: Freedom, Fluidity and Friendliness. Freedom comes from the ability to create any style of animation you want, using symbols and pegs with bitmap and vector art, and to export your project in HD or for your mobile simultaneously. Fluidity results from the beauty of creating content, animating and compositing all within one single application and relying on the most advanced animation technology available on the market. Friendliness is the attitude Animate brings to the table thanks to its adaptable user interface, its openness to Adobe® products and its smooth integration into your toolkit.

Animate comes with a Personal Learning Edition that will quickly convince you this is the best way to create digital animation. Check it out at toonboom.com/animate

A new era Begins.

3Toon Boom News winter 2008/2009

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.

Gordie O’Ishizuka Jr. first joined Toon Boom Animation

in 2001 as the web integrator and designer. Since late

2006, Gordie has been the webmaster and principle web

developer providing web-based support to Toon Boom

clients and the Toon Boom team, developing Content

Management Systems and other internal tools. A highly

respected and integral member of the Toon Boom family,

Gordie works closely with the marketing department and

the web designers, introducing new web 2.0 technologies

and developing ways of enhancing the user’s experience

when they visit toonboom.com. Most recently with the

introduction of Toon Boom Animate, Gordie designed

the web infrastructure to handle the new licensing activa-

tion process which will eventually be deployed with other

Toon Boom products. Prior to Toon Boom, he worked at

Bell Canada for ten years in Computer Systems Operations

supporting and maintaining financial applications. Gordie

holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University,

Montreal and a College degree in Ceramics. In his free

time, he nurtures his passion for pottery. Gordie pres-

ently shares a studio with three other ceramists where he

creates ceramic art and functional ceramic wares.

Clean funOn the Awards side, Flip Boom continues to garner recognition and reap rewards! Flip Boom won the Canadian New Media Award in the Excellence in Children’s category, while the toy version of Flip Boom, which comes bundled with a tablet, received the highest rating given by the Canadian Toy Testing Council and a Recommended mention by Protégez-Vous 2009 Toy Report. The Flip Boom toy version was developed in conjunction with Maison Joseph Battat Ltd. and is marketed in Costco Canada stores.

To celebrate the Animate launch, Toon Boom toured North America throwing launch parties in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto. These events, hosted by Aaron Simpson, founder of ColdHardFlash.com and Lineboil.com, were a great opportunity to meet and greet hundreds of digital animators and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.


CONSUMER NEWS

Janet Perlman is a director of short animated films and is based in Montreal, Canada. With 35 years experience in the industry Janet has a panoptic perspective of animation. She has worked extensively for the National Film Board of Canada, and for Acme Filmworks. Her most recent film, Hot Seat was done at Acme Filmworks using Toon Boom Studio and is featured on Liberty Mutual’s “Responsibility Proj-ect” website. She also has her own company which devel-ops animation for various platforms. Her work has received international acclaim, including an Oscar® nomination in 1982 for The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin and in 1984 she received an Emmy® as an animator for working on R.O. Blechman’s The Soldier’s Tale. Janet has also won several grand prizes at festivals throughout the world. Janet believes that, “Toon Boom Studio has an effect on the overall look of a film, and that the results are unique. It gives a certain line quality that I think works well for very flat bold graphics. I love the direct connection from rough to finished animation, all in the same program.” Her experience with Toon Boom Studio was a positive one and made the production process much faster and more economical.

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Living and working in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA, Leo Winstead is a freelance illustrator. Leo’s experience has taken him from a production intern in Dreamworks Feature Animation’s FX department where he learned from noted animation talent, Tom Sito, to teaching clay animation in junior high school, to working on the live-action short This is My Body just last summer. Leo has worked in the profession for the last seven years and has also done work for design firms, game developers, and book publishers including: Fleer, Z-man Games, Hinterwelt Enterprises, New World Publishers, and Purple Dragon Games. At the moment he is studying to become an Art Instruc-tor. For the most part, Leo works alone so his workflow is somewhat non-traditional. “I storyboard right into the software. Then I copy each board and create layouts by adding each scene, duplicating the boards, adding details and key poses. Once I’ve got the animation roughed in, I in-between on a separate drawing layer, combine every-thing and do some clean up work. For the 11th Station, I added in a shadow line so that I could show volume in the

characters” he shared. Leo finds Studio’s Scene Planning tools very easy to handle to make complex camera moves and use of multiple elements. He also is enthusiastic about the time saved by using a Wacom tablet to draw directly in Studio and not having to scan paper drawings.___________________________________________________________________________________

Based in New York, Jonathan Charles Doyle is a Painter, Sculptor, Animator, Director, Set and Lighting Designer. With a quality and freedom of brushstroke in his art, Jonathan is not only an incredibly talented, outspoken and prolific artist, but can seemingly turn his hand to anything. The animation he creates contains both humor and action. “The drawing style is loose and trying not to be boxed in by a rote styl-ized form,” he shared. Jonathan’s experience with moving images is based on video production and he uses Final Cut Pro for editing videos, so he was pleased to learn that it was compatible with Toon Boom Studio. Prior to using Studio, his animation experience had been fairly limited and the method used was time consuming as he would draw each individual frame by hand on paper. “Studio allows me to work at light speed compared to my original work process,“ he continued. “My drawings can now be instantly duplicated, attached to motion pegs, I can use automatic lip sync, manipulate my drawings with intuitive drawing tools, add 3D camera move-ments and apply dynamic drop-shadow effects that instantly

