Atomic Betty went from TV stardom to launch a music career with a new CD. © Breakthrough Animation.

From Voice to Video
In the world of animation, there are sometimes happy accidents. When teen voice actor Tajja Isen auditioned for the lead role in Breakthrough Animation’s series Atomic Betty, the producers were looking for an adult actor, not a child. “I heard about the audition three or four years ago,” Isen says, “and I was lucky to get it because I thought it would be fun… Betty is such a strong female character.” Isen not only got the audition, she got the job.

Atomic Betty is a fast-paced animated adventure comedy TV series aimed at 8- to12-year-olds that currently airs in 120 territories worldwide. The show is currently in season three of production. Betty is a little girl with a big secret; to her friends and family, she’s the sweet and brainy girl next door, but when the galaxy beckons, she sheds her humdrum persona and becomes “Atomic Betty, Galactic Guardian and Defender of the Cosmos.”

Isen, who at age 14 also provides the voice of Jane for Jane and The Dragon, came to her role as Betty with considerable experience — including having appeared in The Lion King. Then, when one episode called for Betty to sing, Isen surprised everyone by demonstrating that she had a good singing voice.

Isen recorded the theme song for Atomic Betty, which was produced as a music video and also appears on the Atomic Betty CD. While Isen did not play the keyboards as shown in the video, she is quick to point out that she does know how to play both piano and keyboards. “I’ve also started writing and recording my own songs,” she says.

In March 2006, Isen was awarded the prestigious Young Artists Award for the second year in a row for Atomic Betty, winning “Best Performance in a Voice-Over Role” for her performance in the second season of the show.

“Tajja’s role has grown from being the voice of Atomic Betty to the singer of the show’s original songs to global ambassador of the entire brand,” comments Kevin Gillis, exec producer of Atomic Betty and md of Breakthrough Animation. We are extremely proud of Tajja Isen for winning this significant award. Tajja is an incredibly gifted performer and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have this rising young talent as the voice of Atomic Betty.” “Music has always been the best cultural tool to reach the primary youth market,” Gillis says. “Kids are very sophisticated when it comes to music and the TV experience affords you the opportunity to reach the audience with songs people will remember.”

In Atomic Betty, Betty’s Enemy Number One the ultimate super-villain, the Supreme Overlord, Maximus I.Q. Maximus would love nothing better than to visit Betty’s home world and destroy her once and for all. Gillis hints that season three will see Betty spending more time on Earth.

“There’s going to be a garage band, so there will be more music, and more songs for Tajja,” Gillis says, including another music video.

Atomic Betty also offers auxiliary action and music via the web and through ring-tone or iPod downloads. “I don’t want to be repurposing content,” Gillis says. “The audience can go to the telephone or iPod for a unique experience. It creates a seamless feel between that and the TV experience.”

“We’re a portable society now. It’s quite amazing,” observes Gillis. “The entertainment medium is so portable now. You can watch if and when you want to, surf, or download.” Gillis currently shows his clients clips of Atomic Betty on his PSP.

Another Gillis creation, The Raccoons, is headed back to the TV screen and is being developed as a feature. “The original series has been picked up in 35 countries, including Cartoon Network,” Gillis reveals. The Raccoons starred in their own music video in the 1980s, called Raccoons Let’s Dance.

Missy Elliot takes over New York City in the Pass that Dutch video. Courtesy of Radium.

Well-Rounded Video
Animated music videos range from straight to experimental, and from 2D to 3D — or a trendy mix of all styles. Radium Inc. prefers using CGI to create well-rounded video. The company provided animation for the Missy Elliott video, Pass that Dutch, as well as the “Product People” dance party spot for Target.

“The reason CGI in general — animation, matte paintings, etc. — was used in the video had to do with the overall design of the piece,” says Aladino Debert, creative director/head of CG, Radium Inc. “Pass that Dutch is comprised essentially of three parts, and each required a very different approach. In the most obvious example, Missy is seen singing from the top of the Empire State Building, like King Kong, with the city in the background and old planes buzzing about, so CG was the natural choice. Cost was also a factor, since our approach allowed Dave Meyers, the director, to shoot everything on stage, over greenscreen and create all the environments later, with more time and creative freedom.”

Debert says that Radium did all the VFX on the music video using Autodesk’s Maya for the animation, Pixar’s RenderMan for rendering, and Adobe Photoshop for all the digital matte paintings — all running on off-the-shelf PCs.

Radium lent its CG and visual effects expertise to create a high-energy street-party themed spot for Target. Directed by Spaz Williams, with Radium’s creative director Jonathan Keeton, the spot features Target store products that merge with each other to form dancing party people.

“Stylistically, we wanted it to feel like ‘Rent’ in outer space — colorful, energetic and theatrical, with each character having a distinctive personality,” Debert says. “It’s a rich concept that opens up all sorts of possibilities for other spots for the client.”

Created entirely in CG, the camera moves fluidly through the various rooms of an apartment to reveal, in a series of fast edits, Target’s “Product People” dancing at a party. “Since all the characters on ‘Product People’ are anthropomorphic in nature, and they are dancing, we decided that we could benefit greatly by working with a choreographer (Travis Paine) and real dancers,” Debert says. “By using motion capture, we had a variety of advantages over traditional keyframed animation: We could choose takes in realtime on the motion capture stage, get approvals on the edit using video-feed takes, and get about 75% of the animation straight from the system, with the remaining 25% being keyframe animation.”

“With the sheer amount of characters, motion capture proved to be invaluable, Debert notes.

While a choreographer was used, the final music track was not. “We actually did all the animation and motion capture sessions to a temp track that consisted mostly of beats,” Debert advises. “The final soundtrack was not finished until the last week!”

Debert says that for this project, all animation was created on Autodesk’s Maya, with the rendering done using Mental Image’s Mental Ray. Adobe Photoshop was used to create all texture maps and digital matte paintings. All final compositing was performed using Discreet’s Inferno.

Debert notes that working on a music video can lead to other work, like commercial spots, and vice versa. “Every time you work on a difficult project, be it a music video or commercial, you develop tools and techniques that build your ‘how-to’ library,” he comments.

“What changes are the parameters and creative challenges, but the tools tend to be very similar,” Debert says. “And most important of all, software only takes you so far, so you always need talented people.”

Janet Hetherington is a freelance writer and cartoonist based in Ottawa, Canada. She shares a studio with artist Ronn Sutton and a ginger cat, Heidi.