Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1475547
By Jennifer Walden T he global animation market is ex- pected to reach $587 billion by 2030, according to Precedence Research. With that level of projected growth, there are a lot of employment opportunities for editors looking to get into animation or further their careers in the industry. Here are a few animation tools that can help facilitate that next career move. L e a d A n i m a t i o n E d i t o r L a u r e n C r i s t talks about using Flix from Foundry to efficiently roundtrip sequences between artists and editorial. Editor Tim Collins dives into the open-source 3D creation suite Blender, which handles all aspects of the animation pipeline (3D modeling, rigging, sculpting, and so on). And Brian Master explores what's next for animation and film production techniques beyond linear 2D and 3D storytelling. FLIX FROM FOUNDRY Lead animation editor Lauren Crist is currently cutting her first animated feature with Netflix, having just come from Netflix's "The Cuphead Show!" series as an animatic editor. This upcoming feature is part of Netflix's slate of projects based on the works of renowned children's author Roald Dahl. Crist has also worked as an animatic editor on several animated series for Walt Disney T V A n i m a t i o n , i n c l u d i n g fa n - favo r i te "Phineas and Ferb," and for Amazon Stu- dios on their "Pete the Cat" series. S h i f t i n g f r o m s e r i e s w o r k t o a n a n i m a te d fe a t u re i nv o l v e d i m p o r ta n t workflow changes, including the move from editing in Adobe Premiere on macOS to Avid Media Composer on Windows PC. (Crist noted that due to COVID, the need for remote editing played a role in switching to a PC-based workflow.) And it's also intro- duced Crist to Flix from Foundry (foundry. GET ANIMATED EDITORS EXPLAIN HOW THEY USE THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY IN THEIR ANIMATION PROJECTS com/products/flix) – a story development tool that connects different animation pre-production departments – like story- board artists and editors. Through Flix, editors can send artists sequences that need to be altered, updated, or redesigned and vice versa. When artists create new panels or revise existing ones, they can send those to the editor through Flix. Flix does more than round-tripping between artists and editorial. According to the Foundry site, "Flix will take care of relinking the clips to their original PSD (Photoshop) files, handle effects and cam- era moves, extract audio, break your edit into shots, store the reference QuickTime for easy access, and notify everyone in the production." It also takes care of "naming, organizing and managing your Photoshop files so that you don't have to," helps you to quickly find a specific file, and provides access to every single file ever sent to Flix via the Library with search options that can filter boards by sequence, artist, and date created. Flix also incorporates audio, so you can add a voiceover to your boards, time your sequence to an existing audio track directly in Flix, and add background music or sound effects by importing MP3s. As per the Foundry site, "The recorded timing and audio are automatically passed to editorial, ensuring all the creative decisions from story are preserved." Crist noted that she was "used to a pipeline that's Storyboard Pro-driven. Flix is different in that it's translated with AAFs as opposed to just individual panels or JPEGs that are exported from Toon Boom's Storyboard Pro." F l i x h a s b e e n a r o u n d s i n c e 2 0 1 3 but it's continually evolving. The most recent update released in May 2022 – Flix 6.4 – gives users better integration for their Storyboard Pro and Avid workflow. Lauren Crist. 42 C I N E M O N T A G E T E C H