Vivifilm & Walking The Dog join forces for Brendan
22 juni 2007
On May 30, production company Vivifilm and animation studio Walking the Dog invited the press in Brussels for a visit to one of the sets of Brendan and the Secret of Kells, a classically 2D animated feature film to be released in Belgium in the Summer of 2008.
The story is based on the famous ‘Book of Kells’, one of the most valuable manuscripts in the world. This book was made around 800 and nowadays it can be admired in Trinity College, Dublin. The film goes back to the 9th century, where Brendan (12) is educated by his uncle, Abbot Cellach, who holds a firm grip on his nephew and expects him to follow in his footsteps. One day, Brendan meets Brother Aidan, a master illustrator who shows him the beauty of art and stimulates his creativity and fantasy. Finally, Brendan decides to break free in search of his dream: completing the valuable Book of Kells. On his journey through the forest, he has to face his biggest fears.
Director of Brendan and the Book of Kells is Tomm Moore, the joint managing director and founder of The Cartoon Saloon, started up in Ireland in 1998. The project is a co-production between Les Armateurs (France), The Cartoon Saloon and head producer Vivifilm (Belgium). Six animation studios from five different countries are working on the animation: Walking The Dog and Digital Graphics (Belgium), The Cartoon Saloon (Ireland), Spirit (France), Kecskemet Animation Film Studio (Hungary) and Lightstar Studio’s (Brazil). The Cartoon Saloon takes care of the artwork, the storyboard and the animatic. For each of the 1250 scenes they make a lay-out and send it to the other studios to work on the key animation. In order to make this process work and to provide in an excellent production pipeline tool, Walking the Dog cooperated with Danish software company HoBSoft. Together they worked out a system where every partner can instantly see the progress made by the different partners and where they can check which scenes have received a ‘go’ to proceed to the next production stage.
‘Besides the animating itself, we are indeed playing an important part in structuring the production process’, says Eric Goossens of Walking the Dog. ‘Coordinating the international teamwork is crucial to make this film work. With Belleville Rendez-Vous, we already took on a similar role.’
http://www.cartoonsaloon.ie/