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add dimensionality to my work,” enthused Jonathan. “Toon Boom Studio provides me the ability to realize projects fast-er and more efficiently. The Toon Boom technical support staff is very helpful in aiding my education every step of the way, sometimes overextending themselves to help bring my project to fruition. I have learned much about how Studio works by using the well structured and easily understand-able tutorials provided on their website.”___________________________________________________________________________________

Daniel Tello is a Graphic Designer based in Falls Church, Virginia, USA. From an early age Daniel has been interested in graphic design, he made his first webpage in the 7th grade and went on to study graphic design at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. After graduating in 2007, Daniel accepted a position with JDG Communications in Virginia. Although Daniel is a relative newcomer to the profession, with just 3 years under his belt, he has already made a mark with the work he did on the U.S. Federal Trades Commission project You Are Here. The mandate for this project was to construct an interactive educational website to teach middle-schoolers about being smart consumers. One of the benefits of work-

ing on You Are Here was that Daniel discovered Toon Boom Studio. Initially, he had tried to use Flash on the project, but soon realized that with such an animation-heavy project it was going to be a daunting task. When Daniel found out how easy it was to rig and animate cut-out animation char-acters using Toon Boom Studio he was delighted, and “… When I saw that the program had automated lip-syncing, I nearly fell out of my chair,” he said. It didn’t take Daniel long to come up-to-speed on the program. Daniel’s experi-ence with Toon Boom Studio has led him to exclusively use it when he creates animation.

One Pagers: Bringing Out the BestHeather Kenyon is a consultant specializing in the development and production of animation. For five years, she worked at Cartoon Network, where she was the Senior Director of Development, Original Series, leading the development of all series for children 6 – 11 years of age. She is also the former editor-in-chief of Animation World Network. / heatherkenyon.com

At this year’s MIPCOM, Joan and I were looking over some one pagers for up and coming projects. At a result, I thought a great place to start would be with a few tips on how to make your one pagers come to life and really help sell your show.

• Broadcasters and co-production partners are drawn to new, unique and unusual projects. Therefore, avoid being bland and generic at all costs! Highlight what you think are the most interesting and distinc-tive features of your show. Being mild or cautious will not help you break through all the market noise and get noticed.

• Always include a log line, or a one-sentence descrip-tion, of your show.

• Be concise but include a sense of your show’s one-of-a-kind tone and world.

• As you are describing your project hint at the types of episodes we could expect to see and what sort of adventure, drama or humor could happen. Avoid nonspecific phrases like, “anything can happen,” or “adventure and mayhem ensue.”

• Include several pieces of art that reflect the tone of the show and also illustrate the relationships between characters. There should be one image of the entire cast together, then include a number of smaller images that show the characters interacting and moments of extreme action or comedy. This helps give the viewer a better sense of the show.

• Finally never be afraid to have a voice and a point-of-view! Have fun with your one pager. You don’t need to include everything…just enough so someone says, “I want to know more…do you have a bible?”

INDUSTRY TIPBy Heather Kenyon

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Clockwork Zoo’s partners Vince Gibbons and Sean Rogers have been making television in South Africa for 25 years. By investing in solid long term relationships Clockwork Zoo, based in Cape Town, has become one of the most highly respected production companies in Africa. Their under-standing of the production pipeline is key to their success. Through the youth magazine shows, HIP2B2, Destina-tion South Africa, the teen talk show, Keeping it Real, their basketball show, Slam Dunk and the daily live co-production, Hectic Nine-9, they produce over seven hours of program-ming each week. The critically acclaimed animated show URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika is currently airing with it’s second season of 52 episodes and they’ve just complet-ed the pilot episode of Deadbeats, their adult show about slacker zombie housemates. Clockwork Zoo recently made the move from Digital Pro to Harmony with 53 seats in the first phase. The company originally made the decision to move to Toon Boom after completing 104 episodes of their series URBO: The Adventures of Pax Afrika in Flash. All new 2D development and production will be done in Harmony. “The upgrade to Harmony has ensured a smoother, faster pipeline with fewer fixes, and that means a better result for the client”, says Clockwork Zoo’s head of Animation, Matthew Brown. Sean Rogers, Clockwork Zoo’s Manag-ing Director, says: “Toon Boom has invested heavily in the South African industry putting in place a regional office and special training offers. Joan really believed in our company and now its paying off.”

Led by Creative Director Wayne Brejcha and Executive Producer Sean Henry, Calabash Animation, Inc. is the Chicago based animation production studio, known for its award-winning cel, 3D and stop-motion animation for the advertising and entertainment industries. Calabash Anima-tion is perhaps best known for their creative development of some of America’s most beloved brand icons, including a comprehensive campaign for General Mills that includes both on-air and online components. The studio has made several significant investments in new animation talent and technology. “This has been an amazing year for Cala-bash,” Henry said. “The assignments we’re getting have been more exciting and challenging and it was the right time to reinvest in fresh animation talent and some state of the art technology, including some tools that allow us to move to a more paperless workflow.” Specifically, Cala-bash has welcomed animator Jessica Plummer, an accom-plished designer and animator hailing from New York. The company has also recently taken delivery of several new Cintiq tablet display systems from Wacom, as well as the latest versions of the Toon Boom Harmony software. “Toon Boom Harmony is a revolutionary team-based infrastruc-ture for animation production that increases productivity, encourages creativity, perhaps most importantly, enables a paperless workflow. These tools are incredibly powerful and in the hands of our great animation team will allow us to deliver a superior product for client while also helping refine our workflow so that it is more efficient,” said Henry, “and it also allows us to waste less paper in our produc-tions, so it is more environmentally sound.”___________________________________________________________________________________

