Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The Studio Roundabout

I spent the morning at Imagi, satellite studio of the Hong Kong c.g.i. animation company. They've got newer, larger quarters at the Galleria which are wonderfully decked out.

Astroboy is moving through pre-production. With the story more-or-less locked down, a c.g. crew is visualizing the characters and various environments.

"On other c.g. pictures I've worked on, 2-D designers drew up characters and handed off to the computer graphics crew. On this one, 2-D and 3-D artists are paired up and working together. It makes things go a lot smoother ..."

While Astroboy moves down its track, Gatchaman -- the other feature that's been in work -- is going through continuity and boarding changes.

Over at Nick, Madagascar Penguins is going full steam while El Tigre ends production after two years and 26 episodes.

Penguins is doing a lot of c.g. modelling and visualization work at the Burbank Studio. Animation will be done overseas.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"On this one, 2-D and 3-D artists are paired up and working together. It makes things go a lot smoother ...""

This has pretty much the norm in most cg feature animation to date. The art department designs the characters and supervises them through the cg process with the animators.

Anonymous said...

I'm a great admirer of Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy, and so I'm thrilled that a movie about the little "child of science" is going to be made. I have one piece of advice for the producers of that film: PLEASE try to work in the terrific theme song from the 1960's tv series. Go go GO Astro Boy!!! :D

Steve Hulett said...

This has pretty much the norm in most cg feature animation to date. The art department designs the characters and supervises them through the cg process with the animators.


Wasn't for the guy I talked to. And he's worked around a good deal. (Maybe he leads a sheltered life.)

Anonymous said...

Passing off designs to cg techs is the usual for fx houses, but not for feature animation. It usually shows. They are not at all the same thing, nor should they be.

Anonymous said...

Anyone know what the approximate budget is for those Penguin shows since they are doing the production overseas?

BTW, I havent heard of 2d and 3d guys being "paired" up. Sure they usually communicate. But paired up? Not that I've known about.

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