Do Walt Disney Animation Studios use Toon Boom?

[Jules]

A quick, simple question I need answered pronto.

[Wonderlicious]

Erm, I hope you don't mind me asking first of all...but what's Toon Boom?

[Jules]

Erm, I hope you don't mind me asking first of all...but what's Toon Boom?

Toon Boom is a software company that makes traditional animation-related computer programs. They have products that cater for digital ink and paint and storyboarding, amongst others.

What's special about them is that they make animation software for kids (e.g. Flip Boom), for hobbyists (Toon Boom Studio), for professional traditional animators (Toon Boom Animate) as well as for major studios (Toon Boom Harmony).

Now, I'm almost sure one of those major studios is Walt Disney Animation Studios (who, naturally, have dumped their in-house developed and now outdated CAPS for off-the-shelf software). I just need to be sure.

www.toonboom.com

Toon Boom's main competitor is Adobe Flash CS4.

[Elladorine]

From what I've heard, yes . . . they've switched from CAPS to Toon Boom.

[SpringHeelJack]

Yes. I'm pretty sure "The Princess and the Frog" was done in Toon Boom. How the times have changed.

[miklc]

Hmm very intresting. You say that they have software created for Hobbyists. How much is it? What equipment do you need? How does it even work? I am very intrigued by this

*EDIT* I've just looked on Amazon.co.uk and they have Toon Boom 2009 for Students and Teachers, due to be released on October 10th (Saturday) and it's only £96.99! Does this mean they by getting this, I can produce my own traditional hand drawn animation!!??

[blackcauldron85]

http://www.awn.com/articles/people/clem ... page/2%2C1

The directors and animators also benefitted greatly from Toon Boom's Harmony, which replaced the old CAPS system, and provided richer colors and more interactive backgrounds and characters.

JM: And so we used a production software system on this movie called Harmony, which is a product of Toon Boom. And we did something on this film, which we hadn't done on any of the previous films, which sounds pretty simple but it actually helped us get richer colors and more interactive backgrounds and characters. Our characters were painted almost like in a neutral light before we picked the color that would be in a scene, which isn't the way we ever did it before. Before, we would literally [work] on a scene that was ready to go into color; we would have color models and take a frame from the film and would paint the characters in a frame or two from a scene and go, "That's what they're going to look like over those backgrounds." And then it would go off and be painted -- whether or not it was by hand or artists doing it on the computer. And that's what we lived with, other than dialing it up or down in color timing.

Now, with this new system, the characters are painted in neutral colors and then, in our color model area, [we] take those characters and adjust them for that background, and we can play it back in realtime and see this is how that character works in that environment and actually play the scene as you would see it on screen. And they can do all sorts of things interactively, with gradients…

RC: Like what a painter would do. It really is an artistic thing where they can take the bare bones and enhance it in just a lot of ways, some subtle, some less subtle. It's just really, really nice…

JM: And if we decided that we didn't like the color, with this new system they don't have to repaint the entire scene; they just push a button and from now on that shirt is red. And in the old system, you'd have to take out every cel or in the computer every drawing and physically repaint each one and go to the next one…

More info from another interview:

http://www.latinoreview.com/news/interv ... mages-8310

Musker: Basically then when 2-D went away here they kind of mothballed CAPS and CAPS had been kind of band-aided and paper-clipped together, the production software system. So we used a system on this film called Harmony which is a product from a Canadian company actually called Toon Boom and we did something on this which we hadn't done on any of the films previous which is, in effect, and it sounds like a simple thing but it really helped us to get richer sort of colors and more interactive backgrounds and characters, but our characters were painted almost in a neutral light, like, before we picked the color they would be in a scene. That's not the way that we ever did it before. Before we would literally, with a scene that was okay to go to color we'd have color models who would take a frame of the film and would paint the characters and framer, too, from the scene and they would say, 'That's what they're going to look like over those backgrounds.' Then it would go off and be painted and come back, whether or not it was by hand or in this case on the computer but artists doing it on the computer; we'd get it and that's sort of what we lived with rather than dialing it up or down in color timing. Now with this new system the character is painted in these sort of neutral colors and then in our color model area they can take those characters and adjust them for that background there and we can play it back in real time and see, 'This is the way that character looks in that environment –' actually play the scene as you'd see it on the screen. They can do all sorts of things interactively with that with what they use, they call it gradiance where they can make the character brighter or darker –

Clements: Almost like what a painter would do.