Based in Ecuador, Quemacoco (Headburn) is a group of producers working together to make dreams come true, without limiting their creative inspiration. With this mission in mind, Quemacoco has become an audiovisual produc-tion and communication laboratory, bringing together a team of young professionals who combine their experienc-es, knowledge, and, mainly, their desire of communicating “fresh ideas” and breaking stereotypes. The management team includes Renato Salazar, Creative Director; Daniel

INDUSTRIAL NEWS

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Jácome, Director and Fabricio Ulloa, Animation Director. Quemacoco develops high quality products for TV, inter-net, multimedia, printed media, and mobile devices. Their services include creative assessment, art direction, commu-nication, animation, video production and post-produc-tion. Having a social responsibility has been important during the growth of the company. “Working with children made us understand that we don’t have to think as adults,” shared Fabricio Ulloa. “Toon Boom has become an impor-tant competitive advantage for the studio. The compatibil-ity with the SWF format has allowed us to create e-learning and multimedia systems with better interactivity. The abil-ity to mix animation styles such as cut-out and classic, the auto lip-sync and the scene manager features reduce and improve radically the time and effort invested in our proj-ects. Toon Boom Animate will definitively enhance our situ-ation and of our positioning in our country,” he added.

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Founded in 2007 by Carlo Harrietha and Jean-Mathieu Bérubé, En Pleine Face offers turnkey post-production services for audiovisual projects. Whether it implies live-action shooting, animation creation, or a combination of the two, En Pleine Face takes care of all post-production steps, from editing to audio mixing and mastering, compositing and 2D animation, all in one studio. In addition to creating several TV commercials, the team has started working with the stand-up comics Les Chick N’Swell on Une année Chick N’Swell, a feature length film for Super-Écran. The team also works on Les Sans-Fils, a Teletoon series directed by Michel Courtemanche for which they extensively used Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. “This project is a puppet show targeted for teens and adults. Storyboard Pro offered us great flexibility at the level of work planning and reuse of assets,” shared Jean-Mathieu Bérubé. In 2008, the team was proud to pres-ent their first feature length project. Titled Cul-de-$ac, the feature has hit the festival route and took its spectators by surprise due to its breathtaking Asian-style action scenes. This daring approach is a first in Quebec and opens the door

to independent filmmakers to create any genre. Not only it is the first local production with martial arts but also it is the first one to combine live-action with animation, packed with special effects and stunts. The animated sequence combines 2D and 3D and was done using Digital Pro.___________________________________________________________________________________

As summer approaches in the Southern hemisphere, there is more than the summer warming up Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 2DLabs, a full service studio that promises to serve “Animation with a Tropical Twist” is gearing up to what will certainly be their hottest year yet! With production of Jobi’s Room (104 eps x 1 minute) in full swing and pre-production for My Big Big Friend (52x11) just around the corner, things are getting busy! “We are using Jobi’s Room as a ramp up for My Big Big Friend. The one minute format is great for training and to get the new guys to cut their teeth into Digital Pro,” says animation director Andres Lieban. The studio will triple its size from 25 to over 75 people over the next 9 months. It will move from Digital Pro to Harmony. André Breitman, the studio’s head and executive producer to both series is looking forward to the change. “A soft-ware like Harmony will allow us to grow without losing control over the quality of our work.” My Big Big Friend will be co-produced with Breakthrough Entertainment and has been sold to Treehouse Television. “We are proud to have been chosen by Treehouse. We admire their work and we are confident that our show will dazzle them.”

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TECHNOLOGY NEWS

An Easy-to-Use Addition to the Existing ArsenalToon Boom Animate’s user friendliness and advanced creative capabilities make it a cool addition to your anima-tion toolkit. Its shortcut sets seamlessly replicate the most standard animation environments.

The Best Animation Toolset. Period.Animate brings together the most advanced animation feature set available on the market, all embedded in a flexible environment: vector, bitmap, symbols, pegs, camera, morphing, inverse kinematics, advanced lip sync to name a few.

No Need to CheatAnimate adapts to your creative ways whether you are trained in traditional or digital animation. It also supports most standard formats for seamless asset transfer and multi-channel digital output.

Packaged in a streamlined user interface, Animate offers powerful vector-based drawing tools, superior timeline with symbols support, a robust library structure and interactive camera tools. In addition, Animate includes morphing, inverse kinematics and compositing capabilities conveniently set within one application.

Animation unlimited.

Toon Boom just released Animate, a unique animation software that combines the best of digital cartoon animation with a creator-friendly attitude.

No matter what your animation habits are, Toon Boom Animate knows how to take care of a full project from asset imports and content creation up to animation and compositing. Vectors, bitmaps, symbols, pegs, Animate combines them all for maximum freedom and performance. Animate’s features and shortcut sets fit so nicely into your friendly circle of Adobe® products and animation techniques that you will feel comfortable in minutes.

Set the action in style with its multiplane camera, Animate enables you to set up your scene in 3D, access a powerful Graph editor and apply accurate Ease control on your action.


learning editionFREE

www.toonboom.com/animate

Explore true digital animation Animate enables you to create tradigital and bitmap animation as well as combine both styles. You can access advanced lip-sync and cell swapping tools to give an extra edge to your content creation process.

