Hasta La Motion!

Haifaa Al-Mansour (Wadjda, 2012), Saudi Arabia’s first female director has collaborated with LA-based animation studio ShadowMachine (BoJack Horseman, Robot Chicken) to bring her empowering Miss Camel to screens.

Haifaa-Al-Mansour

ShadowMachine will develop and produce the project with Al-Mansour and her husband and writing collaborator, Brad Niemann. The LA branch of the studio is currently in production of Youtube Red’s space adventure, Dallas & Robo.

Miss Camel tells the story of female empowerment in this dominantly patriarchal world through Hayla, a teen girl from Saudi Arabia who is desperate to escape her arranged marriage in order to  achieve her goal of attending art school outside the country. Scheming to sneak away to college interviews in a neighbouring Gulf state, Hayla makes a startling discovery that she can talk to animals, at her cousin’s wedding. She then finds herself in a friendship with the beautiful camel, Melwah and they travel to Doha together for the ‘Miss Camel beauty pageant’, defying cultural and sexual restrictions.

This project was awarded the $100,000 IWC Filmmaker Award at the Dubai International Film Festival in December.

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ITV, the commercial broadcaster from UK has picked up the Mr. Magoo reboot from Xilam Animation for children’s channel CITV. The 2D animated series will consist of 78 episodes of seven minutes each and will launch next spring. The story revolves around Mr. Magoo, an elderly disaster-prone man, who creates chaos every time he forgets to put on his glasses.

Mr. Magoo has been adapted from John Hubley’s original series, created in 1949, by Olivier Jean-Marie and is directed by Xilam’s Hugo Gittard.

Everybody in the neighbourhood loves Mr. Magoo. He is lively, kind-hearted and a cheerful guy who is always happy to give a helping hand. But with glasses, he causes disasters! All neighbours have kindly adjusted to his uniqueness, except for one- a megalomaniac hamster by the name Fizz. His goal is to have all humanity recognise how genius he is. He tries leaving a mark, but Magoo always interferes, thwarting his crazy plans.

The reboot was commissioned by France Televisions in partnership with Cartoon Network in Asia and Discovery in Italy’s K2. Xilam plans to make Mr. Magoo a key property for consumer product development, starting with France and UK.

This disaster-prone senior appeared on screens 70 years ago and will continue to delight young audiences and create chaos as before. The chaotic drama is expected to begin in December 2018.

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When the cute, fluffy, joyful, affectionate rabbit, Molang and a shy, emotional little chick, Piu Piu set out on their daily explorations, audience have another three and a half minutes of sheer happiness.

Molang, the preschool animated series is a joyous treat to watch and is melting hearts all over with the warm relation the two cute characters share.

It is the brain-child of director, Marie-Caroline Villand which symbolises tenderness, softness and is the cutest anyone has ever seen. “We want to show kids that facing life in a positive way leads to happiness, as well as empathy and friendship. Molang had to be a series of happiness,” expressed Villand.

Wondering how the creators keep up with the stories in this cute language?
Molang entirely expresses feelings visually as the series use a made-up language. The script is written based on the visuals to be displayed and not what the character is saying in a language of their own. It’s quite a task! The scriptwriters take inspiration from everyday life situations or extraordinary adventures to make the episode all the more interesting.

The unique language is so popular now, that it has a dictionary of its own. The expressions in the dialogues showcase surprise, approbation, gratitude, and the list goes on.

With the daily situations adding to the storyline of every episode, there is no hint of sadness or harsh moments, which makes it apt to reach the tiny tots’ hearts. The story can be anything from sensitive, empathetic, creative to tricky but the team makes it a point to end the story on a happy note. “There are no rules except one: There are no bad guys in the world of Molang, and no hostile intentions” Villand added.

The more simplified, the easier to reach the audience, and Molang does just that! The 2D illustrated animation helps to maintain the original design. The subtle way of line art makes it appealing to the kids who enjoy the show more. The cute illustrations of Molang, right from the intriguing backgrounds to the charming character sketches bind together, to make the entire scene a happy frame. Hye Ji Yoon, is the illustrator of this happiness.

The cuteness has amazed and charmed not just the kids but adults too. And how could anyone not fall in love with these cute fluffballs?! With many episodes being inspired from real life and having references to old movies like Charlie Chaplin, De Funes, Laurel and Hardy, Fernandel, adults enjoy the joyous ride too.

