Two animated series pitched by graduates of the Brazilian TV Producers’ International Training Program in Animation have scored production deals through a special pitching session at the annual Forum Brasil.

Captain Constantine and the Salty Pudding Island, from Split Film, was nominated as best program at the event by a jury of executives from such outlets as Cartoon Network, Discovery Kids, MTV Brasil and Nick. Mirabolica, producer of the second series, Jorel’s Brother, won a $20,000 award to develop the project and it is likely to appear next year on Cartoon Network Latin America as a 52 x 11 min. series. The series will be done using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro and Harmony.

Sébastien M.

Every year students from Cégep du Vieux Montréal are releasing their senior year film to complete their studies. Today, it’s Philippe Poirier film that we look at below made with Toon Boom Digital Pro (which is now Animate Pro). Pompons et crepage de chignon is about two ladies at the court meet up for a tea party, unaware that their encounter will make the entire France tremble…

You can also take a look at the animatic below :

Sébastien M.

Toon Boom participate with Touchvision to the launch of Animate Pro in Africa. Here are some info regarding the 3 events :

In Johannesburg

Over 60 people celebrated the launch of Toon Boom Animate Pro at Video lab in Blairgowrie.
Don’t Forget George in Johannesburg entertained with their inspiring presentation on their latest project based on their novel Purity.
Special thanks to them for sharing their work with the local community.

In Cairo

Harry Ravelo demonstrated to a growing industry at Fusion, the first Toon Boom certified training centre in Egypt.
The industry has primarily been working in traditional animation methods since 1932.
At least 10 new Studios are embracing this new technolgy and equipping Animate Pro into their pipelines.

In Cape Town

Harto Macharia Muharto from City Varsity won Storyboard pro and Carlos “Charlie” Alves was thrilled with his draw prize of a full commercial Animate program. Special thanks to CFX for their showcase presentation.

Sébastien M.

BKN has completed all 52 x 11’ of the new property, Stone Age in concert with Cartoon One in Italy. Done in high definition, the animation was produced in Toon Boom Storyboard Pro and Harmony solution entirely in BKN’s wholly owned studio in Barcelona Spain. Stone Age can be seen as the Flintstones meets High School Musical with 13 original songs composed by Angelo Pogg

Laura Tapias, managing director for BKN New Media in Spain said: “We are very proud to have produced this series in Spain, not just the pre-production but also, the 100 per cent of the animation process included. We are sure the kids will like the rich stories and characters in high definition.”

Sébastien M.

This third year film is from Algonquin College students Trent Correy, Collin Tsandilis and Mayrhosby Yeoshen. Titled Charged, it has been done traditionally. After drawing and cleaning everything up on paper (yes, paper still exist in North Amercian animation…), the project was ink&paint and composited in Toon Boom Harmony.

Source : Cold Hard Flash

Sébastien M.

To herald the release of 4th Edition, animator Adam Phillips (of biteycastle.com) generated the “Making of 4th Edition” cartoons, featuring such celebrity spokesmonsters as the beholder, tiefling, troglodyte… and of course, the gnome.

With the release of the latest cartoon: Demogorgon and the Gnome, Adam took the time to answer a few questions regarding his process of animation to Wizards.com D&D portal.

Here is an extract from Adam’s interview : “I’ve been using Flash for about 10 years now but it has always had its limitations. I guess the stuff I want to do nowadays has outgrown Flash, so I’m using ToonBoom software, which is a serious animation tool. The Demogorgon’s interview was done in ToonBoom Animate Pro. The interface is similar to Flash in that it’s a vector-based drawing and timeline-based animation program but you can apply bitmap effects, so you’re almost unlimited in what you can do in the final render.”

Sébastien M.

Renato Vargas (a.k.a. Rindolphus) posted an article on his blog I’ll tell you a story… where he explains how you can easily solve some perspective issue by creating the basic architectural elements of your background in Google SketchUp. Then export an perform the painting in Toon Boom Animate.

This technique is not new, more and more production are using Google SketchUp (or other 3D software) to create more accurate 3D background for 2D animated project. I remember that the guys from Film Roman used that techniques in King Of the Hill during storyboarding phase to always get accurate BG and save pre-preduction time.

Sébastien M.

Toon Boom Top Executives will be on the road again for the Animate More For Less tour. Toon Boom with Animate is offering “more for less” to animators versus other existing products including first-class customer service. See why more and more people are migrating to Animate…

JUNE 10th
Columbus, OH
Location: The Columbus, A Renaissance Hotel
Address: 50 North 3Rd Street, Columbus, OH, 43215
Room: 3rd Floor Event Room 30
Time: 6:30-9:00 pm

JUNE 16th
New York City
Location: To be confirmed
Address: To be confirmed
Room: To be confirmed
Time: 7:30-9:30pm

JUNE 17th
Chicago, IL
Location: Chicago Martz Plaza
Address: 350 North Orleans Street, Chicago, IL, 60654
Room: The LaSalle Room – 15th Floor
Time: 6:30-900 pm

JUNE 18th
Orlando, Florida
Location: Grand Bohemian Hotel
Address: 325 S. Orange Ave, Orlando, FL, 32801
Room: Johann Strauss II
Time: 6:30-9:00 pm

JUNE 23rd
Denver, CO
Location: Colorado History Museum
Address: 1300 Broadway, Denver, CO 80203
Room: Museum Level Lobby
Time: 6:30-9:00 pm

JULY 13th
San Francisco, CA
Location: To be confirmed
Address: To be confirmed
Room: To be confirmed
Time: 7:00-9:00 pm

JULY 20th
Seattle, WA
Location: Seattle Marriott Waterfront
Address: 2100 Alaskan Way, Seattle, WA, 98121
Room: To be confirmed
Time: 7:00-9:00 pm

JULY 21st
Portland, OR
Location: To be confirmed
Address: To be confirmed
Room: To be confirmed
Time: 6:30-9:00 pm

To RSVP, please visit the Animate “More for Less” Tour page, select RSVP then your city and register here : http://toonboom.makeswebsites.com/

I’m proud to announce the release of Toon Boom Animate Pro, our high-end animation software for professionals. From now on, Animate Pro is replacing Dgitial Pro.

A 30 minutes Take a Tour demonstration video is also available if you want to understand better what Animate Pro is all about here :
http://www.toonboom.com/products/animatepro/featuresVideo/takeATour.php

For those of you who were using Animate or Digital Pro, we do have comparison pages available :
Animate to Animate Pro :
http://www.toonboom.com/products/compare/ANI2ANP.php
Digital Pro to Animate Pro :
http://www.toonboom.com/products/compare/DIG2ANP.php

A free PLE (Personal Learning Edition) is also available if you want to try or learn it.

Sébastien M.

Animator Bernard Derriman and stand up actor Arj Barker delivered a new episode on their Arj and Poopy web site called Poetreet. Started as a Flash series, Arj and Poopy characters, are based on some of Arj stand-up material, that stars him and his cat, Poopy. This new episode is done with Toon Boom Digital Pro and will see the big differences between the previous Flash style and this new look.

Sébastien M.