Art director Mike Moon of Foster’s says, “All of those pencil lines you see in the show aren’t scanned lines that are vectorized, but actually just digital lines that can be manipulated in Illustrator. We’ve also used Illustrator, in places, to animate some assets to get certain looks that are more difficult to achieve working purely in Flash. So, for instance, in the pilot there’s an octopus tentacle. We create that octopus tentacle as a brush in Illustrator, and within that brush it’s got several colors and strokes and textures and details, and that can be applied to an animated center-line almost the way a 3D object would work with a spline. Then we can import those frames into Flash, and have the freedom to further manipulate it or bring it right into After Effects for compositing.”

Hollywood 2D Digital Animation: The New Flash Production Revolution, by Sandro Corsaro and Cliff Parrott, provides insight into Flash-based production. © 2004 Thomson Course Technology.

“For some of the animation itself, you can get certain effects by making a character’s body a brush in Illustrator, and then bring it into Flash,” says Craig Kellman. “So, if we draw a curvy line and apply the body brush to it, it turns that line into a character’s body based on that curve we just drew. That helps our animation look fluid. You can do it with a leg, a hand, an entire body. Like three characters stacked together under a trenchcoat, you can make a brush for them to move them all as one body in a series of S-curves.”

Moon says, “Honestly, I’m not seeing a lot of limitations. The animators are doing such brilliant work. At this point in time, I can’t imagine producing a 2D show not somehow using this process, or a slight modification of this process. I’m sold. Obviously there are issues I would change, little production issues, but creatively, what we’re doing now, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Because the whole Foster’s world is created with the same drawing tools (Illustrator, initially), there arises an interesting problem for the directors in achieving the separation they want among its characters, backgrounds and props. Moon says, “That’s something we’re constantly fighting with, to get that separation, whereas in a traditional show you have the obvious separation between traditionally or digitally painted backgrounds married with flat character art. Given that there are so many characters in play with so much line work, we’ve really pulled the backgrounds down tremendously, trying to go with a monochromatic palette a lot of times. On the other hand, we wanted these really decadent backgrounds with a lot of intricacy to them. It involves striking a balance between really simple color styling and really complex design. Right in the middle there is a good balance.”

Because the backgrounds are prepared in Illustrator, every detail of every element has its own integrity, existing on its own layers within the program. Those layers can be brought into After Effects and composited using a 3D camera, creating a sort of infinite multiplane effect. “There’s a lot of stuff like that we’re really not taking advantage of to its full extent, just because of time,” says Moon.

Also, with their scalability, the digital assets can be used across a variety of platforms, whether for television, online, or, nowadays, mobile phones. Working with the same models and the same animation elements, the integration among media is theoretically seamless.

Moon says, “With Foster’s, really, I think we’re just scratching the surface of what can be done with this. There are so many possibilities in terms of looks and production design, so many techniques and processes nested in there. I think, as a first step, we were really successful with it. Everyone has done an amazing job. Just when I think we’ve hit a ceiling, things just keep getting better and better and better. It never ceases to amaze me what these guys are able to generate. So, I’m really interested to see how this mindset evolves and affects things in the future.”

Flash Forward
Naturally, one of the keys to success in producing quality Flash animation is in pulling together the right team. In the heart of Hollywood, Six Point Harness Studios has assembled a crackerjack crew of humble and talented artists who are thinking big. Opening its doors only a year and a half ago, Six Point Harness is already hard at work on several top-tier pilot projects for Nickelodeon, Klasky-Csupo, Disney and Fox.

Brendan Burch, one of the founding artists of the studio, says, “It’s mostly because of Flash that we felt we could start our own studio. We’ve figured out all of these different structural aspects for putting files together in Flash that really speeds things up, tremendously. And there is definitely a big hole to fill as far as Flash production goes. Mondo Media, Renegade Animation, Cartoon Network, Atomic Cartoons — there aren’t really too many people that do it well. We try to erase the line between Flash and traditional. People call it Flash animation, and are expecting some kind of Flash animation, but it’s not the case with us. You’re going to get something that’s well animated.”