Considering the huge fan base of Molang, the cute rabbit has made its way to every household with the many accessories and toys of the character being designed. “We have various products including toy figures, plush toys, playsets, kids’ apparel and other accessories,” shared head of M&L Laurence Papon. Molang has 50 lincensees across the world including master toy Tomy in Europe and Australia, Jazwares for the American continent, publisher Scholastic in North America and publisher Flammarion in France.

Molang sure is the joyous treasure Villand has given the era. With the fluffy body and an always smiling face, Piu Piu and Molang are here to stay and bring joys to many lives out there!

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From the movie of “Avatar” that set an impressive record for CG movie box office in China eight years ago, to the exquisite Chinese CG animation film “Monkey King: Hero is Back”, China’s first full-motion capture movie “L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties” and the Chinese animated movie series “Boonie Bears” that broke the Chinese box office record, the CG technology has gradually matured, and the development of China’s CG industry has gradually entered the fast lane with the screening of Chinese animation films has been increasing within the past few years. As compared with the United States, Japan, and other regions, so far in China’s CG production industry, China still has a lot of room for development in terms of its production process and storyline. The difficulty of film and television production is increasing along with people’s increasing demand for visual experience at the same time. In addition to the vivid storyline, the refined production level and high-quality resolution have gradually become the public needs. How to meet the public needs and solve technical problems in the production process? How to achieve the perfect combination of art and technology to provide viewers with a higher quality visual experience? Those have always been big issues in CG production, and also the direction that Fox Renderfarm has been tirelessly exploring for over a decade.

As we all know, the rendering process is an indispensable part of CG production. Huge rendering computing power requires massive equipment support, which is a high threshold for many small and medium-sized studios. When cloud computing concept just emerged in 2010, Fox Renderfarm decided to devote its energy to the cloud rendering platform based on the deep accumulation of 3D animation and cloud computing technologies to develop a large-scale self-service cluster rendering system in order to provide rendering technology support for SMEs and CG studios.

Start from 0

The idea of cloud rendering was born in 2010. The goal of Fox Renderfarm is to build a large rendering cloud service that can be shared and used by all the studios in the world on pay per use basis. Kenny Zou, CEO of Fox Renderfarm told us that there was only a team of five people and less than 50 servers at that time. Fox Renderfarm spent nearly two years from the ideas to the development of the SaaS platform version 1.0. During the first half of the year since the service launched, the revenue was basically 0, as well as the popularity. The entire team even doubted whether this business model will be accepted by the industry. By chance, Fox Renderfarm helped to render a movie in a short time. With the release of the film, the cloud rendering service provided by Fox Renderfarm has attracted wide attention in the industry and its popularity has also greatly improved. Fox Renderfarm has then entered a period of rapid development.

The dream is perfect, but the reality is cruel

Everyone at Fox Renderfarm thought that the high-speed development would lead the way forward steadily, but the reality is always crueler than the expectation. Kenny Zou frankly stated that with the popularization of cloud computing concepts, the demand for cloud rendering service has seen explosive growth in a short period of time. However, due to insufficient equipment resources and platform design capacity, users often experience machine congestion, long queue time, etc. during the rendering process. The extremely poor user experience whacked the entire team. Until 2016, Fox Renderfarm accepted the first round of financing from Alibaba Group, which in turn expanded the scale of production and the number of equipment as well as making product research and development a top priority. This ultimately eased the problem of user experience.

To become the first in Asia

With the rapid growth of Fox Renderfarm’s computing capabilities, Fox Renderfarm has now become Asia’s largest cloud rendering platform. There are numerous well-known Chinese and foreign films that used cloud rendering services by Fox Renderfarm, such as: Mr Hublot (the 86th Academy Award for best animated short film), Wolf Warrior 2 (which broke a new record at the box office in China), Baahubali series (the biggest blockbuster of Indian cinema), Monkey King: Hero is Back (Chinese box-office myth movie), Duck Duck Goose (the Hollywood production standard animated comedy film), Boonie Bears series (the highest box office record in Chinese animation movies history), Detective Chinatown 2 (the 2018 Chinese Spring Festival blockbuster movie) and other special effects movie productions. More than that, Fox Renderfarm also share the massive cluster rendering and computing power to the small and medium-sized production studios around the world to help talented and creative young people to realize their CG creation dreams through the free rendering and educational discounts initiative via Fox Renderfarm’s GoCloud Program.

