Untitled - Toon Boom Animation

Toon Boom on the Move
at a Fast Pace
The Toon Boom News is back! Toon Boom’s customers and friends kept saying how much they missed the printed version of this publication so here it is. Packed with exciting news, this issue is proud to spotlight the global
Toon Boom community and present Toon Boom’s multiple outreach programs.
More than ever, Toon Boom is dedicated to education. To that end, the company adopted a partnership
approach at the province and county levels throughout
North America to make the Toon Boom educational
program available to educators and students. As an example, Toon Boom has worked closely with the Educational
Resource Acquisition Consortium of British Columbia,
the California Orange County Department of Education, the Quebec Network for Competency Development via Technology Integration (Récit), the Federation
of Quebec Private Schools, the Quebec Training and
Research Centre in Education and the Leading English
Education and Resource Network in Quebec. The goal
is to position Toon Boom software as an efficient communication tool to teach all subjects, while developing excellent pedagogical material that facilitates the integration
of technology in the classroom.
In early September,
Toon Boom launched the
Myouterspace Contest,
hosted by William Shatner. This out of this world
initiative brings together
Toon Boom, Myouterspace
and the Academy of Art
University, giving artists
the opportunity to show-
Toon Boom App
for the iPad
Back in August 2010,
Toon Boom has launched
its first iPad app called
Flipboom Lite. This free
app is designed to easily
create simple smoothlooking animation on
your iPad.
Loaded with a sample
project, Flipboom Lite
offers introductory tools
to learn and create
animation in a fun and
playful environment.
Flipboom Lite lets you
use your fingertips to
doodle, scribble or draw
a sequence of images
and see them move.
Information about Flipboom Lite is available
online at toonboom.
com/app
“Porting our technology
to mobile devices is a
natural move for Toon
Boom. We are pleased
to release Flipboom Lite,
as our first foray in that
direction”, shared Joan
Vogelesang, President
and Chief Executive Officer at Toon Boom.
This issue’s cover courtesy of Atlantyca S.p.A. / Moonscoop S.A.S.
Toon Boom Corporate Headquarters
+1 514 278 8666
7 Laurier Avenue East
Montreal (Quebec) Canada H2T 1E4
toonboom.com
2
Toon Boom News
Printed in Canada
winter 2010/2011
case their skills as top-notch animators. The contest challenges animators to create their own original video based
on a short William Shatner monologue featuring myouterspace.com. Participants are required to use the Personal
Learning Edition of Toon Boom Animate or Animate Pro
to design and direct their own animated William Shatner using one of three audio voiceovers. The grand prize
winner will be working on an animated project being
developed by Myouterspace. Additional prizes include
Toon Boom Animate Pro licenses and online courses from
education sponsor Academy of Art University.
Toon Boom is very much involved in developing the
animation industry in Africa, expanding its presence
further in North and West Africa. Another focus area is
the Caribbean in which the team has initiated several
training initiatives. In addition to the University of Trinidad and Tobago, the team has conducted a series of
master classes and introductory workshops in Barbados,
in collaboration with the National Council of Science and
Technology. More than 60 animators have been trained.
Toon Boom is also working closely with the University of
West Indies Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination and has a project to set up a Digital Media Learning
Center. In Guyana, the first train-the-trainer session took
place in November where The Brainstreet Group has
become the first Harmony installation. Other initiatives
are underway in Jamaica and Grenada.
On the Awards front, Flip Boom All-Star continues to
garner recognition and reap rewards! Early this year, Flip
Boom All-Star won the Parents’ Choice Silver Award,
which highlighted how
novices can
easily learn
the basics of
putting drawn and painted imagery into motion. It recently received the 2010 Honors Award from the National
Parenting Publications Awards (NAPPA), in the software category. NAPPA rated it as a terrific “get started”
application for those who aspire to work in the video
game or animation professions. Finally, Flip Boom All-Star
also received the 2010 Award of Excellence from Tech
& Learning as one of the best education offerings of the
past year.
In addition to regular road trips, the Toon Boom
team has an extensive tradeshow calendar for the Winter
2010/2011 season. They will be at Character Dubai,
Booth 3E08, in Dubai, November 29-December 1,
Expotoons, in Buenos Aires, November 30-December
2, Cartoon Connection, in Guadalajara, December 6-9,
Consumer Electronic Show, Booth 26423, in Las Vegas,
January 6-9, Florida Educational Technology Conference, Booth 1521, in Orlando, January 31-February 3,
Texas Computer Education Association, Booth 2693, in
Austin, February 9-11, KidScreen Summit in New York,
February 15-18, Cartoon Movie in Lyon, March 2-4, and
the National Art Education Association in Seattle,
March 17-20 and Tokyo Anime Fair in Tokyo, March 24-27.
Happy Holidays
The Toon Boom Team wishes you and your loved
ones health, peace, happiness for 2011, and lots of
entertaining animated content for the whole year!
Send your greetings using Toon Boom’s fun e-card at
toonboom.com/greetings2011!
Want to be Toon Boom Certified?
The Toon Boom Certified Instructor Program has been developed for professional animators who are interested in
teaching with Toon Boom Professional and Enterprise solutions in educational institutions, training centres, studios, or
as corporate trainers or freelancers.
Why Choose the Toon Boom Certification Program?
• Validate your skills and knowledge
• Open up career opportunities
• Boost your credibility within your field
• Highlight your resume with a Toon Boom Certificate and logo
• Get referred in the Toon Boom Certified Instructors database
Information about the Instructor Certification Program is available online at
toonboom.com/edu/certified_instructor.php
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
3
Toon Boom Care
Reel Help to Feed Real Children
by Amy Quek
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Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
The entire production process of the animation includes
character and background design, storyboard, animatics,
key frame animation, clean-up, in-between animation, digital ink and paint-and-editing production. ITE is dedicated
to providing an authentic learning environment to teach
students how to work and succeed in the industry.
18-year-old ITE student, Nicholas Sim, who was part of
the team, said: “I gained a lot of valuable experience working on this project. The entire production process is reflective of the high professional standards in the industry, and I
learned from my lecturers, who were industry practitioners
themselves.”
The next promotional marketing animation clip for AAH
will be set in an African context and be produced in 2011.
It will be a training platform for another batch of students.
Apart from learning the necessary skills of the trade, students
could also benefit from an increased awareness of supporting meaningful societal causes.
Amy Queck is the Course Manager of Media & Broadcasting
Design at ITE College Central.
Images courtesy of ITE College Central
For about eight months
between
January
and
September 2010, a team
of seven lecturers and 24
students from Singapore’s
Institute of Technical
Education (ITE) worked on a special project on top of their
usual curriculum work. There is much drawing involved: an
average of 2700 drawings in fact, and all for a good cause to
raise awareness on children’s suffering from hunger worldwide.
