Paul McCartney DVD Uses Toon Boom Animation Software

Sir Paul McCartney has produced a new DVD titled "Paul McCartney: The Music and Animation Collection", which includes the critically acclaimed new film, "Tuesday".

The film is produced by Sir Paul and directed by Geoff Dunbar. The colour work and compositing for both film and DVD linking sequences were provided by King Camera, the leading digital animation bureau, based in London's Soho film village. Chris King, Director and System Administrator, teamed with Tim Barter, the very talented young Digital Artist and Compositor, worked closely with Geoff Dunbar to achieve the high quality look. The film is based on the award-winning book by David Weisner and has a highly textured illustrated style; both Paul and Geoff did not want the flat impersonal style that they felt computers to date can offer.

"With production guidance from Jacqui Davies and the skill of King Camera the results are more than satisfactory." quotes Geoff Dunbar at High Eagle Productions.

This resulted in a BAFTA nomination for "Tuesday" and both Paul and Geoff are quick to point out the excellent contribution of King Camera. The DVD is due for release in the U.K. on 27 September 2004 after a very successful release in the USA. It also features the chart topper, "Rupert and the FROGGO Song" and "Tropic Island Hum", another of Sir Paul's vibrant all family entertainment songs heralding the arrival of a new set of characters to cartoon folk lore, Wirral the Squirrel, his girlfriend Wilhemina and their eccentric friend Froggo, among others.

King Camera used Toon Boom's advanced 2D animation system, USAnimation, as their main tool to assemble the film and linking material. USAnimation is vector-based and is able to handle productions of any duration or resolution. King Camera rendered Film and High Definition resolutions for the DVD and "Tuesday" while other productions have been simultaneously rendered to Macromedia(r) Flash(tm). "With "Tuesday" we had to incorporate extensive use of textures, automatic tones and highlights, mist, light and focal effects, sparkles, ripples, colour timing changes and multi-planning, sometimes for as many as eighty characters per scene, all with separate peg moves! Coupled with the freedom to create and digitally animate many of the scenes from scratch, USAnimation was an ideal tool, allowing us to easily integrate all aspects of the production, make real time changes with Geoff and Jacqui and produce a unique aesthetic look for both film and DVD extras." explains Tim Barter, Digital Artist and Compositor at King Camera.