Unleash your creative styleRefine your artwork style using multiple brush tools, textures and gradients to get a unique look and feel. Vector Art combined with bitmaps deliver a more profes-sional looking animation.

Animate faster Symbols and pegs work in unison. Keyframing in cut-out and tradigital animation is a breeze. Easily fine-tune your animation to get the result you have imagined.

• Resolution-independent scenes combining vector and bitmap animation

• High Resolution compositing engine with 16 bits per channel bitmap rendering

• OpenGL accelerated 3D Space environment for accurate multi-plane camera setup and easy depth positioning

• Automatic updates to all View windows when changes are made to drawings

• Reusable elements and template stored in library

• Unique real time anti-aliasing technology in working canvas

Propel your animation to the next level Take a leap forward in your animation creation, thanks to morphing, inverse kinematics, library building, colour ID and the 15 most commonly used special effects built in Animate.

Enjoy a smooth integrationAnimate can import leading file formats, including MOV, SWF, PSD, AI and PDF, as well as export to video in MOV and FLV. Animate outputs 4:3, 16:9 and full-HD 1920 x 1080 video formats. Get started immediatelyAnimate is delivered with a host of practical extras, including a Getting Started Guide covering the various workflows you can explore to create animation, video training and many ready-to-use templates for a speedy learning experience.

Take a leap forward in your animation creation, thanks to morphing, inverse kinematics, library building, colour ID and fifteen most commonly used special effects built into Animate.

Whether you want to create artwork, set up your action or add special effects, or customize your workspace as you need, each tool comes with a contextual interface that will let you set your preferences in a click.


Case study

House of Cool provides concept and pre-production envi-ronment and character designs, digital storyboard, and story development services for a host of clients in commer-cial, television, feature film, gaming and interactive media. Broadening the scope of their services, House of Cool acquired high-end CG studio, Red Rover in June of 2008. Red Rover Studios provides their clients with a variety of full CG and graphic design production services to complete the pre-production and production life cycles. “We feel it is a natural fit as both studios are committed to quality and creative excellence as well as artistic and technical innova-tion” explained Wesley Lui, Co-founder and Director of Operations at House of Cool.

Since opening the studio doors in June of 2004, House of Cool has grown from two employees to 65 artists, producers, production managers and management both at House of Cool and Red Rover Studios. House of Cool’s first big break came from Nelvana. They both worked together to develop a pre-production platform, which would allow them to focus on digital storyboards and designs. It was with Nelvana that they were introduced to Toon Boom and its array of software capabilities. “Toon Boom was an emerging force in animation software and is now the lead-ing innovator helping artists to create content while mini-mizing IT hiccups. Toon Boom, primarily Toon Boom Story

Board Pro, has allowed us to develop creative story in an efficient manner without sacrificing quality in our boards” continued Wesley.

In the past, House of Cool created a show for Disney Television titled Lumber Jacksons. More recently, House of Cool developed kids television series Betty Banner Party

House of Cool Sizzles on Storyboard Pro

House of Cool Inc. is a pre-production studio with a focus on the development of original content. Their business is built on transforming their client’s most valued intellectual properties into compelling and marketable products. They have developed and designed content for Pixar Studios, Blue Sky Studios, Laika Entertainment, Universal Studios and the Weinstein Company. They have also completed television series projects with Disney Studios and Nelvana Limited.

Images courtesy of House of Cool

Ricardo Curtis, Wesley Lui


“Chromaconcerto has triggered huge interest from the music community. We are discussing the idea of making animated shorts as well as musical works from two or three composers available on the net for people to create their own musical experience.”

Planner and El Hombre La Mancha, signing a distribution agreement with DECODE Enter-tainment. The team looks forward to gearing up for production on these properties as well as launching a number of new properties in the near future. They are currently in develop-ment on two more children’s animated series, Spaghetti West, a series of 26 twenty minute episodes and Roboyo, a series of 26 eleven minute episodes.

The team behind the company is as cool as its name. Let’s introduce Ricardo Curtis, the Founder and President of House of Cool. Ricar-do has over eight animated feature films under his belt as an animator, supervising animator, story artist and head of story distinctions on such films as Monsters Inc., The Incredibles (Pixar Studios) and Horton Hears A Who! (Blue Sky Studios). He has taught at CalArts and Sheridan College for Animation and Story Development. Wesley Lui is Co-founder and Director of Operations. As a graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University with a degree in economics and with his past experience in commercial lending and investment advisor positions, Wes played an integral role in structuring the acquisition of high-end CG studio Red Rover by House of Cool, leading negotiation and valuation of the deal. Andrew Ng is the Television Story Supervisor at House of Cool and attend-ed Sheridan College Classical Animation Program. He has worked in the industry since 1995 in various departments of pre-production and has been storyboarding since 2000. He is responsible for overseeing storyboards on series produc-tion, and producing high quality and consistent storyboards for all clients.

House of Cool has been using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro since 2007 in series production and has integrated it into their production pipeline. “The program is very easy to

get accustomed to since most people are computer savvy these days, and after a day of training most board artists are up and running by day two. With the tools available in Storyboard Pro, we are better able to concentrate on story-telling and not the peripherals that make the job tedious,” commented Wesley.

