Softimage and Nerd Corps looking to bring animated show to television.
Softimage Co., a subsidiary of Avid Technology, Inc., today announced that Nerd Corps Entertainment Inc., is in production on Dragon Booster - a fully animated 3D television show - using SOFTIMAGE®|XSI® software. After a thorough technical evaluation of the available 3D tools on the market, Nerd Corps chose SOFTIMAGE|XSI software for its extensive feature set, workflow efficiencies, and customization options.
“It’s vital to the long term success of companies like ours to have the ability to create high caliber projects while working within tight time constraints and aggressive budgets. SOFTIMAGE|XSI has played a key roll in the development of a pipeline that allows us to do just that,” said Chuck Johnson, co-founder and head of CGI production at Nerd Corps Entertainment. “The XSI interface is intuitive and easy to use, making it the ideal application for an environment like ours, where artists can learn the software as they work, rather than wasting valuable production time getting up to speed.”
Ace Fipke, founder and president at Nerd Corps, added, “Our partners are extremely pleased with the unique style and high quality of shows we’ve been able to produce with XSI. We’ve been able to exceed creative expectations while completing episodes on time and on budget - a rare occurrence in 3D episodic production. In addition, the support and training we received from Softimage played an integral part in helping our small start-up grow into a full-scale production company in under six months.”
Founded in the fall of 2003, Vancouver, Canada-based Nerd Corps Entertainment has over 70 artists, including animators, modelers, VFX artists, compositors, designers, storyboard artists, directors and writers working to deliver the first 39 episodes of Dragon Booster, the studio’s first major television production contract. The show, which is a tale about a good-versus-evil struggle in a world where humans and dragons co-exist, is currently scheduled to begin airing this October on ABC Family in the U.S. and on CBC in Canada, before worldwide release in early 2005.
“For close to two decades, Softimage has been focused on solving technical issues for 3D artists, freeing them to concentrate on their creativity. The features found in SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.4.0 - like the high-level rigging language, non-destructive character workflows, native non-linear animation tools, and fully integrated compositor - are just a few of the tools we’ve designed to help streamline and optimize how artists use the software,” said Gareth Morgan, senior product manager for Softimage.