Welcome to the Digital Animation department of ITE
College Central’s School of Design and Media. The compiled
number of drawings covers 720 frames and tells a 30-second
story revolving around seven characters. Pieced together,
it becomes a 2D animation clip for the efforts of Action
Against Hunger (AAH), a humanitarian organization based
in Canada, that focuses on ending hunger worldwide. Using
Bangladesh as a setting for the storyline, the short film was
intended for screening on World Food Day 2010 on October
16th in Montreal, Canada, to complement AAH’s campaign
initiatives, which are aimed at saving children all over the
world from hunger.
The National ITE Certificate (Nitec) in Digital Animation
course started in 2006. A year later, the Digital Animation
department collaborated with Toon Boom to open a joint
ITE-Toon Boom Centre of Excellence in New Media. The
Centre enables lecturers and students to embark on research
development projects with Toon Boom using software such
as Toon Boom Animate Pro. This partnership also involves
the creation of a real-world studio environment equipped
with tools used by the animation industry and engaging staff
and students with real-world projects.
INDUSTRY TIP
By Mark Simon
Making more money
thanks to real-time animatics
I use Storyboard Pro for more than just animation projects. I also use it extensively for live-action productions.
I recently worked
with a production
company
who
had designed a
really cool corporate video for a
Sea World adventure park. The
problem was that
the Sea World
Storyboard by Mark Simon of Animatics & Storyboards, Inc.
execs had a hard
time understanding some of the complicated special
effects transitions, the elements that made this a special
production.
TOON BOOM STAR
This section is dedicated to Toon Boom employees. In each
issue, we will introduce you to the people behind the technology and put a face to the voice you may have spoken to.
Shabana Ali has been part of the Multimedia Content
Creation Team at Toon Boom since 2008. She is involved
in the development and creation of promotional and
learning material for all Toon Boom products, namely
documentation write-up, user interface concept development, advertisement, character template creation,
and most importantly, video tutorial recording. If you
have gone through the Animate and Animate Pro video
tutorial packs, you should be familiar with her voice and
have listened to her detailed instructions on how to use
these applications. She never misses an opportunity to
give useful tips to make user’s experience even better
and take them to the next level. Shabana is a Dawson
College graduate in Illustration and Design. She also
holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from McGill
University. Prior to joining Toon Boom, she worked for
various art publications and galleries. On her spare time,
she enjoys rock climbing and creating illustrations, keeping her creativity to a fine tune!
When the production company called me, and I had
worked with them many times before, the initial thought
was to storyboard the sequences so they could present
visuals of the transitions to Sea World. I brought my tablet
laptop with me and opened up Storyboard Pro.
Most of the work I had done for this client in previous
years had been drawn on paper or in Photoshop. This
time I started to sketch in Storyboard Pro. Since they were
used to seeing me sketch digitally, the meeting started
exactly the same as any other.
But then the tone of the meeting changed. As I was
sketching my thumbnails of the transitions, I was placing
the various elements on separate layers so I could manipulate them and I quickly added timing and layer moves as
we worked. As we finished going over the first transition,
my client asked to see the boards. I said to them, “Want
to see how it looks in action?”
The response was, “What? Really?”. I played scenes and
the transition and they could see more than just sketches
of their special effect transition, they saw the actual transition in motion…in just a few minutes.
Immediately, the gig of storyboarding the transitions
became a gig of producing an animatic of the whole
video. I love gigs that grow and become more profitable.
That client, like many others that I work with, now insists
on using Storyboard Pro for its speed, flexibility and
improved presentation to their clients.
Did it work? Yes. Sea World execs instantly understood
the creative when they finally saw the animatic. It also
works for me, as providing exceptional help for my clients
means they return as clients.
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
5
Images courtesy of Atlantyca S.p.A. / Moonscoop S.A.S.
Case study
Geronimo Stilton Travels on Harmony to Resolve Mysteries
Atlantyca Entertainment was established in September 2006, by leading Italian publishing entrepreneur and creator
Pietro Marietti, who with Elisabetta Dami, produced one of today’s most successful junior publishing sensations, the
celebrated kids book series Geronimo Stilton. A transmedia company, with Production (including Distribution division), Licensing, Content and a Foreign Rights Departments, Atlantyca Entertainment seeks co-production partners
(and to acquire third party properties) to produce content for TV, movies, books and multi-media. The company along
with co-production partner Moonscoop completed the production of the animated series Geronimo Stilton Season I
(26 x 22’), which premiered internationally in the Fall of 2009.
Both companies are partnered again to produce Season division, has secured 2200 translation deals with 50 leading
II, twenty six new episodes to be completed by the Fall of publishers around the world.
2011.
The corporate team at Atlantyca Entertainment is
The company’s licensing division manages the interna- comprised of seasoned and highly experienced executives,
tional licensing initiatives for the Geronimo Stilton brand all
including Pietro Marietti, Chairman; Claudia Mazzucco,
of its franchise properties the company is the appointed
CEO; Caterina Vacchi, Senior Manager, Executive ProducItalian licensing agent for Moonscoop’s Code Lyoko, Grow- er; Luana Perrero, Distribution Manager, Niccolò Sacchi,
ing Up Creepie and Dive Olly Dive and most recently was
Production Manager; Maria Giovanna Gurrieri, Licensing
appointed the Italian licensing agent of Antoine De Saint- Director, and Carmen Castillo, Foreign Rights Manager.
Exupery’s internationally famous Le Petit Prince. Atlantyca
Based on the award-winning Geronimo Stilton interis a co-production partner and distributor (in Italy only) for national kids’ book series by Edizioni Piemme, the first TV
Dive Olly Dive (Season I and II).
Atlantyca’s foreign rights sales department is the licensor of the Geronimo Stilton book series and is responsible
for seeking new business opportunities for the books and
all of its character spin-off franchises. The Content department aims to create original contents, together with developing and producing loosely-based book series based
on new and popular animated series such as developing
novels for MoonScoop’s Code Lyoko, Dive Olly Dive and
Hero 108. Atlantyca Entertainment is responsible for the
sales of foreign rights for Piemme children’s books and
properties and through a dedicated foreign rights sales
Caterina Vacchi, Niccolò Sacchi, Benji Angoncillo and Johnatan Tinsay
6
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
series centers on the life and adventures of mouse-author
Geronimo Stilton who works as a journalist for the fictional
newspaper, The Rodent’s Gazette. He has a younger sister
named Thea Stilton, a cousin named Trap Stilton, and
a favorite little nephew, nine-year-old Benjamin Stilton.