Musker: Yeah, very painterly.

Clements: It really is an artistic thing where they can kind of take the bare bones and enhance it in just a lot of ways, some subtle, some less subtle. That's really, really nice. We can see it there.

Musker: We can see it right there on the monitor and if we decided that we didn't like the color, like the color of your shirt we don't like and so on, with this new system they don't have to repaint the entire scene. They would just say, 'Okay, lets make that shirt red for the whole scene.' We call it a scene in animation from cut to cut. So they sort of push a button and say, 'From now on that shirt is red.' In the old system you would've had to take every cell, and even in the computer, every drawing and physically repaint each one and go to the next one, repaint with this. With this with the push of a button we can repaint things.

[kurtadisneyite]

Actually, Disney Australia was the first Disney division to use TOON BOOM for all their productions. In the mid 90's, they was farming out ALADDIN TV episodes to a number of shops. UNLIMITED ENERGEE in Sydney Australia (one of two Australian studios with a digital production pipeline ending with one of Australia's two Ampex digital tape setups used for recording Burbank Animation Studios and Energee's own CROCADOO productions) was tapped to do one episode.

Energee went through quite a few tests with other Disney show episodes and made a very low bid before Disney was convinced a digital pipeline might work.

However, Disney wanted output to 35mm film, so COSA betas, Adobe and Linker Systems products were stitched together using automated scripts to assist 20 people involved with scanning, painting and output of Disney's ALADDIN animation to Tape storage for transfer to one of the few local Digital 35mm film recorders for exposure. This process went on for 5 weeks, with another week of interaction with the USA studio to correct mistakes and add changes. Disney even sent some key people to see how we handled classical blue-line (which wreaked havoc with most digital systems then).

Enegee's collage process was essentially CAPS, but with more or less off the shelf software. It still had CAPS limitation of being bit-map, and could not do huge camera moves on artwork without "raster" or other defects showing up.

A month or so after Energee finished its ALADDIN effort, TOON BOOM announced their next generation animation system, HARMONY, which had a number of advantages over the process Energee used (mainly, HARMONY and TOON BOOM's other products are Vector systems, which can convert animation art to a form that can be re-sized in Camera without any loss of quality).

Disney Australia then made their investment in HARMONY, quickly abandoning their animation Cameras and older ink/paint process. They used it for LION KING II and other films all the way up through CINDERELLA III.

Energee did not have the capital to buy HARMONY (roughly $40,000 per seat those days), and soldiered on using its Pseudo-CAPS approach, combining 2D with 3D (one of first TV Animation studios doing it), and developing its own in-house Vector paint system until it lost key staff, and after its only feature THE MAGIC PUDDING lost key funding and collapsed.

This info comes from one of two Americans working at Energee who helped stitch together their production pipeline and handled the more complex camera and 2D Digital effects work. This poster was that person, and the Aladdin Episode we did was OF ICE AND MEN.

[kurtadisneyite]

...and I should add that almost every Disney feature from Disney Australia, with exception of CINDERELLA III, their last, is showcased on Toon Boom's demo reel. PRINCESS AND THE FROG excerpts are also on their reel.

Toon Boom products for solo animators are ANIMATOR and ANIMATOR PRO.
These are essentially HARMONY but minus the extensive network and time-task-tracking features HARMONY provides for a supervisor to ride herd over an animation shop. Both ANIMATOR products offer extensive scanning and digital animation tools, while ANIMATOR PRO allows import (and some animation of) 3D from MAYA.