Storyboard Pro and Harmony, DreamWall magic recipe

Storyboard Pro and Harmony compose Toon Boom, and that is the tool used by DreamWall to transpose “Little Furry” from comics to animation movie. 

These tools were already a common use at DreamWall studios, for instance for big productions such as “The Red Turtle”, “Zombillenium” but also for series such as “Gardfield” or “Little Spirou”. 

  • How does it work? 

Composed with Storyboard Pro and Harmony, these two tools are complementary. Storyboard pro allows the creation of stroryboard and animatics that are imported into Harmony in which the rest of the work can be done further on. 

These programs offer a custom cutting in order to create an optimized pipe-line and to create a remarkable imagery which gives a natural style and the impression of hand-made drawings. 

Another advantage of this suit is that it allows, more specifically for Storyboard Pro, remote work, which in the case of “The Little Fury”is a considerable advantage. In fact many artists from aroud the world were implicated on the project. 

 

  • Toon Boom and the “Little Furry”

When the idea of bringing the comics created by Pierre Bailly and Céline Fraipont to live. DreamWall was already ahead by the fact that the entire team was already trained to use this software. 

This production required DreamWall to work with around forty artists from all around Europe. This was made thanks to the way Toon Boom works.  

One of the complexity of this production was that there are almost no dialogue, so there was the need of a precise timing of the storyboard in order to guide the voice-over. In other words, the creation of the animation tale was guided through visual effects. Every of these information as well as information about the placing of the camera, angles and timing were conveyed thanks to Storyboard Pro. 

In concrete terms, a work was made on the animatic which was compressed and slid simply on a server the a allow an exchange of versions.

Another complexity of this production was the way the character walk. This is when the resources of Harmony library were one of the most precious tools. In fact, once a putting or a cycle was validated it is stocked into the library and can be reused later, which is a considerable save of time within the production. 

During the entire production an expert from Toon Boom was in DreamWall studios, Olivier Brugnoli, he was implicated into every step of the production and helped in the orientation of the pipe-line. 

This huge production which required the hiring of around forty animators encounters a large success when it came out. A success that is expressed by the audience and many acclamations.