Jan 19, 2017

From Short to Cartoon Network Series: How the CG Animation "My Night and Me" Made Its Way to Television

Set in the Dark Ages and mixing over-the-top comic action with stylized design, the show was directed by Joely Christian and co-produced by TeamTO in France and Thuristar in Belgium. [Production at TeamTO has been particularly busy in recent years, with titles such as "Angelo Rules," "Oscar's Oasis," "Sofia the First," "PJ Masks," "Raving Rabbids" and "Calimero. He is also in the midst of the second season of Skylanders.

His work on "My Knight and Me" grew out of Kristian's short story "850 Meters," which featured a knight from the same era. The project was proposed at the Cartoon Forum in 2012.

"In a way, Joely wanted to use his character like an actor," explains Corinne Cooper, Team TO's production manager and executive producer. 'He wanted to use the same characters throughout several projects. For this show, we wanted to broaden the storyline, make the father-son relationship stronger, and focus on the theme of teamwork"

.

"What I liked most about this boy-driven series was that the female characters were very strong, especially the daughter as a rugged princess and the queen mother," Couper added.

"My Knight and I" followed a traditional production cycle, with some animation done in 2D at Tristar and CG work distributed between Team TO's Paris and Bourg-les-Vallances (near Lyon) studios. After lighting, boards and animatics were produced. Voice-overs were recorded in French and English, and 44 animators completed the final animation. 52 13-minute episodes were produced in about 18 months.

TeamTO, which had completed a feature-length animation ("Yellow Bird") prior to "My Night and Me," utilized in-house pipeline development for use on the show. This included a transition to Pixar's RenderMan rendering workflow, which is somewhat unusual for television production.

"RenderMan has really improved our lighting," says TeamTO President and CEO Guillaume Herouin. "With RenderMan, it wasn't easy at first because you have to build your own shaders, and with RenderMan, it wasn't easy at first because you have to build your own shaders, and with RenderMan, you have to build your own shaders. Everything can be tweaked, reused, and redeveloped."

Hellouin and Kouper also suggest that the point of difference in this show is its stylization. It is clearly in the realm of CG animation, but at times it appears more graphic, such as when the background is plain. The idea was to clearly separate the characters from their environment.

"In some CG shows, the characters disappear from the background. In this show, we wanted the characters to pop off the screen." We focused on the characters and stylized the backgrounds to create contrast with the characters.

"The Knight and I" has already aired in France, Belgium, and the UK. In the U.S., it premiered earlier this month on Cartoon Network and will be broadcast by Turner, CN's parent company, on other EMEA, Latin American, and Asia-Pacific channels.

Meanwhile, TeamTO continues to expand. The studio now has offices in Los Angeles and Beijing and is developing several in-house productions, along with third-party animation projects.

"The studio has grown a lot in the last few years; in 2016 it reached 360 employees and will be full again by next summer."