DVDizzy Forum

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

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…

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.