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Digital Anarchy Releases ToonIt!

Digital Anarchy, a leading provider of cost-effective visual effects software for Adobe and Apple products, announced the release of ToonIt! for Film/Video. ToonIt! 1.0 will reliably and easily create cartoon-like images from film and video footage, freeing artists from time consuming techniques such as hand painting and rotoscoping. The filters use advanced algorithms from Toonamation to create cartoon shading and lines in After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion and Premiere Pro.

Stan Schwartz, co-founder and president of Toonamation, said about their render engine, "Cartoons, whether full color images or line drawings, are a natural way for people to express themselves. Until now there hasn't been a high-quality way to create these effects that isn't very labor intensive. We're delighted to bring that capability to you, here, first, through the ToonIt! plugin and our partnership with Digital Anarchy."

With ToonIt!, users can easily customize the "toon" effect for almost any footage in a variety of ways. There are four filters in the set. The Roto Toon filter creates flat shades of color and gives you full control over details like outlines, shading styles and halftone effects. The Outlines Only filter uses edge detection to produce cartoon-style edges, removing color altogether from the footage for a black-and-white comic-book style. Goth Toon makes use of internal color rotoscoping to create a high contrast effect, while Blacklight Edges' edge detection creates a fun, customizable set of neon-colored edges.

One of the key features of ToonIt! is its ability to minimize temporal artifacts. Other cartooning software frequently produces an undesirable "vibrating" image that is the result of color regions and lines jittering from frame to frame. In comparison, ToonIt! filters reduce these graphic issues and produce very consistent, pleasing results from one frame to the next. This temporal noise reduction and visual consistency drastically reduce the need to make adjustments via rotoscoping or other manual editing methods.

Some of the features include:

* Create a number of sophisticated looks, including Flat Cartoon, Graphic Novel, Line Art, Stipple and Pen & Ink.* No Resolution Limits: ToonIt! will work on footage of any resolution or size, from web to film.* No Hand Masking or Rotoscoping: Each toon effect is generated automatically. While there are customizable controls in the plug-in, no manual or frame-by-frame work is needed.* Customizable Looks: With 40 different parameters available to adjust the plug-in results, there are many possible approaches to get the best result for different types of footage.* Temporal Noise Reduction: ToonIt! keeps the results consistent over time, frame-by-frame. There is no jittering when played back at full speed, which is a common problem for software trying to achieve the cartoon effect.

Digital Anarchy ceo Jim Tierney commented, "We saw a need in the market for this product and have been trying to develop it for quite some time. Thanks to the Toonamation guys, we've finally created a plug-in that creates a beautiful cartoon look automatically."

Regularly priced at $299, ToonIt! 1.0 will be available for $249 through July 4. The filters work in After Effects 5.5 and higher, Final Cut Pro 4.5 and higher, Motion 2.1 and higher, and Premiere Pro 2.0 (Windows only) and higher. ToonIt! for Film/Video supports all variants of Macintosh OS X and runs natively on Intel Macs. The product supports Windows 2000, XP Home, XP Pro and Vista 32-bit systems. Demo filters and samples are available at Digital Anarchy's website.

A second package of ToonIt! will be released for use in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements later in the year. The same sophisticated algorithms will create a cartoon look for still images and photographs.

Digital Anarchy (www.digitalanarchy.com) is a privately owned company operating out of San Francisco that creates high-quality creative software for broadcast designers, 2D animators and professional photographers. These tools solve a wide range of design issues, from creating text effects and background design elements, to masking out bluescreens for commercial still photography. Digital Anarchy products work in conjunction with a wide range of products from companies such as Adobe, Apple and Autodesk.

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Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
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