“There are numerous advantages to Storyboard Pro, the biggest being able to work more effectively with numer-ous board artists both in-house and freelance. Whereas storyboards are normally a solitary job, we can now build an effective team of artists that can maintain quality and consistency for our clients. Working with Directors has been simplified as they can now draw right onto the file instead of writing their revisions, which can be vague or misleading at times.”

“Being able to create one file that can be used from the rough stage through to the final board is very convenient. It’s a lot more difficult to have something go wrong with a computer file, which can be backed up numerous times, than a paper board where spilling a cup of coffee on it can ruin weeks of work. By using a server, artists can now check their boards to previous boards to maintain a consistent look to a show, which is a big priority to clients who ask us to deliver season’s worth of shows.”

“The formatting tools in Storyboard Pro have been a great time saver in tight-deadline shows. Just re-numbering a storyboard for delivery can be a real messy and tedious chore, but with the renumbering tool, that stage is now an after-thought. I’ve seen a lot of boards where something as important as Action Notes are illegible because artists tend to have messy handwriting, but being able to type it out saves us a lot of time and clients big headaches.”

“The turn-around on a board is much less complicated specifically in regards to revisions. Being able to work on the original board to do the revisions, and not have it get muddled as it would on paper is great. Normally we’d have to use post-it notes all over a revised board in order to save time, but that creates a cumbersome board. And in practical

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Andrew Ng


terms, getting a board with lots of post-its and tape through a photocopier is a real chore.”

“By having the digital board, we are now able to upload boards to multiple clients at the same time. This is especially useful when dealing with clients in multiple time zones, and offers a huge savings in time and shipping costs. Now every-one can get the board at the same time.”

“Story artists are always trying to find ways to be faster. Since the job is repetitive in many respects, saving a minute here or there on a task can prove to be very beneficial in the long term. Not having to erase is a big one, now control z allows us to draw as freely as possible without having to worry

about a misplaced line. We just get rid of it and start again.”

“Another thing clients love is that all the panels of a story-board now have a background in it. Being able to drag a background layer into multi-ple panels makes the board aesthetically pleasing and much better to view during the leica stage. The transition from paper to digital was very easy as most people these days are pretty savvy with comput-ers. Most people are up and running within a day, so there is very little learning curve.”

“The key features we are using the most are probably the Light Table tool, as well as the Onion Skin tool. The Onion Skin tool is great for syncing up poses through long animation scenes, and the Light Table tool is great for when we go to clean-up. These tools allow us to concentrate on the actual drawing instead of worrying whether or not the character is getting bigger, or if the draw-ing has moved over time when it shouldn’t.”

“We are also using the Library and Import functions to bring in actual backgrounds

to use in the board. This stops us from wasting time re-draw-ing things that don’t need to be reproduced for a storyboard, as well as ensuring that characters are acting in the actual environments that they will be inhabiting. This is something that is beneficial all the way through production from story-boarding to layout and to animation.”

“We have storyboard teams for shows that involve multiple episodes and the tool has allowed us to be a more effective team. Where before, having someone help out on a board could sometimes be more trouble than it was worth, in terms of maintaining consistency, we can now have multi-ple people working on one board. We can then take those individual segments and place them back into the original file. This allows us to hand out the board to multiple clean up artists and then recompile the board into one file. Since we can send them the whole file, they have an idea how their section is working with the rest of the board. This is espe-cially useful with freelance artists who would normally just receive their section and have no idea how it relates to the other parts.”

“When Exporting, we normally use the PDF format since that is universally accepted. Also, we export JPEG files to the clients so that they can create animatics. This is a huge time saver on their side, instead of having to scan in the paper boards and then lift off each panel to go into their editing suites.”

House of Cool and Red Rover’s current plans include an ongoing drive to cross-pollinate the two studios creative and technical capabilities, as well as reaching more clients with innovative, high-calibre production and creative services. House of Cool also seeks to work with clients and strategic partners to develop its own library of extraordinary IP, push-ing entertainment content to new heights.


Big Soul has developed and produced several award-winning television series, such as Moccasin Flats and numerous short films such as Thomas King’s I’m Not The Indian You Had In Mind. Moccasin Flats’ three seasons aired on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) and Showcase Televi-sion and were the most successful Aboriginal programme, in addition to being the first Aboriginal created, produced and controlled dramatic series in North America, to receive the distinction as a Best Dramatic Series Gemini nominee.In 2007, Big Soul started its first animation project, titled By The Rapids. It tells the story of a pampered urban teen, Cory Littlehorn, who has no choice but to adapt to life in the odd little Mohawk community of “By The Rapids” when his parents fail to return from a luxurious retreat to collect him.

An hilarious comedy-animation, By The Rapids was creat-ed, written and directed by Mohawk filmmaker, Joseph Tekaroniake “Dega” Lazare from Kahnawake, a Mohawk community located just south of Montréal, Québec. Season One will consist of seven episodes and will air in Winter 2008. Another six episodes have already been given the green light and another seven scripts are currently in development to complete Season Two. By The Rapids is available in both Mohawk and English languages. Additional team members include Peter Jensen - Producer and Production Manager, James Kinistino - Editor, Bojan Redzic - Animation Supervi-sor and Beverly Maguire - Animation Studio Coordinator.

