Feb 5, 2019

How L'Atelier provides two episodes of "Robozuna" every four weeks

Anyone who works in animation on TV or streaming services already knows the pressure of delivering high-quality content on time and budget. One show that has raised the bar for the episode is cg animation Robozuna, Kidscave Entertainment and ITV Studios which airs on ITV in England and is also now on Netflix

Robozuna follows an orphan boy and his homemade robot watching to liberate his homeland from the evil empire and its legions of robots together. It's a good idea. The show is made by Studio L'Atelier Animation in Montreal, Canada, known for their work with feature-length ballerinas.

The load on the show of L'Atelier Animation is intense – they have to deliver two episodes every four weeks – they have the company's pipeline and production for Robozuna

"Kidscave Entertainment informed us early on that the quality of work done at Ballerina is the motivation to reach out to us." L'Atelier animation producer Sebastien Racine "Specifically, the face animation we achieved in the film convinced them that we had the skill level we needed to take Robozna."

Once on board, L'Atelier was provided with scripts and designs, with animation studios translating 3d models and 2d concepts into environments. The assets were then sent to Kidscave, based in London, to generate animatics (done with Redboard storyboarding software). Animatics then had to let Latelier's shot pipeline know and allow for a fast episode turnaround.

"The production schedule was very tight, but it was still very tight," said the head of cg Benoitblouin. "We're delivering 4 episodes every 2 weeks and we're offering offsets for each department. This equates to 40 minutes of layout and animation, 150 effect shots, and a monthly output of 66,000 final composite frames. To do this, the pipeline uses an in-house builder and a number of automation tools to retrieve data via Shotgun, so you can assemble the scene using the same interface within all the software.

Modeling, rigging, layout, animation, and effects are done in Maya, while texturing is done in Substance and Mari. Lighting, compositing, and rendering are handled by Guerilla Render and Nuke. "It's added to all of the in-house tools we've developed to optimize our pipeline using Shotgun," added Charles Granger, visual effects supervisor.

Robozuna's animators have a lot of material to generate – everything is keyframed (motion capture was not considered in the show). "Animators were encouraged to act on the idea to help them bring credibility to the shot," said animation director Jennifer Harlow. It also has a large library of movements and poses, which were constantly updated and used interchangeably between characters."

Despite the tight turnaround, according to the studio's Global Animation Director Ted Ty, L'Atelier's goal is how the animated TV series "working within the constraints of the TV schedule with tight deadlines and tight budgets will help our animated TV series."

"More specifically, "continued Ty" was aimed at creating character-specific performance based on a launch with a director in dealing with humans vs robots to reach the desired quality level. All characters, depending on their character and the context of the episode, will be able to specify whether their movements are energetic or subtle, large or docile. "

This was extended to ensuring, for example, that older robots with older software would have more primitive and robotic actions, while "new and improved" robots "had cooler, smoother and more organic movements," Ty said. "There was a lot of input from our animators themselves, too, who had a lot of creative freedom in executing ideas. Everyone in the team contributed significantly, resulting in a huge range of funny characters.

Currently, L'Atelier has finished the second of Robozuna's 20-episode long season and delivery is scheduled for mid-may. He has also worked on the feature-length animated film Fireheart, co-produced by Main Journey and Caramel Films, and Attention Menhill.An animated short that is part of the "4d Ride" at the Asterix Park in France.