Geronimo is a nervous, mild-mannered mouse who would
like nothing better than to live a quiet life, but he keeps
getting involved in far-away adventures with Thea, Trap,
and Benjamin. The second season will introduce new characters, new vehicles, a variety of Geronimo’s favourite locations, and the children characters will take a stronger, more
active role in the stories.
The Geronimo Stilton Season I series, produced with
the participation of RAI and M6 France has received wide
spread and critical a cclaim. International broadcasters for
the first season include: Rai 2, Radio Canada, TV2 Norway,
MTV 3 Finland, and Nickelodeon Northern Europe International for Belgium, The Netherlands and Scandinavia.
In Iberian markets, broadcasters include Turner’s Cartoon
Network, Boomerang and Boing for Spain, RTP 2 and Canal
Panda in Portugal; LTV (Latvia), Al Jazeera Children Channel (Pan Arab), Media Corp (Singapore), Content Union
(Kazakhstan), Minimax (Multi-territory Eastern Europe)
and Noga’s Logi (Israel). In French speaking countries, the
series is broadcast on TV5 Monde and CFI.
Additional broadcasters include Dogan’s D-Smart TV
and TRT (Turkish Radio & Television Corporation) (Turkey)
for fall 2011; Poland’s TVN and TVN Style with Media
Service Zawada picking up DVD rights; EBS (Korea); Imavision (HV rights for French and English speaking Canada);
OKTO TV (Singapore); Truevisions (Thailand) and SUNTV
(India). Universal Pictures Video (Multi-territory Western
Europe) bringing the total number of territories to more
than 80.
Atlantyca and its partners have chosen the Toon Boom
pipeline to deliver both seasons of Geronimo Stilton,
which represents a total of 52 twenty-two minute episodes
completely done with traditional animation. From Storyboard Pro to Harmony, each studio involved in this multisite production relied on a unified and integrated workflow
to meet deadlines and quality standards.
The production pipeline for Geronimo Stilton Season I
was shared globally, linking Italy, France, USA, the Philippines and India together.
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
7
Case study (continued)
In order to deliver the first 26 episodes, the
following teams have been put together:
Distribution of scope of work
Italy
•Spearheading all of the production
•13 scripts (carried by Atlantyca using American writers)
•Story editing (carried by Atlantyca using an American
story editor)
•Director (carried by Atlantyca using an American
director)
•Art direction (carried by Atlantyca using an American
director)
•10 Storyboards/Animatic
•Character design
•X-sheets
•Italian Dubbing
1. In Italy:
•Niccolò Sacchi: Supervising Producer
•Caterina Vacchi: Executive Producer
•Pietro Marietti: Executive Producer (and President)
•Claudia Mazzucco: Executive Producer (and CEO)
•Karen K. Miller: Producer (part of the Atlantyca team,
based in LA)
•Lucia Geraldine Scott (Production Coordinator)
•4 staff members (including legal department, accounting, etc)
France
Atlantyca’s Los Angeles Team from Moonscoop LLC
(hired as work for hire by Atlantyca) included:
Philippines
•Guy Vasilovich: Director
•Peter Anderson: Producer
•Liz Young: Executive Producer
•Finbarr O’Riordan: Production Coordinator
•Melissa Mable: Production Coordinator
•Christine Deitner: Assistant Director (for the second
season) - a few revisionists for storyboards and a few
editors for the final animatics for a total number of 7/8
people.
•13 scripts
•16 Storyboards/animatic
•Background and prop design
•Audio and Video post production
•Produced French dubbing
Animation of 24 episodes
India
Animation of 2 episodes
For character design, storyboards/animatics and the
x-sheets, Atlantyca hired Enarmonia out of Turin to handle
that portion of the production. Enarmonia had at least 10
people involved in the whole process.
Images courtesy of Atlantyca S.p.A. / Moonscoop S.A.S.
2. In France:
8
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
•Caterina Gonnelli: Creative Producer
•Nicolas Atlan: Executive Producer
•Christophe di Sabatino: Executive Producer (and
President)
•Dorothee Lanchier: Production Manager
•Caroline Spiteri: Production Coordinator (for the first
season)
•Rebecca Fraiberger: Script Coordinator
•Marilyn Browne: Production Coordinator (for the
second season)
Additional people involved in the coordination on the
breakdown list, backgrounds and props design, storyboards, the editing of the animatic and the storyboard revisions numbered an estimated 15 people.
3. In the Philippines:
The staff was estimated at 400, including the studio
coordinator, production manager, supervisors and animators.
For Season II, the production staff was slightly larger
since the production timeline is shorter.
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro was used for storyboarding
and animatic pre-editing. The rest of the production was
done within Harmony.
The Italian and French team started the storyboards
with thumbnails, using quick roughs to understand the
whole storyboard and all were hand-drawn. Director’s and
storyboard supervisor’s notes were managed using Storyboard Pro.
Storyboard Pro was used in two different ways:
•Based on the experience of the different storyboard artists, some of them would create the
storyboards digitally, because they were experienced in using tablets.
•For the others, they drew the storyboards on
paper and then the panels were scanned and
imported into the software.
In both cases, in their final stages, Storyboard Pro was
used to pre-edit the animatic before the entire project was
sent to the director for the revisions, final check and final
editing.
Once this step was completed, all drawings were
scanned as well as inked and painted using Harmony.
Effects and compositing were also accomplished within
Harmony out of the Philippines and India.
“The character design was coloured directly into
Harmony. For us, that was a big time saver because our
designers could avoid indicating, on each design board.
the RGB values, since they exported the color palettes and
both studios, in the Philippines and India could use them
directly in the ink and paint stage,” commented Niccolò
Sacchi, Production Manager at Atlantyca Entertainment
and Supervising Producer on Geronimo Stilton.
“Storyboard Pro provided us with enormous timesaving opportunities in one of the most efficient manners—
always resulting in top-quality work. This asset we found to
be extremely invaluable when working with different teams
from one continent to the other. In terms of quality of the
storyboards, the ability to import images directly from key
backgrounds digitally was extremely advantageous, saving
us a vast amount of time because our artists did not need
to re-draw them every time! In addition, it offered more
detail and clear information for the animation studios we
were working with jointly.”
“In regard to the pre-production process, having the
storyboard supervisors and the artists based in Europe
(Italy and France) while the director, the revisionists and the
editors were based in Los Angeles, provided us with the
ability to send very quickly the “working” Storyboard Projects directly to these key creative individuals. This permitted them in return to “act” and modify directly the original
project using all the benefits the software has to offer. This
also proved to be a major benefit for the revisionists.”