Despite his young age, Dega Lazare brings a wealth of experience to the team. His story is a testament that dedi-cation, passion and talent can make dreams come true. At age 13, he created his first short film which received great reviews in Kahnawake. Self-taught, Dega went on to produce two additional shorts which earned him an invitation to the 2002 Sundance Film Festival where he was noticed by Big Soul. He started working at the studio as an intern and took this opportunity to successfully pitch and produce Might of the Starchaser that would make him, at the age of 19, the youngest filmmaker at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

Led by Laura J. Milliken, the accomplished producer and entrepreneur, Big Soul Productions is celebrating its tenth anniversary, with a very impressive track record. Since its inception, the Toronto-based studio has been a leader in Aboriginal screen based content programming. Building its strength in live-action, the studio offers a complete range of services from creative development, to pre-production up to post-production, for feature films, series, documenta-ries, music videos and shorts.

Case study

Images courtesy of Big Soul Productions

Big Soul Animates Aboriginal Values and Humor using the Toon Boom Pipeline

Dega Lazare, Laura Milliken, Peter Jensen, James Kinistino


While working as an intern at Big Soul, Dega pitched his By The Rapids idea to Laura Milliken, who after seeing his four minute pitch, promoted the show to broadcast-ers. This is how the animated adventure started. During the summer of 2007, Dega had to create a thirty minute pilot using entry-level animation software that made his task quite challenging. “This is why we started to look at other options in the market place, either outsourcing to another Canadian studio or using better technology. On the costs side, it made more sense to equip ourselves with the right tools and all roads led to Toon Boom” shared Peter Jensen and James Kinistino. “When I started using Digital Pro, I really appreciated finding all the features I needed,” commented Dega. “Toon Boom was instrumental in making the show successful. The challenge was not to compromise any creative idea. The technology enabled us to match the vision with reality and deliver high entertainment value in each episode,” he continued.

By the Rapids uses a combination of traditional and cut-out animation techniques, and requires the team to work on both a part-time and full-time basis over two shifts, seven days a week. The production team includes a studio coor-dinator, three background artists, three storyboard artists,

six character designers and layout artists, six colour artists, three riggers and twenty animators. During the summer of 2008, Big Soul hired half of Max The Mutt’s third year interns and many of them moved to different tasks to devel-op their experience.

During pre-production, the main tool Dega uses with the team is Storyboard Pro, as he explained “Our storyboard artists work remotely so we send them the scripts; they create the boards and send them back to us for comments and approval. Storyboard Pro makes this process much faster.” Once the boards are approved, they are export-ed in the Digital Pro format to be used as a reference for timing and animation creation. Characters are drawn on paper and then scanned in to start building the library of assets. “Digital Pro is a very powerful animation software. We make great use of the colour palette, camera, special effects and morphing capabilities throughout the project.

All these advanced features save us a lot of time, especially when there are revisions that can be implemented in real time,” commented Bojan Redjic.

The team delivers 10.5 minutes of final animation per week and the animation creation process becomes faster from one week to the next thanks to the reuse of assets. With an additional six episodes recently approved, the team can foresee even more reuse and greater quality as the time savings will enable them to be more creative. As animation is a new field for Big Soul, their goal is to build a strong capac-ity internally and position the studio as an animation facility as well. They have additional animation projects in the works, among them a TV Christmas Special titled Coyote Solstice, to air on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2009.

It is worth mentioning that Big Soul plays an active role on the training front, injecting the production industry with a young talented force coming from the Aboriginal community. Big Soul is committed to creating capacity in the Canadian film and television industry for Aboriginal people, who represent an extremely small percentage of professionals in the field. The studio delivers its own custom designed film and televi-sion empowerment training programs for Aboriginal youth entitled Project One Generation. So far, over three hundred young people have been trained on skills related to live action production, both on camera and behind. In the field of anima-tion, Big Soul is working closely with Max the Mutt to make sure the trainees learn all the animation principles and techniques.

Big Soul shows a lot of wisdom in its strong desire to make Aboriginal talent shine through live-action and animation proj-ects. It is important for them to present a different side of the community than the more common one we see. Their mission is commendable and we wish them the best of success.


Lead by Alex Gueriguian and David Nadezhdin (co-found-ers), Fidel Studios team is comprised of a variety of talent such as 2D animators, multimedia designers, developers and producers. What makes Fidel Studios different from other companies is its ability to offer a range of services, from traditional to emerging media such as animated content, graphic design, online virtual worlds, online games, interac-tive applications, and more recently mobile applications for the iPhone. The ability to combine quality animations and interactive applications makes Fidel Studios appealing to advertizing agencies and entertainment industries.

“It’s not about traditional vs digital. It’s about change and we have noticed that the advertising and the entertainment industries are faced with new ways when creating and plan-ning projects. We believe that a collaborative approach to engage the consumer into an experience is relevant for the success of any project. Our expertise in the field of anima-tion, interactive and entertainment provides great insight on the strategy to adopt and deliver quality work all under one roof,” stated Alex Gueriguian.

“Our cross-discipline approach takes into perspec-tive multiple aspects of a brand, business, experience and environment allowing us to break the boundaries between different mediums,” he continued.

Fidel Studios offers a complete digital animation pipeline (paperless and full animation process). Their philosophy is based on the methods of the Golden Age of 1940’s Cartoons. To do so, Fidel Studios has equipped itself with Toon Boom Digital Pro and Storyboard Pro. Each unit is appointed a Director with their own team to bring out the most of every project and the most of every team member. Their objective is to produce long lasting projects and develop talent that will grow creatively together. Fidel Studios team relies on three main attributes which makes it innovative and consis-tent with the market’s need to have its content evolve across multiple platforms.

