Mar
16
2010
The Princess and the Frog Team Goes Paperless
With The Princess and the Frog DVD arriving in stores today, it’s high time we mention that Toon Boom was the technology of choice behind the Oscar-nominated feature. Much of the animation process was traditional (flipping paper and such), but the crew at Walt Disney Animation Studios used the enterprise-grade Toon Boom package Harmony to bring it to the screen. In fact, many of the Annie-Award-winning effects were “paperless” – drawn with a Cintiq right into Harmony.
March 16th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
Now that is animation.
March 17th, 2010 at 6:01 am
Inspiring. If only they would release a version of the entire film of the rough animation. Makes me wonder what would be better for a Digital Traditional Character Animation approach….Flash or Toon Boom. I have not tried Toon Boom, But the fact that the FX animation was drawn digitally on a cintiq is really exciting…
March 17th, 2010 at 7:46 am
Hi,
The animated effects were all done using Harmony, which illustrates how far you can go with this fully dedicated to animation technology. On that topic, it was great to see that The Princess and the Frog was granted an Annie Award in that category.
March 19th, 2010 at 6:49 am
I can certainly understand the division between character movement and effects. I have not tested Harmony, but have so several other Toonboom products. Would someone care to elaborate: is the automatic line smoothing adjustable in the enterprise-grade product? The ‘auto’ factor presents some difficulty when subtlety is needed.
March 20th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
@ john lane: yes, i believe it is. it’s drawing capabilities are much nicer than flash’s.
March 23rd, 2010 at 7:11 am
Wow, you just can’t beat traditional animation.
I guess it’s those subtle movements, rotations and in-betweens that you can’t seem to get from 2D.
Besides, dealing with computers sometimes is a greater pain than on paper.
But that’s just me!
December 28th, 2010 at 7:52 am
I saw the Princess and the Frog on DVD this past Fall at a friend’s place for the first time ever. Definitely an amazing piece of work, can’t wait to see what else gets pulled out of the archives