This week Tim Sarnoff is at FMX providing an overview of his animation and VFX roadmap for Technicolor Digital. We had a chance to discuss these topics with him prior to his trip, including the company's first ever foray into original content with the animated series, Pete & Pickles, and the formation of a new team headed by animation vets Jean MacCurdy and Fonda Snyder.

Bill Desowitz: So, it's been a year since you've been at Technicolor. You've got some great animation news about Pete & Pickles. What's the strategic roadmap?

 Tim Sarnoff: It's an obvious next step, which is to take our facilities -- most specifically our facility in Bangalore -- and utilize the resources that are there to help creative talent fulfill their visions. No different from we've got a barn -- let's put on a show. It's that basic philosophy that Mickey Rooney espoused many years ago.

BD: Only it's Pete & Pickles, not Mickey & Judy.

TS: But they're similar in terms of the story line: two unlikely characters [a pig and elephant] becoming fast friends.

BD: And I see you've got a little help now with Jean and Fonda.

TS: Technicolor has afforded me the opportunity of putting all the pieces of my past together into one gigantically terrific opportunity. There's our animation business in India; there's a very strong visual effects presence in London and Vancouver [MPC]; and our commercial business in both London and LA… and to bring Jean back to the business after being away for a few years, and having Fonda take all of her writers that she's represented for many years, it really is an opportunity to do something that's different from just offering a fee for services.

BD: What can you tell us about Pete & Pickles and your overall plans for producing children's animation?

TS: What we are doing is putting things together that are about universal truths: the basis of friendships vs. the struggles of success in a relationship, things that are funny vs. things that are just amusing. And when we're looking at different projects that we're going to be working on, we are surrounding the talent that brings the projects to us with whatever resources we have to help them at Technicolor. So some of the talent have incredibly good story sense but not necessarily the artistic group behind them, so we can support them with that. Others, who have great artistic expression but who have not been engaged in trying to put a story together, we can surround them with those people. So, we're there as an enhancer to the creative talent looking to finish their vision. That is essentially what Technicolor has been doing for 100 years.