Alex Gueriguian, co-founder and digital director, has served the film and advertizing industries in terms of digital content. With a background in storytelling, design, anima-tion, online gaming and entertainment, his expertise come to play in terms of how to develop and deploy content across digital platforms to maximize exposure and user experience. David Nadezhdin, co-founder and interactive director, was a previous owner of an interactive firm before co-founding Fidel Studios. His expertise in user experience, technical knowledge, and creative execution allows for every digital and interactive project to come together and attain its objectives.

Fidel Studios is an independent animation and interactive studio based in Montreal, Canada that produces evocative, expressive and relevant content for a variety of platforms such as, advertising, online gaming, entertainment and multi-media. With a background in film, animation and multimedia combined with agency and production experience, Fidel Studios’ goal is to provide clients and talent with an intimate environment for ideas to be developed and achieved.

Case study

Fidel Studios Creates Engaging Content Using Toon Boom Paperless Pipeline

Fidel StudiosViviane Collette, Alex Gueriguian, David Nadezhdin, Alberto Gonzalez, Andrew Fraticelli, Chantal Bédard, Alex Boyer, Rémi Joanettte, Jean-Laurent Ratel

Images courtesy of Fidel Studios


A wonderful asset newly arrived at Fidel Studios is Chantal Bédard, a veteran and leader in the anima-tion industry. She played an impor-tant role in helping the cartoon industry adopt digital technolo-gies. Over the last 12 years, Chan-tal has directed and produced many animated television series. Chantal also headed Oasis Anima-tion one of the largest animation studios in Montreal. Some projects include, the popular series 6teen and a daily episode On s’écoute parler (François Perusse) as a direc-tor. Fidel Studios is currently developing PedPals, an online virtual world for kids (ages 6 to 12) that provides them with the ability to create their own avatars, explore the world, play online games and join a social network. The project offers a back door approach to education, well-being and the discovery of new cultures with fun and games.

For PedPals Fidel Studios used a paperless process in Digital Pro to design rich and detailed characters, props and backgrounds helping to achieve the level of detail required for the project. “The project could have been drawn and animated in Flash, but Toon Boom offered more possibili-ties in the long run for the overall scalability of the project,” shared Chantal Bedard.

The Fidel Studios team of 2D artists was split into differ-ent groups. “A part of our artists would work on game play, backgrounds and props, while others, on the avatars, inte-rior and exterior locations. This simple structure helped us achieve an efficient production pipeline and reach the expected quality for the overall project. The lead artist collaborated with our interactive team to ensure a quick and efficient integration from all of the animations into the platform for development,” she continued. Parallel to this project, Fidel Studios is also developing an animated teaser to promote the platform. “It is a great challenge to combine an interactive and animated experience using a compelling story to promote the online content,” stated Alex.

In addition, Fidel Studios is currently finalizing the produc-tion of Eagle Creek, an animated feature film for a mature audience. Eagle Creek is a conceptual road movie that takes place on a golf course fairway where playing golf leads to a high body count. The film was produced using Digital Pro with a team of six animators over the course of 15 months. It was a first for Fidel Studios.

Unique in its genre, Eagle Creek is sure to catch the atten-tion of its audience with its edgy content and visual style. Using painted backgrounds and realistic looking characters, the director and lead animator, Keven Synnott, a Montreal based artist, tackled the project with passion and dedica-tion. “It was possible to achieve such a surprising result in such a short lapse of time because our animation unit was providing creative and technical insight at every stage of the production. Toon Boom provided us with the ability to create a traditional animation style that was very fluid,” explained Chantal.

Fidel Studios’ success is primarily based on the fact that they take the time and make the effort by investing into their talent and projects. “Allowing time for research, develop-ment and optimization gives us an overall edge in deliver-ing memorable projects that are high in quality, scalable and cross-platform,” concluded Alex. Fidel Studios has certainly set a solid foundation to create unique content ready for delivery on-air, online and on-device, which perfectly falls into current and future entertainment needs. Congrats!Im

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SCHOOLS ON BOARD

Founded in Lausanne in 1980, the school of visual arts Ceruleum has been focusing mainly on developing work-shops and foundation class. In 2005, two new programs were launched in the fields of Classical Animation and Illus-tration. The complete course of these programs takes place over three years, 36 hours of classes per week, ten months per year. A Master’s in directing animated movies, spread out over two years, complete the offer of the professional programs. The Classical Animation Program proposes to learn all the process of creating an animated film, mainly from the animator point of view. Most of the time is spent drawing on paper, observing and learning to understand the motion of life. They also approach the peripheral fields such as the storyboard or the character design and different tech-niques like 3D or the stop-motion. Toon Boom Digital Pro and Pencil Check Pro are the two principal tools used by the students. At the end of the three years, the students have to demonstrate their skills and abilities to work as animators. The Master proposes to go further in storytelling, art devel-opment and production management for those who want to tell their story more than animate the stories of others.___________________________________________________________________________________

Founded in 1991, Princess Sumaya Univer-sity for Technology (PSUT) is the non-profit private Jordanian university. It is a leading university in information technol-ogy, communications, and electronics. It is regarded as a centre of educational excel-

lence and recognized as a pioneer and an advanced Arab university in the domain of ICT. In 2006 academic year, PSUT initiated the Computer Graphics and Animation program as the first of its kind, not only in Jordan, but also in the region. The program was designed to offer students a joyful, yet an artistic experience, in a scientific platform. The main goal of the program was to provide the students with the theoreti-cal background needed in the field of digital graphics and the scientific knowledge that exists behind the concept of

computer animation. PSUT has integrated Digital Pro and Storyboard Pro as the main tools to deliver their animation courses. The students are allowed to produce traditional and paperless animation for their class projects and to learn how to meet the standards of actual production in terms of quality and speed and to experience the full production of animated movies in their final projects. ___________________________________________________________________________________

