Flash Equals Financial Freedom

By Michelle Paster

August 1, 2005    Source: Film & Video

Cartoon Network’s Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi may just reinvent the way animators think about 2D. Many animated TV shows are still based on pencil-and-paper drawings, which are scanned into conventional animation programs, but Puffy AmiYumi, produced by Renegade Animation ( Glendale, CA), saves time and money by using Macromedia Flash as a key animation tool. The result, Renegade claims, is that Puffy AmiYumi is the only animated program created entirely in the U.S.

The all-digital Flash workflow has allowed the production to save approximately $650,000 on each half-hour episode, estimate the show’s producers. "We get more and more of the process digital so we are saving the time of drawing and scanning, as well as inking and painting," says Renegade’s executive producer and co-founder Ashley Postlewaite, referring to an asset database that includes characters, props and effects. "Now, if the artists simply take drawings from the [Flash] archive and alter them, we have cut out all those steps."

It’s easy, for example, to slightly change the mouths of characters Ami and Yumi to match their emotions from shot to shot by making minor adjustments to images already created and stored in the asset database. Working in Flash has offered other efficiencies, as well. "We are animating in color as opposed to doing rough animation, clean-up, and then color," Postlewaite explains. Minimizing these steps has allowed the show to work with a 40-crew base, compared to double that amount for most 2D animated shows.

Through such methods, the artists generate an episode (each comprising three seven-minute shorts) for $250,000 to $350,000, excluding above-the-line costs such as voice talent. "We are able to meet the overseas price, which used to not be possible," says Postlewaite. "Now we can say to our clients,‘You get increased quality, increased participation in the process, and you can call retakes, often while you are sitting here.’"

With the goal to keep production completely in the U.S., Flash provides a level of automation that has led Renegade to become a bunch of loyalists. After experimental development with popular animation programs such as Toon Boom’s US Animation and Adobe After Effects, Darrell Van Citters, Renegade’s supervising director and co-founder, decided Flash would be the best and only tool for the job. "It was the most cost-effective solution for what it had to offer, providing for quality control and [prevention from] going off model."