ANIMO SOFTWARE PRODUCES OSCAR WINNER

Michael Dudok de Wit’s animated film ‘Father and Daughter’ (pictured) which used Animo technology has won an Oscar for Best Animated Short.
The visuals, which have a traditional charcoal-and-pencil look, were created by London-based Spider Eye using Cambridge Animation Systems’ Animo software.
The animated story of ‘Father and Daughter’ tells of the longing a daughter experiences after her father bids her farewell at the beginning of the twentieth century. John Brooks, producer with Spider Eye said: “Although ‘Father and Daughter’ is stylistically simple, it was difficult to achieve and would have been impossible to create traditionally. With Animo, we were able to satisfy all of the director’s requirements and add value to many of the scenes of Father and Daughter.”
Director Michael Dudok de Wit wanted to avoid the flat, painted feel of cel painting and chose instead to fill areas with different “boiling” textures. He created coloured, grainy textures in Photoshop and sent them to Spider Eye. The images were entered into Animo and short film clips were made by randomly moving the images under the camera. The textures were output at high resolution, imported into final scenes, and matted to fill areas of the character animation.
Animo’s Layer Palettes feature was used to create the matte runs that define the fill areas on the character animation. A colour model was made that allowed individual colours in the painter’s palette to be isolated as a black matte run.
'Father and Daughter' made its debut at the Ottawa International Film Festival, where it won the Independent Film and People’s Choice awards. Other awards include Grand Prize at the Cinanima Animation Festival and Best International Animated Film at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.
Spider Eye Limited, founded by Morgan Francis and John Brooks in the 1990s, provides 2D and 3D animation service. The animation service company attracts high-end, complicated, difficult-to-achieve art films and commercials.
Cambridge Animation Systems is the exclusive developer of Animo software, as well as Inkworks and other 3D animation plug-ins. Animo is the first software package to seamlessly integrate 2D and 3D animation and has an installed base of 3,000 users in more than 50 countries. (AMcE)