The animation program at Cégep du Vieux Montréal (CVM) will celebrate its tenth anniversary in 2009! Since the begin-ning, two main objectives have guided the training program: develop strong traditional animation skills in students and meet the market place’s requirements. At the end of the program, each student creates his/her own short, extensively going over all animation production steps, from character design, to storyboarding, background design, animation and compositing. As the students have to meet the highest quality standards during the production of their shorts, Toon Boom technology was the most sensible choice. In addition to Harmony, CVM has also integrated Pencil Check Pro for line testing and Digital Pro to introduce the cut-out animation techniques. At the end of the three-year program, gradu-ates leave with a solid knowledge in animation production, having developed a strong sense of versatility, competence and autonomy. These assets represent a solid foundation to build their own career and become key players in the anima-tion industry. The year-end Gala is a great opportunity for the industry to express its appreciation of CVM graduates’ excel-lent work, thanks to its strong and enthusiastic participation at the event year after year.

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Earlier this year, Toon Boom Animation began a campaign to save the man behind the voice of the Toon Boom Animation tutorials, Emru Townsend. He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia in December 2007, and in early 2008, he discovered he needed a bone marrow transplant. His only sibling was not a match, and he quickly learned about the unrelated registries of donors worldwide, and the lack of visibility of accurate information about registration as a donor and the dona-tion process if someone proves to be a match.

Emru treated his search for an unrelated donor in a similar manner to how he met new friends and colleagues in the anima-tion world. He reached out to other people, and was always glad to lend a hand, without worrying what he might get in return. Emru found a potential match in June, and in Septem-ber, the donor was still committed to providing a donation. Emru received a transfusion of the donor’s stem cells the day before the Ottawa International Animation Festival, fittingly, at the Ottawa Hospital 10 minutes away. For this reason only, he missed his first Ottawa festival in 20 years. Despite his trans-plant successfully engrafting to his body, his cancer proved to be too resistant to chemotherapy and stem cell therapy, and he died peacefully on November 11, in the presence of his family.

In addition to Toon Boom, he freelanced as a writer for Softimage and Autodesk. He founded Frames Per Second magazine in 1991, which later became a website in 2003 that still runs today. Emru was a vital part of the Montreal and international animation community, in person and online. He has asked that people learn more about becoming regis-tered donors, and sign up if they can. Toon Boom Animation is committed to helping get Emru’s message across, even though his voice is now silent.

Here are some common facts about stem cell registration and donation that are often unknown or misunderstood.

1. 70% of people requiring a stem cell transplant need an unre-lated donor.The first choice is a family member, but more people will have to rely on a stranger.

2. Register by providing a blood sample in Quebec or the UK, or a cheek swab sample in the rest of Canada or the US.In the US, UK and most of Canada, you can even fill in your registra-tion online and get a kit sent to your home. This is a free service in Canada and the UK as well as many other countries. In the US, there are ways to register for free.

3. Donation is safe, fast, and not risky.You never donate stem cells or bone marrow at risk to your own life. What-ever is donated replenishes itself naturally in the body. There is a myth of extreme pain, which is one of the major reasons people do not donate. In fact, the donor may feel achy and sore, and possible flu-like symptoms before or shortly after donation, depending on the process used.

4. There are 2 ways to do it.70% of people will donate in a process that takes a few hours and is similar to donating blood. For a few days leading up to the extraction process, the donor receives injections to produce additional stem cells in the body.30% of people will donate by having liquid marrow extracted from within the back of the pelvic bone. The donor will be under general anesthetic or an analgesic will be applied in the area of extraction.

5. Many people cannot find matches.There are 8 blood types, but for a stem cell match there are several million combinations of possible human leukocyte antigen (HLA) profiles - 150 billion different possibilities in theory.

Blood type does not affect a matching. When a donor has a different blood type, if the transplant works, the recip-ient’s blood type will change! Even though blood is impor-tant, and people who need transplants (in addition to many other people) need donated blood to survive, people with a rare blood type can probably find a match in a room with 100 people of different ethnicity. For someone looking for a stem cell match, they may need a stadium of 20000 or 50 stadiums (or more) to find a match. Then they have to hope that person is on the registry.

The most likely match within the general population is someone of the same or similar ethnicity. Many donor pools are severely underrepresented, including donors of African, Aboriginal, Asian and Latino descent. It is vital for these numbers to increase to help more people find matches.

So far due to the efforts of many people who have continued to support this awareness campaign by spread-ing the word and getting registered, two matches other than Emru’s have occurred.

To learn more, go to www.heal-emru.com. Questions can be directed to [email protected].

Resources:OneMatch (Canada): www.onematch.caNational Marrow Donor Program (US): www.marrow.orgAnthony Nolan Trust (UK): www.anthony.nolan.org.ukOther registries: www.healemru.om/registries.php

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REGISTER FOR LIFE

Animating the world.

Animation unlimited.Discover a world of infinite possibilities. / toonboom.com

Toon Boom News Winter 2008

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