Sinbad is back, only this time he’s not an oversized comedian, he’s the real, swashbuckling, Cyclops-escaping, monster-vanquishing thing. Toronto’s Atlantis Productions in association with All American Entertainment is bringing the vintage adventure classic back to television in a production which explores the farthest reaches of special effects and production technology.

Twenty-two one-hour episodes of Sinbad – including a pair of two-hour pilot episodes – are being shot from June 17 until the end of the year in South Africa.

Toronto digital effects facility Calibre Digital Design, together with the recently created Blackfly Group, will supply the show’s lineup of chilling creatures to challenge the seafaring Sinbad.

The show’s producer, Jonathan Hackett, says the series was inspired by the ‘effects’ intensive series of tv movies by stop-motion artist Ray Harryhousen and says the show will strive to capture the playful spirit of Sinbad while delivering all the thrills.

Sinbad, played by Zen Gesner (Dumb and Dumber), will confront all manner of monster and magic, which he must dispatch with the wit and resourcefulness of a Homeric action hero.

Neil Williamson, founding partner and vp at Calibre and animation and digital effects director on Sinbad, says working on a tv project will allow Calibre to push the scope of the effects and believability of the characters to the limit.

‘You can get more believable effects in a shorter turnaround time on a tv project,’ says Williamson. ‘It’s easier than pulling the cgi into high resolution for film.’

Among Calibre’s mandates is to deliver photo-realistic scenes while maintaining the out-of-this-world quality that marks the Sinbad story. Special attention to secondary animation – providing quirks and humor to characters (like having the Cyclops stick his finger in his ear during combat) – will help capture that Sinbadesque feel.

The Calibre team will consist of two units, which are charged with the creative design elements and animation of creatures as well as specialized post work, compositing, miniatures and matte paintings. They will supply Atlantis with complete shots to be edited into the masters.

Hackett says while the Sinbad budget hasn’t been finalized, the series will cost $1 million-plus per episode and the effects budget is about double or triple that of a typical series.

The show is shooting in and around Cape Town, with the African coastline providing miles of cliff and quay and beach beauty shots. Saldanha Bay will stand in for Baghdad, and Sinbad’s ship, a replica of an Arabian dhow, will be built on a barge in Gordon’s Bay.

Hackett says South Africa provides not only great scenery but comes equipped with an established film infrastructure from a high volume of commercial production and outstanding value for the Rand. ‘South Africa has been very receptive to the Canadian contingent here,’ says Hackett.

Williamson will travel to South Africa to set up a Cape Town headquarters for Calibre. To foster communications between the far-flung components of the project, Calibre and Atlantis have constructed a multiple isdn line network for video conferencing and transferring rushes and works in progress.

Sending packages to Cape Town can take up to three or four days, says Williamson, which can translate to a seven-day lapse between crew on set and the Toronto production and effects work.

He says the network will be indispensable for enhancing the speed as well as the quality of communication. ‘It means the ability to communicate properly. You can make changes to storyboards and get immediate feedback, and once the system is in place, costs are fixed regardless of the amount of data sent.’

In addition to the Cyclops character, Calibre will create a bevy of the other fantastical creatures that are intrinsic to the Sinbad experience. Five characters were in production prior to the start of shooting, with another five to eight yet to be liberated from pages and gray matter.

Contributing to Sinbad’s journey will be the ever-lovin’ Harpy, a winged and scaled woman/marine creature and minion of the witch Rumina, as well as a rock monster which emerges from the rubble of a landslide into the sea and, naturally, the sea monster itself.

The creatures will be born as clay models and are in turn modeled and fine-tuned in Calibre’s Flint and Flame suites using Alias 3D paint and Softimage animation software. Williamson says the Flint suite, the second-fastest system at the facility, allows animators to paint directly onto 3D models and accommodates the painting of color, displacement transparency or reflectiveness.

In addition to providing texture, animators will give movement to characters using a combination of computer animation and motion capture. Calibre recently acquired a Monkey motion-capture system from DID Technologies in New York, which will be used to realistically render the comings and goings of many of the characters. The Monkey resembles a small desktop robot which can be maneuvered and its movements recreated accurately by 3D characters on screen.

Better moves

Williamson says in some cases, the Monkey provides a better representation of movement than human-based systems, which can sometimes deliver flat results despite the vigorous gesticulations of the wired subject.

Given the pelagic nature of Sinbad’s adventures, Williamson says significant research was devoted to water and how far traditionally difficult water effects could be taken. Much of the open ocean material will be shot using a target boat equipped with a number of large tracking targets to facilitate subsequent Flame compositing. A cg boat will also be created for wide and night shots.

He says shooting with a green screen and extracting the motion of a target boat using the Flame beats water tank shooting in terms of cost efficiency, realism and flexibility.

Calibre is also in the process of upgrading its Flame/Inferno suite with the Silicon Graphics Infinite Reality graphics system and the recently released, speedier R10000 processors, allowing for 10 to 30 times the current speed and processing power on most jobs. Long-term additions to the wood, metal and wire-wrought Calibre offices may include an online editing system like Quantel’s EditBox.

A 12-foot scale model of Sinbad’s vessel is also being constructed by the Blackfly Group under the guidance of effects supervisors Ray McMillan and Michael Lennick and model maker Bob Sher.

Sinbad production designer is Gavin Mitchell and cast will include an array of Canadian talent including George Buza playing Sinbad’s brother Doubar, Jacqueline Collens as Mave the magician, Vancouver’s Ian Tracey and Lawrence Bayne from Toronto.

The Sinbad pilots will begin airing in September on CanWest Global and is syndicated in the u.s.