New feature film-quality CG-animated short-form series debuted on Rovio’s kid-friendly ToonsTV service on March 10.
Canadian animation studio Bardel Entertainment has partnered with Rovio Entertainment to produce the Angry Birds Blues television series, which debuted March 10 on Rovio’s kid-friendly ToonsTV service. Rovio teased the series during the end credits of last year’s The Angry Birds Movie, which grossed nearly $350 million at the global box office.
The story follows the hilarious antics of mischievous bluebird triplets who charge into outrageous escapes on Bird Island. Bursting with energy and big plans that either wildly succeed or disastrously fail, the Blues’ feats are often complicated by a supporting cast of naive, yet adorable, hatchlings.
“We’re excited to be entering into a new relationship with Rovio to extend the world of Angry Birds into a new TV series,” said Delna Bhesania, CEO & Co-founder of Bardel Entertainment. “This is an opportunity for Bardel to offer a bigger breadth of services and push the boundaries of quality for animated TV.”
It was during the development of the “look-of-picture” when Rovio and Bardel began the collaboration for the series. One of the biggest hurdles to over-come was creating a feature film look using a television schedule and budget. It was imperative that the quality of work be indistinguishable from the Angry Birds feature film that was produced by Rovio and distributed by Sony Pictures.
“We knew we wanted to work with Bardel because they understand the high level of quality that the Angry Birds brand demands,” said Joonas Rissanen, producer of Angry Birds Blues. “Bardel helped us get as close as possible to a feature film look within a TV-series budget.”
In order to maintain the fast-paced schedule without compromising the quality, Bardel’s Studio CG Supervisor, Chris Browne, strategized with his team to develop innovative solutions that would optimize the CG workflow. One of the tools they created was a pipeline that was able to render detailed, high-quality assets, such as dense grass in a large scaled environment. Assets of this quality can be extremely challenging to optimize. The team created a tool to build grass only in the camera view, as opposed to the entire environment. Other innovative tools created include a 360-degree rotational lighting system to achieve the high-quality cinematic effect for of the series; and a workshare tool that enabled artists to share technical settings to eliminate repetitive tasks.
Each of the initial 30 episodes of the series runs 2-3 minutes in length.
Source: Bardel Entertainment
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