“For our production team, dealing with individuals
based in multiple countries with a variety of time zones, we
used an online system (SPI by 3DCLICK) to check the scenes
at different stages of the animation production. On a daily
basis, around 200 scenes were checked and reviewed by
the Supervising Producer, the Director and the Animator
Supervisor. Harmony was an ideal support tool, providing
each studio with the ability to export any video format that
matched the technical requirements of the specific online
software”, concluded Niccolò.
If Geronimo Stilton’s exciting adventures are any indication of Atlantyca’s vitality and creativity, rest assured their
future projects will bring young audiences some new very
entertaining and captivating television programming.
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
9
Case study
Images courtesy of Calabash Animation Inc.
Calabash Animation’s Online ‘Trix Toons’
Honored With Multiple Tellys
If you’ve watched commercials in recent years featuring beloved brand icons such as the Trix Rabbit or Lucky the
Leprechaun, then you have undoubtedly seen the work of Calabash Animation (http://www.calabashanimation.com),
the acclaimed Chicago, Illinois-based animation production studio, known for its award-winning cel, stop-motion and
computer-generated animation
Led by Creative Director Wayne Brejcha and Executive
Producer Sean Henry, Calabash has been entrusted with
some of the ad world’s most durable characters. Moreover,
ad agencies like Saatchi & Saatchi and McCann Worldwide
have turned to Sean and Wayne to bring those iconic characters to life in the new media world. Case in point is Trix
Toons, a web animation project that resulted in three Telly
Awards in the online category.
TrixToons consists of three 7-minute webisodes that
viewers accessed by entering a passcode found on the
lids of the Trix Yogurt product. Set against the backdrops
of various TV and film genres, the storylines featured the
Trix Rabbit in a series of hilarious offbeat adventures that
find the Rabbit and his friends battling his arch nemesis,
“Tibbar”. One film is a superhero adventure spoof called
The Trixters. Another is a western theme called Ride ‘Em
Rabbit. The third is called Trix the Musical, in which the
Rabbit leads a rock band in a battle of the bands competition against the unscrupulous Tibbar.
“Producing three 7-minute shorts is a lot different than
creating a 30-second TV spot,” Brejcha explained. “While it
was challenging to adapt the look of the Trix Rabbit, which
is usually cell animated with CG or live action environments,
it was exciting to really develop the characters with fuller
story lines. “
10 Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
Henry notes that he and Brejcha encouraged the animators to invent and improvise and were inspired to see everyone respond to the challenges the job presented.
“We backed off a lot and let the animators have fun and
they wound up coming up with solutions we might never
have thought of,” Henry says. ”One of the strengths of our
studio is that our artists tend to focus on solutions rather
than limitations. For this project we had some great tools in
the hands of some great talent.”
Calabash relied upon Toon Boom
Harmony and Storyboard Pro as its
tools of choice for the production.
“Toon Boom Storyboard Pro and
Harmony software were indispensable
throughout the entire project, from
start to finish,” Henry says. “We were
able to take our ideas all the way from
initial concept into animation and final
compositing all within the same family
of software. This pretty much eliminated the workflow issues we have faced
in the past when trying to combine
different production pipelines within
one project. Harmony allows us to do
everything from digital drawn animation to 2D puppet animation and
compositing, all within the same software.”
In addition to Henry and Brejcha, the Calabash Animation team included Art Director/Designer Jessica Plummer; Art Director Gary Whitney; Compositor Pat Bradley;
Animators George Gipson, Caitlin Leham, Gary Whitney,
Priscilla Olson, Ian Merch, Pat Bradley, Bob Renzas, Tom
Moore, Ben Chow, BJ Crawford, Tom Riffle, Patrick Cheng;
Background Artists Julia Lundman, Jeremy Rumas, Sarah
Satrun, Catherine Satrun, Jeremiah Alcorn; Production
Manager Diane Grider; and Associate Producer Alexis
Davison.
Looking forward, Calabash continues to be one of the
most highly respected studios for character animation
and is in production on several new commercial and film
projects. The company is currently stretching its creative
muscles with a new two-minute short for Eternal Descent,
a popular Goth comic book/music project, and animation for the forthcoming documentary film by Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar, On the Shoulders of Giants. Calabash has
also recently finished production on a series of new Little
Caesar’s Pizza spots, reviving the animated character after
a long absence from TV ads.
What ties them all together? Calabash’s distinctive
creative vision and the creative tools from Toon Boom that
consistently help bring that vision to life.
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
11
Images courtesy of Liberato Produções Culturais
Case study
Mystical Animation Makes it
to the Big Screen
Founded in 1977, Liberato Produções Culturais is the
oldest and most prolific animation studio in Brazil’s
Northeast. Specialized in animated film production,
it has produced eleven shorts and one feature-length
film titled Boi Aruá, the fifth feature-length animated film ever produced
in Brazil. The studio’s
director is Chico Liberato, who has received
dozens of awards in
Brazil and abroad,
among which: the 1st
FEST Rio; the Moscow
Youth Festival; and the
CCBB Mostra do Filme
Livre, in Rio de Janeiro.
He was a special guest
with Boi Aruá at the
Festival Internacional
ANIMADRID, in Spain,
and the Toulouse Festival, in France. Boi Aruá
was also shown on
French and Spanish
television.
Chico Liberato, Director
12 Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
The team at Liberato Produções Culturais (left to right, top to
bottom): Antonio Cassiano, Antonio Junior, Felipe Assis, Luiz Batalha, Marcelo Vitz, Marcio Oliveira, Mario Alves, Mauritano Junio,
Tiago Oliveira, Victor Lima, Cândida Luz Liberato
Liberato Produções Culturais is currently working
on its second feature-length animated film, Rites of
Passage, all done using Toon Boom Harmony.
Co-produced with Araçá Azul Cinema de Video,
Rites of Passage brings together a cast of very talented people, including: Chico Liberato as Director,
Script Writer and Art Director; Cândida Luz Liberato
as Producer; Alba Liberato as Script Writer; Antônio
Cassiano as Art Director and Background Designer;
Márcio Oliveira as Editor / animatic editor; Claudio
Guido, as Director Assistant; Antônio Júnior as Technical Supervisor; Antônio Júnior, Marcelo Vitz, Mário
Alves, Tiago Oliveira, Felipe Assis and Mauritano
Júnior as Animators.
Some important names from the Brazilian entertainment industry are also associated with this project such as singers Xangai and Margareth Menezes,
actors Jackson Costa, Ingra Liberato, and the composer of the theme song, Elomar Figueira Mello.
Rites of Passage tells the story of two men who
have fulfilled their destinies. At the River of Death,
they tell the boatman Caronte the stories of their
lives. The Warrior fought for justice in a lawless land
while the Saint planted plenty for his people in the
Promised Land. Now, they need to be strong as they
settle scores with their own inner angels and devils.
