The following text appeared in an advertising supplement to Playback:

When Silicon Graphics workstations were introduced into one established Canadian traditional animation house, a seasoned animator with over 20 years of experience ‘just sat and stared at the machines for a full six months, over two shifts.’ This sense of awe is ech’ed with most cell animators new to the Silicon Graphics workstation. Animation has been created the same way for a long time, and the introduction of computers into animation studios is inspiring the craft.

The biggest change for cell animation production is the production consolidation of Silicon Graphics workstations in the head office rather than relying on off-shore resources. Consolidating animation production means greater control, and for the artist this brings a new found creative freedom. The ability to change, manipulate and reinvent animation production on the spot gives the traditional animator a welcome freedom and can, in some cases, include stepping into the 3D world. The benefits of these new tools are rippling through the industry.

Elisabeth Laett of Toon Boom Technologies, Inc. which produces two animation software products, Tic Tac Toon and USAnimation, believes that the technology and the demand for animated entertainment has energized the industry. ‘With the requirements for animation expanding: the 500 channel universe, digital t.v, direct-to-video, the whole production of animation is increasing. With the market growing, and the technological barriers coming down, animation is booming.’

It is the hardware and software development working together that has really fuelled the growth of creating traditional animation on the Silicon Graphics platform, according to Laett. ‘When you look at how SGI packages their O2 system with a studio software bundle that includes Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Alias Wavefront Composer and Kai Power tools, it is a stand alone environment for the animator. Key to the development of the platform, SGI works with software developers. So that Toon Boom Technologies could optimize our application on the O2 platform, we used the O2 platform, which was code named Moosehead, six months before it was released. We’ve seen a 30-40% performance improvement from the start running on the O2. With Tic Tac Toon you can animate right in the system using a graphics tablet. This kind of processing speed and capability, allows you to create animation far more effectively and faster.’

With speed you also get reliability, and Laett sees this as another powerful reason that animators are embracing the technology. ‘A lot of traditional animators have not used workstations before. The O2 modular is so easy to manage and support. Everything just pops out, and should a component break, SGI ships you a new one. It is easy to maintain and d’esn’t frighten people from a technology perspective.’

With a name like Digitoon, it is obvious that digital animation tools are embraced in their cartoon production. Gordon Stanfield, President, has just wrapped 26 episodes of Kleo The Misfit Unicorn for the Family Channel and SRC. All the colour, composition and rendering was completed on the Silicon Graphics workstations. With the introduction of Silicon Graphics to Digitoon, the company has reclaimed the work from Asia. Now they are doing everything on Silicon Graphics hard drives at Digitoon in Vancouver, rather than relying on off-shore resources to get the work done.

‘We did 26 episodes in 9 or 10 months. We could have done it in the same time traditionally, but we’d have been doing it in Asia with five hundred people. We have more depth of field, and can do complex camera moves with a array of colours at our disposal. You can make decisions on the spot. The difference now is that we have more creative control and that is really what it is all about,’ explains Gordon Stanfield. Evidence that bringing production home has helped their success, Digitoon is opening an office in New York City this spring.

Delaney & Friends, also from Vancouver, has been in animation for over 12 years. The company has just brought in 3 Silicon Graphic O2’s equipped with USAnimation software to move cell animation on to the digital platform. As Delaney & Friends experiments, using the Silicon Graphics systems for short format work like educational films and commercials, Chris Delaney is finding his way of work is changing. ‘Computers are invaluable, they do things that you cannot do and give you greater creative flexibility. For instance, you paint a scene and then decide that you don’t like the background colour, or any of the colours, you can instantly change it with a touch of a button. In the traditional system once the character is painted you, are out of luck. You’ve got a major revision to do.’

Introducing the Silicon Graphics into Delaney and Friends has been a learning experience, one that requires that they readjust their animation production paradigm: rescheduling the production flow so that there is more time at the end of the production for finishing and rendering. Delaney explains that although the computers bring a new set of dilemmas to animation production, like scheduling, he knows that ‘the whole studio is thrilled that the company has implemented digital tools.’

Natterjack Animation Company did half the animation on the feature film Tank Girl, and supplied animation for Werner II, Germany’s top grossing film at the time of its release. Natterjack has introduced the Silicon Graphics O2 workstation with USAnimation software specifically because they have a number of half hour animation series in development. With the development of Pirates and The Champ taking place of over an extended period of time, Silicon Graphics is an easier system on which to develop. Sean Murch, Director of Development on the project elaborates: ‘The SGI O2/ ToonBoom combination has been unbeatable. In terms of selling our original series ideas at the network level, the O2 has provided us with a low cost method of producing 2 to 3 minutes, finished pilot films. The extra push this gives us in selling our series concepts is phenomenal. Before we acquired this system, it was too cost prohibitive to produce these short films.’

At International Rocketship, Alan Best, technical director, brought in Silicon Graphics to complete International Rocketships’ second special for Gary Larsen’s Tales from the Far Side. Best is a traditional layout artist and while designing the program he realized it was going to be special effect intensive. With the tight schedule ahead of him, Best could not guarantee that the company would finish using traditional animation techniques.

In response to this concern, Best who had been looking at computers for International Rocketship installed the Silicon Graphics O2 system with Toon Boom Technologies, Inc. software. The system was installed midway through the production of the Tales from the Far Side special and three sequences were completed on the machines. ‘The technology matched exactly what we were doing in the traditional cells. Nobody can tell where one begins and the other ends. I can’t tell the difference between the sequences I worked on traditionally and the scenes produced digitally.’

For animation television series production, Mainframe Entertainment blazed trails with the successful continuing 3D animation series, Reboot. Behind all this innovative development is the tools. Mainframe Entertainment’s Director of Software Development Chris Welman, is responsible for the software vendors and in-house software development. He has a great respect for the hardware that is making the volume of work in production at Mainframe Entertainment possible. The two seasons of Reboot were done on a mixture of Indy’s, Oynx’s and Indigo 2’s and then, Mainframe brought in the Impact. ‘The Impact came along as a replacement for the Indigo 2. It was just beautiful. It is a workhorse. It brought the power that you previously could only get from the high-end Onyx, down to the individual animators desktop.’

Welman believes that this will undoubtedly affect their production, already producing 23 episodes of Reboot in less than 1 year. Now Mainframe is working on Season 3, with 16 episodes to air on YTV this summer. With speed on the desktop, the 40 animators working on the series are more effective in all aspects of their work. Welman maintains: ‘SGI helps with the creative part of our jobs here, just by bringing speed to the desktop. It helps with experimentation because if you can do something quickly you will be more creative.’ In Mainframe’s computer generated animated world, the ability to be creative becomes the only way to produce the volume of innovative 3D animation series work on their plate.

When one traditional animator said that the introduction of SGI gave their company ‘a creative jolt,’ he meant that the speed and power of the Silicon Graphics platform is inspiring animation production. With the demand for innovative animation to fill a real marketplace need, the Silicon Graphics platform provides the traditional animator with increased creative control, as well as the ability to work faster with fewer people and keep pace with that growing need for animation products all over the world.