Today, Fox Renderfarm Rendering Platform is still further expanding its system scale, optimizing system stability, and continuously improving its capacity specifications. In 2018, Fox Renderfarm will deploy high-level security strategies in strict accordance with the MPAA content security guidelines to match the stringent requirements of top studios around the world for data security.

Speaking of this, many people cannot help but ask: There are hundreds of platforms that provide rendering services. What makes Fox Renderfarm become the top render farm in the industry? After talking to companies that have formed long-term cooperation with Fox Renderfarm, we finally got the answer.

Fox Renderfarm pays special attention to R&D investment

Currently, Fox Renderfarm has more than 100 employees in technical R&D team, including cloud platform development engineers, 3D rendering technical director (TD) experts with years of experience, and top-notch system operation engineers.

Rich industry experience

Fox Renderfarm’s TD team comes from the industry’s first-line studios. They understand the production environment and usage habits of the industry studios and have accumulated a lot of experience in the massive customer service process, and are also good at handling a variety of rendering problems.

High cost-performance

Fox Renderfarm has greatly optimized its data center, capacity utilization, and operational efficiency through large-scale procurement of software and hardware equipment, which greatly reduced overall costs.

Provide end-to-end one-stop service

In addition to further optimizing the cloud rendering service experience, Fox Renderfarm will also invest in R&D specifically for the film and television industry, providing high-speed cross-border data transmission services, digital asset management services, cloud workstation rental services, and off-site production collaboration platform services. All services will be tailored to the film and television industry to reduce the production costs of the industry and increase production efficiency and quality.
With the rapid development of the CG production industry and the intensification of globalization, international cooperation has become increasingly close. Cloud rendering services have now become standard practice on the production of animation and special effects processes. As one of the largest cloud rendering farms in the world, Fox Renderfarm connects with and serves the world’s major film and television animation production companies, providing standardized processes for post-production, reducing costs and increasing output. It carries a great significance to the development of the entire CG industry.

On 19^th April 2018, Fox Renderfarm and the mainstream animation production companies of both China and Malaysia to host the 2018 Fox Renderfarm CG Technology Summit – Malaysia with the theme of “Technology Inspires Art”. The cutting-edge CG technology and the most practical successful case study sharing provide more opportunities for industry elites to network and communicate with each other.

Guest Speaker & Their Topics:

Shuai Peng Film Division VP of Original Force
Topic: Film Rendering Difficulties of Original Force

Ling Chen  CG Division Production Director of Original Force
Topic: From Motion Capture to CG Production Process (Using L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties project as a case study)

Yanjuan Liu Deputy General Manager of Fantawild
Topic: Boonie Bears Animated Series Film Technology Development Process

At the same time, Fox Renderfarm CEO Kenny Zou will be together with local mainstream animation production companies to sign a letter of intent for strategic cooperation, which will lay a solid foundation for the long-term cooperation in film and television rendering animation between China and Malaysia.
“Technology Inspires Art” —— 2018 Fox Renderfarm CG Technology Summit

See You in Malaysia!

The post “An excellent work must be the result of a perfect combination of technology and art”: Exclusive interview with Kenny Zou from Fox Renderfarm appeared first on AnimationXpress.

Framestore has brought Larissa Berringer and Cat Pavitt to its Chicago team as business development manager and senior producer respectively for the Midwest office (Framestore’s third base in the US) as it celebrates its first year in operation in Chicago.

Larissa Berringer

With significant credits gained across film, television and advertising, Larissa is an experienced multimedia producer. Before joining Framestore to foster client and creative relationships across the company’s advertising business, she started her career on the sets of the popular series Weeds, working alongside show creator Jenji Kohan. She then moved to the VFX industry and joined Vitamin Pictures in Chicago as executive producer where she handled projects for clients spanning across ad agencies, Fortune 500 companies, and renowned directors. She later moved to be the producer at The Mill.

Managing director (Chicago) Krystina Wilson says, “Larissa’s breadth of knowledge, reputation within the Chicago community, and her strategic thinking as to how we grow, as a both a creative studio and innovation company, all make her invaluable to our team.”

Cat Pavitt

On the other hand, Cat Pavitt joins the Chicago office directly from Framestore’s London operation. There she has spent the past seven years at the core of the company’s advertising VFX business producing work. She has also won the best producer at the UK Broadcast Tech Young Talent Awards in 2017.

“Cat’s innate skills and passion as a producer are the perfect complement to Larissa’s joining. Her demeanour with clients and artists alike, has made her beloved across the company, and we are thrilled to have her in Chicago to join this already stellar production team,” adds Wilson.

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