The film Rites of Passage invites the audience to
think about the most fundamental issues to human
beings as they pass from life to death: what have I
done with my life? What were the consequences of
my acts?
Targeted to the general public, the feature film
will be 80-minute long and produced in high definition, with a delivery in 35 mm. To strengthen the
film’s message, the team intends to use some of the
strongest images and text from the film to create a
literary version of the project. This material will be
distributed to libraries, at talks and workshops, and
at screenings of the film.
True to the studio’s tradition and unique art style,
Rites of Passage was designed as a traditional 2D
animation. The use of symbolic abstractions and
experimental approach to traditional animation are
known characteristics of the studio films, as presented in the historical feature Boi Aruá (1985). However,
the new production is using Toon Boom Harmony to
deliver a more sophisticated animation, taking advantage of its industrial oriented environment to achieve
high levels of productivity.
The first step of the process was crafting a handmade storyboard, done by the director, one screenplay writer and an assistant. In order to test the
content in video format, an animatic editor transferred
the scanned storyboard to Toon Boom Storyboard
Pro (fig. 1). A temporary cast was hired to record
fig. 1
fig. 2
fig. 3
fig. 4
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
13
Case study (continued)
some draft dialogs, essential to guess the timing of
the scenes. The first version of the animatic was then
built and recursively refined, in order to find the best
layout and pace for the
story. “At this point, the
editing capabilities of
the software were of
great use, allowing the
repositioning of scenes,
easy adjustment of the
duration of the shots
and the audio tracks.
Inside the scenes, individual
elements
(as
the characters) were
animated, with either
cuts of the imported
images or newly created
illustrations made with
the drawing tools (fig.
2). Cameras were used
to create dynamic framing options. After the required
changes, the definitive voices were recorded based on
the PDF export of the timeline. When the final version
of the animatic was built, every Storyboard Pro shot
was exported to Stage, providing the animators with
reference video tracks, audio tracks and a simple
camera structure (fig. 3)” explained Chico Liberato.
Still in pre-production, it was fundamental to build
a consistent set of model sheets and prop designs,
leaving them accessible to the animation. Since the
studio works within a
paperless pipeline, all
designs were created
digitally. The vector
references provided a
simple and powerful
way to establish not
only the artistic guidance, but also technical
details such as stroke
thickness and color
palettes.
“Furthermore,
the
modular
structure of Harmony,
where the palettes are
fig. 5
separated files, helped
keeping the consistency of the colors,
since many scene projects could link to the same files.
That’s even more interesting when it’s necessary to
change the palettes of elements that were already
animated” continued Chico. In Rites of Passage, many
color schemes were invented, sometimes for the very
same scenario or characters, in order to suggest various moods (fig. 5). “To achieve that, clone palettes
Images courtesy of Liberato Produções Culturais
14 Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
fig. 6
fig. 7
fig. 8
s
fig. 9
were used. These palettes keep the same link to the
drawings as the original palette, and every one of
them may be completely changed through features
like the Tint Panel or Color Editor,” added Chico. The
model sheets were developed by the director and
the art director, with two assistants.
The backgrounds, done by two background
artists, are planned and built according to the
animatic. Some shots demand very specific locations,
which are built individually. However, in many situations compositions are crafted with the rearrangement of existing templates from the movie library. In
order to develop these templates in a reusable form,
the BG designers, the director and animatic editor
always review the sequences to work in a modular
way. For the scenes with 3D camera movements, the
backgrounds are organized in layers (fig. 6). They’re
initially built as a regular image, and then separated
along the Z axis with the Maintain Size tool. It automatically increases the scale of the more distanced
parts, keeping the layout intact.
The animation is made by 4 leading animators and
2 cleanup artists. The process is mostly traditional,
even though it’s common to separate the characters
into simple sets of layers, adding some flexibility of
the cut out approach to the scheme (fig. 7). By also
combining artificial keyframes, on the drawing layers
themselves or with pegs, the action is broken down to
simpler movements, easier to perform. With the flexibility of the network library, some animation blocks
are easily shared and reused, like the classic case of
walk or run cycles. “Considering the cleanup stage,
splitting the characters into layers also helps to save
time, since only the moving parts of the body are
redrawn. That economy is increased with the fact that
the drawings may be exposed more than once, with
different positions, scales or rotations. As an example, the lip sync is done with the same set of mouth
drawings, by simply choosing the right phonemes and
organizing their placement (fig. 8)” stated Chico.
The cleanup artists also do the coloring, and put
a thicker line around each character. This contour
line, part of the overall visual design, is done combining modules of the composition Network (fig. 9).
The Network also offers many other interesting
post-production features, like color refinement and
creation of shadows.
With the screening of Rites of Passage planned in
2011, Liberato Produções Culturais once again establishes itself as a pioneer animation studio in the northeast of Brazil. The new production will keep focus in
the Brazilian North eastern culture, and bring many
interesting technical improvements thanks to the use
of Toon Boom Harmony.
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
15
ANIMATION STUDIOS
Flux Animation Studio is
an International Award
winning, New Zealandbased animation specialist. Animator and Cartoonist
Brent Chambers established
the company in 1997 using a
basement garage in an inner Auckland suburb as the company’s first
offices. Today, Flux employs a
core team of 23 permanent staff
and many more contractors, including traditional, digital
and 3D animators. The studio is based in premises that
house state-of-the-art technology in central Auckland.
Flux’s Television Division have produced 12 series for New
Zealand’s leading television broadcaster, TVNZ - Tamatoa,
Artoonz, Puzzle Inc., The Adventures of Massey Ferguson
and Buzzy Bee and more recently international co-production Staines down Drains – Series 1 and Master Raindrop.
Staines Series 1 topped the ratings in both NZ and Australia and has been sold into over 30 territories around the
world. Based on this success Flux managed to secure
funding for the second series of Staines and is currently
in post-production phase of the Staines Series 2. The new
production brought new challenges with it and Flux had
to look for a more time and cost effective way to produce
animation. This is how Toon Boom Harmony came into
picture. Brent Chambers, the owner and MD of Flux
explained: “We decided to utilize Toon Boom Harmony
because of its efficient and streamlined production set up,
that allows the production to be conducted very effectively.” Ray McGrath, the Series Director, continued: “Further
positive features of the Toon Boom Harmony system are
the centralized library set up which allows for easy re-use
of the animations and the fast rendering.”
