Dancing Diablo is collaborating with 4Kids for a third season of the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES television series since its premiere on FOX. It has styled and painted backgrounds for 26 episodes that premiered February 2003, is finishing the last of 26 episodes for the second season and is embarking on 13 more episodes.
My team works on the digital coloring of one show each week, said Dancing Diablos founding partner Beatriz Ramos, explaining the collaborative process. We meet with the director at 4Kids to breakdown the board and discuss the color treatment for the show (the palette we use is moody with an emphasis on dramatic lighting), how we want the backgrounds to look, what colors the flashback scenes or the dream sequences are going to employ, what light treatments we are using for characters and props, etc.
4Kids Ent. (www.4KidsEntertainment.com) supplies the designs, which are scanned and then Dancing Diablo artists digitally color the backgrounds, characters and props in Photoshop.
Once all the color models are approved, Dancing Diablo ships the files to Dong Woo Animation in Seoul, Korea where the actual animation is done.
4Kids Ent. producer JoEllyn Marlow added, Beatriz is one of the most talented and skilled artists that I have worked with in a very long time, and I think that her sensibilities are perfect for this project. Without her touch, the show would not have looked as good as it does. Because of Dancing Diablos contributions, this show is taken to a higher level of quality than it would have been had anyone else done the ink-and-paint.
The Dancing Diablo creative team includes founding partner/designer Ramos, who is the stylist, color supervisor Liz Artinian, background painter Reginald Butter, prop/character colorist Pedro Ros and production manager Francisco Hurtado.
Dancing Diablo works closely with a 4Kids Ent. Team, which includes supervising producer Lloyd Goldfine, supervising director Roy Burdine, exec in charge of production Carole Weitzman and producer Marlow.
The original TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES were created in May 1984 when Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman published a 40-page, black-and-white comic book. The original TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE animated series debuted in 1987 and was the #1 children's television show throughout the late 80s and early 90s.
Dancing Diablo Studio Inc. (www.dancingdiablo.com), founded in January 2002, is an intimate and independent studio known for the fresh, bold and positively devilish ideas its artists and illustrators conjure for their clients. The Brooklyn-based studio offers traditional animation, stop-motion, CGI and Flash, and creates images for the advertising, broadcast, corporate and recording industries.
While relatively young, its client roster includes 4Kids Ent., Young & Rubicam (Bravo Group), Steve Madden, Millennial Arts Prods., Atlantic Records, Greenteam Advertising (Smithsonian Institution), MTV and Side Show/ABC Sports. In addition, individually, the partners have created projects for MTV, Cartoon Network, Disney, Grey Global Group Advertising, ING Barings, Prime Brokerage Services, Intel Corp., Kelloggs, Microsoft, Nickelodeon, Scholastic Inc., Cheseborough-Ponds USA Co. and New Line Prods.
For additional information or to see a reel, contact Jackie Brown, studio manager, at email Diablo@dancingdiablo.com.