Image courtesy of Totally2d
Image courtesy of Macaia
Image courtesy of Flux Animation Studio
stopped Totally2d from attaining an eminent production style. In 2009 the young studio made an entrance by
scooping ‘Best Zimbabwean Short Animation Award’, and
The Most Promising Film Director of the Year Award. In
a recent musical video project, the team led by the very
talented Tafadzwa Tarumbwa, incorporated cut out and
rotoscoped characters yielding stunning results. At this
stage, the versatility of Toon Boom Studio is what makes it
such a powerful product. Totally2d managed to rise from
being unknown and suddenly scooped the above awards,
which shows that Toon Boom software is capable of unlocking hidden potential. “When your project comes out just
the way you wanted, and then goes on to win awards, you
know you’re using the right tool. Those who have limited
man power like us need to exploit every drop of available
resources. Meaning even the best people will obviously
need the best software for the job. The smooth brush
strokes I get from Toon Boom Studio demonstrate how
their software can enable amazing line work. Plus all our
character templates are easily accessible in the time saving
Global Library feature. My having Toon Boom Studio is a
crucial and solid investment” explained Tafadzwa.
Based in Zimbabwe, Totally2d is an independent studio
still in its early chapters of existence but has already hit
some promising notes by conducting open children workshops (along with JAAG), giving character templates online
and participating in film festivals. Most Totally2d projects
involve a writer, animator, sound engineer and passionate
voice actors. Yet the small handful of man power has never
16 Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
Macaia was founded in 2008 by a group of animators
and illustrators based in Berlin, Germany and Milan, Italy.
The team works on small productions and focuses on
high-quality output where the details in every step of the
production from the first ideas to the final composition
are worked on with meticulous care. Since its founding,
Macaia has created episodes for children’s TV, animated
title sequences for movies and festivals as well as online
clips and animated TV-commercials for clients in Italy,
Germany and the UK. Macaia specializes in 2D animation. They combine analogue animation techniques (classical animation or cut-out) with digital techniques. Macaia
used Toon Boom Animate in a collaboration with Flickerpix Animations, a company based in Belfast, Northern
Ireland. Flickerpix were producing an animated series for
BBC Northern Ireland called Wee Wise Words, in which
the words and thoughts of children on a range of subjects
were put into animated images. Macaia created one of the
episodes. The guideline was to follow a 50’s illustration
style, and the animation was to be done using a cut-out
technique. “Toon Boom Animate was enormously useful
on this project, not only because it provided the possibil-
Dani Bowman is a 15 year old autistic high school student
with a love for anime and manga style animation with no
formal art or computer training. She has been working on
Toon Boom Studio since April 2009. In addition to producing eight series for her company, Powerlight-Studios, Dani
for hire” creating animated short stories for products and
characters for websites and marketing programs. Additionally, Powerlight Studios is partnering with Joey Travolta’s
Inclusion Films to further develop her skills and to create
animation projects written by Inclusion Writers. She was
recently honoured in Vancouver, BC by ANCA Naturally
Autistic for Eeya’s Story in a global competition. Written by
George Nickel and a co-production of Powerlight Studios
and Inclusion Films, Eeya’s Story is about a young autistic
boy that saves his people from the evil weewoos that want
to make them their slaves.
10-year-old award-winning artist
and film critic Perry Chen from
San Diego, California, has a very
unique task. He will be using his
talents to help other children of
many cultures learn the importance of the Holocaust. Done
using Toon Boom Studio and
five minutes long, Beyond The
Forest is an animated short film
based on the experience of Holocaust survivor, Ingrid Pitt,
who later became a major film and television star. Pitt and
her family were imprisoned by the Nazis in the Stutthof
concentration camp in Poland in 1942. She spent ages five
through eight in the camp and miraculously escaped with
her mother in 1945. The characters and storyboards for the
animated film were created and drawn by two-time Academy Award nominee Bill Plympton. Chen will be creating thousands of pencil drawings using Studio’s powerful
drawing tools and a Wacom Intuos tablet. The animation
is black and white, in a simple and realistic style, similar to
that in Bill Plympton’s Annie Award-winning short The Fan
and the Flower. Perry will use Plympton’s storyboard (23
sketches) and character designs as the basis for drawing.
Beyond The Forest is slated to premiere at film festivals in
2011 and will surely garner significant recognition from the
animation community.
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
17
Image courtesy of Perry Chen
Luciérnaga Studio is a boutique animation house based in
Monterrey, Mexico run by Jorge and Daniel Hernández and
featuring a team of young talented and creative animators
and illustrators. Founded in February of 2003, it has participated in over 80 regional and national television commercials as well as videogame art, short films, corporate and e
learning applications. It recently launched Webtoonz.tv an
animation and webcomics channel for the Latin American
market. Initially it will feature two animated series for the
web and mobile devices. The first series is Santiago and
the Yellow Monster, a tribute to B Movies about a group
of fourth graders and their pet goblin that get involved in
all sorts of incidents involving ghosts, monsters, mutants
and other farfetched adventures. It will be available soon
in App form for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad as well
as Android based phones. The second series is Master of
Poppets, an animated videoblog featuring poppets and
metal music available in webisode form. “We love how
the web allows a small animation studio to distribute its
own content” shared Jorge Hernández “It allows us total
creativity and enables us to put our ideas out there. We
didn’t have the benefit of a big budget but Toon Boom
helped us stretch our resources in ways we couldn’t have
done with any other solution. We love how easy it is to
draw in it, the automatic lip sync, color palettes and inverse
kinematics features as well as being able to produce FX
without ever leaving Toon Boom Harmony.”
Image courtesy of Dani Bowman
also uses Toon Boon Studio to produce Fan and Tribute
art posted on websites around the world including deviantart.com and furaffinity.net. Dani is a huge fan of Strange
Flavour and the Airburst series. Dani also does “animation
Image courtesy of Webtoonz.tv/Lucienrnaga Studio
ity of applying the x-sheet to the timeline - which greatly
speeded-up the work, but in particular, because it made
it so easy to mix traditional animation with cut-out animation,” explained Filippo Letizi. For the characters, Macaia
mixed imported Bitmaps that were pre-prepared in Photoshop, and vector shapes created directly in Animate. This
made it possible for them to re-use their designs and
animations with only small modifications for different characters.
Freelancers
Toon Boom News
18 18
winter 2010/2011
Originally from Calgary, Malcolm Sutherland studied
printmaking at the Alberta College of Art and Design
before coming to Montreal in 2002 where he began work
at the National Film Board and later studied film at Concordia University. His short animated films, including La Fête
(2010), Light Forms (2010), The Astronomer’s Dream (2009),
Forming Game (2008), Great Ambition (2008), Returning
Round (2008), The Tourists (2007), Birdcalls (2005) and
Robot City (2002), have been screened and awarded at
festivals worldwide. He has worked in advertising, feature
film, television series and animation for the internet. His
work has been showcased by Animation World Network,
Motionographer, IDN magazine, Cartoonbrew, Drawn.ca
and on other major animation, illustration and design sites
from around the world. Malcolm creates 2D high quality
projects using Toon Boom Studio and enjoys its ease of
switching between hand-drawn animation and cut-out
animation (or even combining the two). “I have been using
it for almost 8 years and I think it is the best 2D animation software in the world. I cannot imagine my creative
life without it, I literally use it almost every day,” shared
Malcolm.
Image courtesy of Malcolm Sutherland
Pat Bradley is an award winning animator and illustrator
with a unique, playful style and a knack for storytelling.
His work can be seen in national advertising campaigns
and in some of the nation’s top museums including the
Field Museum and Art Institute of Chicago. For one of
the Field Museum’s latest exhibitions titled Mammoths
and Mastodons, Pat produced illustrations for graphic
panels, two short animated films as well as the artwork
and animation for a small interactive theater about ancient
cave art. “Toon Boom software was an essential tool for
each of these projects. I used Storyboard Pro for concept
art, to sketch out each of the illustrations, and used it for
the storyboards and animatics for the animations. Like
most of my projects, I used Animate Pro for the animations,” shared Pat. “The cave art interactive is quite different than any project I had worked on before. It is a small
270 degree theater with a video projected on a curved
surface so it fills the viewer’s field of vision and makes
them feel like they are in the animated space. The scope
of work included four animated stories, a 3D cave that is
used in the game engine, and short animated scenes that
are part of the game play. Creating the animations was
a technical challenge. Rather than composing images in
a rectangle as you’d see on a typical television monitor,
these needed to be created as an extreme fisheye with a
custom plug-in for After Effects. The animations looked
completely distorted until they were projected on the
curved surface of the theater. I was thankful for the flexibility of Animate Pro because there was quite a lot of trial
and error, experimenting with different resolutions and
aspect ratios, to get the animation to work with the After
Effects plug-in. The style of the animation was meant to
look somewhat abstract, rustic and textured; reflecting
actual cave art. This was easy to accomplish with Animate
Pro, with the customizable textured pencils. ” concluded
Pat. The combination of the 3D cave, 2D animation and
interactivity is truly a unique product. The animation and
the exhibit were a great success and are now traveling to
museums around the U.S.
Yoni Goodman began his career as an illustrator and
designer for “Maariv” and “Haaretz”, two major Israeli newspapers. While studying in the department of
Visual Communication at the Bezalel Academy of Art
and Design in Jerusalem, he fell in love with animation and hasn’t stopped animating since. After graduating in 2002, Yoni worked as a freelance animator
and illustrator for numerous television shows and
commercials. In 2004, he began teaching animation
in Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (until 2009) and
in 2005 started working as Director of Animation for
Ari Folman’s documentary series, The material that
love is made of, creating
3 five-minute animation
shorts. The successful connection with
Ari Folman led to their
next project as Director of Animation for
the acclaimed awardwinning feature Waltz
with Bashir, in which
Yoni also developed the
Flash cut-out animation
Image courtesy of Qtab.net
technique needed to create this feature. Since 2008,
Yoni has continued working as a freelance animator,
creating short animations, mainly for civil rights movement and as Director of Animation for Arin Mark’s
short film The Gift and Dawn Shapiro’s The Edge of
Joy. Yoni is about to start working for Ari Folman’s
next feature, The Futurological Congress, where
again he will act as Director of Animation using Toon
Boom Harmony. “Harmony is by far superior to Flash
in building a project, and giving it the final touches.
The brush line and workflow using the art and color
modes make it very easy to handle when you build
the project. Also, everything regarding pegs
and Z depth makes the
scene work better so
for the whole design/
animating
process,
I
moved
completely to Harmony. I also
like working with the
network view for masking and blur effects,”
commented Yoni.
Image courtesy of Yoni Goodman
Image courtesy of Mike Shapiro
Mike Shapiro is the author of Book of Sick, a comic strip
that was published in alternative weeklies and magazines
across the U.S. and Great Britain. As a graphic artist for
over 12 years, Mike has decided to bring his concept to
life and adopted Toon Boom Studio to make it happen.
“(Studio) allows you to combine talent and technology
so you can create your vision without so many technical
issues; I am basically illiterate when it comes to computer stuff and Toon Boom Studio let me create my films,”
stated Mike. Mike recently created an animated music
video for Patricia Vonne, a flamenco rock’n’roll singer and
song writer in the U.S., titled Joe’s Gone Riding. The clip is
available in the Toon Boom Showcase in the Professionals
category and reflects his great combination of comic strip
and animation styles.
Based in Cairo, Egypt, Essam Hawas is a self taught animator, character designer, storyboard artist, website and
graphic designer. Essam holds extensive knowledge of all
the elements that shape an animated film or show, from
walks to reactions to rotations. He has many techniques
for creating various types of model sheets and expression
sheets, understanding proportion,
caricature and gestures, imitating
styles of character design that
will help bring an animated story
to life. Essam is used to work in
both animation pipelines, namely
the paperless animation workflow
and the cut-out animation workflow. Essam works as a Toon Boom
Consultant and Supervisor of the
Cut-out Animation Department
at Matrix Studio (Areen Studio).
He also founded the first training
website in Arab World (www.qtab.
net) which provides training material in animation and visual effects.
“For me, Toon Boom Animate Pro is a
time saver that delivers high quality.
To reach the same results, it would
take much more time and a combination of 2 or 3 software packages,”
explained Essam.
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
19
Animation in Education
Bluffton Elementary School, SC, USA
iAcademy, Philippines
From Elementary...
To Higher Education
Develop a wide array of skills using
animation solutions while tying into
Math, Science, History, Geography and
Arts learning objectives.
Prepare students for a career in
animation production, empowering
them with marketable knowledge, giving
access to a worldwide network of users
to enhance their job search.
Art and Cross-Discipline curriculums
including lesson material for Toon
Boom software available.
20 Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
toonboom.com/edu
SCHOOLS ON BOARD
As of September 2010, elementary and high school students
and teachers in English schools across Quebec can access
software which helps make learning in the classroom more
engaging and relevant. Toon Boom and LEARN have joined
forces to make available animation software licenses for
students and teachers to utilize in order to explain concepts,
tells stories, express themselves creatively while learning
about the basics of animation and technology. It is a unique
educational opportunity for the Quebec English community
and one which many educators are anxious to introduce into
the classrooms. As a non-profit educational organization,
LEARN has the infrastructure and contacts to help make
this educational venture a possibility. Both Toon Boom and
LEARN have already started training sessions with key educators from across the province in order to assure a smooth
introduction for the animation software. Dikran Husseindjian,
Director of Education markets at Toon Boom, highlighted the
importance of making it simple and accessible for teachers
and users who depend on proper training as well as a reliable
support team.
Image courtesy of iACADEMY
The Bachelor of Science in
Animation at iACADEMY
is a comprehensive and
well-rounded 4 year degree
that deals with film making
for Traditional and Digital
Animation. It encompasses
a wide range of studies
in visual arts with applied
science and technology that would enable the students to
understand, learn and apply different techniques and methodologies. As it continually adopts cutting edge technology,
the students will have a big advantage of being competent
and updated in hardware and in software technology. Different software applications are used such as Adobe Photoshop,
Flash, After Effects and Premiere, Toon Boom Animate Pro
and Storyboard Pro and Autodesk’s 3D Maya, Mudbox and
3D Studio max. For the hardware, iACADEMY is an authorized partner of WACOM, using the Cintiq 21 UX. This course
is designed in a stepped learning process: the first two years
mainly focus on Traditional drawings and principles of animation with basic computer studies as their dynamic foundation
while the last two years focus on Conceptual Design and Digital animation. “Toon Boom Animate Pro and Storyboard Pro
are very easy to learn and save time to finish an animated film.
That’s why these two applications were included in the animation program and were highly recommended for classroom
activity by the chairperson of animation, namely,” shared
Cynthia Z. Javier. She is also a freelance feature animator of
Cutting Edge Productions and became part of the movie
“Dayo”.
The name of Bezalel is synonymous with more than 100 years
of Israeli art, years of innovation and quality. Bezalel, established in 1906 by artist Boris Schatz, as the “Bezalel School
of Arts and Crafts,” is currently the “Bezalel academy of
arts and design Jerusalem”, Israel’s leading academy of art
and design, and one of the most prestigious in the world.
With more than 200 students, the Animation studies faculty
delivers a 4 year Bachelor of Fine Arts program. In the third
year, the students have to make a choice between 3D, stopmotion and classical animation. As head of the animation
studies, Hanan Kaminski has implemented the Toon Boom
line of professional products. He also acts as Animation film
director at Cinemon Entertainment, Hungary and has extensively used the Toon Boom digital pipeline in projects such
as The Wumblers (Golden Angel award, Silver Telly Award).
“I believe that our students need to use the most advanced
technologies. That’s why for classical 2D animation, I decided to equip our department with Toon Boom Harmony. It
permits us to work on projects with smaller teams, offer a
better artistic control to the animators and screen the same
project, without changing the artwork, on different platforms
like internet, portable phone, iPad, TV or on the big screen,”
explained Hanan.
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
21
Communicate through
animation with Toon
Boom’s award-winning
software
Happy
Holidays
You’re
Invited
toonboom.com/kids
Image courtesy of Bluffton Elementary
Case Study
Using Animation For Learning All Subjects
Starting at Grade 2
Bluffton Elementary is a rural school located on the
mainland, adjacent to Hilton Head Island, in South Carolina. It is on the Bluffton Schools Campus, which consists
of Bluffton Elementary School, Bluffton Early Childhood
Center, H.E. McCracken Middle School, and Bluffton High
School. As an arts-infused school, Bluffton Elementary
seeks to ensure there is a reason for every child to come
to school each day. The school develops students who are
life-long learners, confident, and competent and strives to
teach the students where they are and gently push them to
their potential. The animation program was a dream of Bluffton
Elementary School’s principal, Christine Brown. Mrs. Brown
worked with Bluffton Elementary’s Instructional Technology Coach, Lynn Walker, to identify the perfect person for
the new program. That person is Celia Stokes. Ms. Stokes
is a certified art teacher with a love of technology. She
implemented the additional avenue for students to demonstrate their understanding of their grade-level curriculum
content through the use of visual arts in the area of animation. It serves as an ultimate vehicle for integrating technology across all content areas. The animation program
is supported by Flip Boom Classic. Flip Boom Classic was
chosen due to its ease of use and ability ranges, from the
novice to the professional. Students use animation to
extend their learning by connecting classroom instruction,
assignments and concepts with artistic capabilities. Typical animation programs exist in schools at the secondary
level to aid in presentation and communication skills as an
end result of content knowledge. The animation program
at Bluffton Elementary differs from other programs in that
it engages students as early as second grade to use animation to support current, ongoing student learning. Engagement in animation extends typical visual arts programs
through the use of drawing tablets and storyboards to
support story building, visualization, sequencing, logical
thinking, creativity and self-expression. Extension of our
current arts curriculum is also possible through animation
instruction and introductory application of timing, velocity
and motion, as well as various techniques that include traditional 2D animation. The animation program also extends
current measures of student assessment across the content
areas. Students are able to demonstrate understanding in
all content areas, such as animating Math facts, Science
life cycles, Historical events, weekly vocabulary, and Story
Writing. Through animation, students are able to demonstrate their understanding by the use of a visual illustration,
as opposed to traditional paper and pencil activities. As
an assessment tool, animation gives teachers of Bluffton
Elementary School still another tool for determining the
level of a student’s understanding of curriculum standards.
Visual documentation of student achievement is especially
important for those students who are underperforming in
the areas of reading and writing, those that may struggle
with such issues as speech and language delays or Autism,
and even for students who are learning a second language
for the first time.
This new technology enriches the nature of school
assignments and fosters greater interest and motivation
for students in every subject area. Bluffton Elementary
has seen a change in student’s attitudes towards learning.
Students can’t wait to get to the animation lab. Parents
have called to express their appreciation for the offering.
One parent explained that her child was sick but cried to
come to school because he would be working in the animation lab that day. Students have stopped seeing educational topics as boring and instead have found a joy in the
animating process. As one fifth grader stated, “It is like
watching a movie, only you have to create it first.”
With the huge success of the animation program this
year, Bluffton Elementary will be expanding the software
options to include Flip Boom All-Star (with sound capabilities) as well as Toon Boom Studio for more sophisticated
animations. Also, Bluffton Middle school will be continuing
the animation program for grades 6 and 7 so the elementary students are able to grow in the animation experience.
Toon Boom News
winter 2010/2011
23
Starting a new
production?
“The latest Harmony solution is a leap forward to create
animation of the highest quality efficiently. As a studio and
a producer, I would not be comfortable doing something
this big using Flash. We feel safer with everything related
to Harmony’s back-ups and centralized library.” André
Koogan Breitman, Executive Producer, 2DLab
“At the start of each production, we design a new rigging
system to complement the particular style and required
features for that show. Harmony gives us the freedom to
not be locked into one particular way of working.” David
Hecker, Asset Manager, Clockwork Zoo
The answer
is Harmony.
•
•
•
•
•
Cost-effective integrated
solution
Ideal for traditional, cut-out and
tradigital projects of any size
Fast ramp-up thanks to turnkey
services
Optimized production with
server-based infrastructure
Easy asset sharing with
centralized database
toonboom.com/harmony