Toon Boom Picked For New French Series “Le Petit Spirou”

Montreal (October 3, 2011) — Toon Boom Animation Inc. announced today that Dupuis Edition & Audiovisuel (France) along with Luxanimation (Luxembourg) and Aranéo (Belgium) have chosen the Toon Boom pipeline to produce a new series titled Le Petit Spirou. The series is based on the highly popular comic book collection created by Tome and Janry. This 78×7’ series is produced by Léon Perahia (Dupuis) and Eric Anselin (Luxanimation) as well as directed by Virginie Jallot. Each producer assigned a local animation studio and shared the production deliverables among them. The three studios include HLC in Paris, Dreamwall in Marcinelle and Luxstudio in Doncols.

Combining cut-out animation with traditional animation in certain parts of the series, the team at Luxanimation determined the production methodology in order to keep the overall quality level as high and as consistent as possible. In addition to maximizing the integration between Storyboard Pro and Harmony, Luxanimation built upon Harmony’s robust Central Library to make reuse their rule of efficiency. During pre-production they created 110 backgrounds, of which only 40 needed to be redrawn from one episode to the next, they also prepared a bank of poses for the 22 characters; this groundwork set a solid basis for reuse and the easy addition of new assets as they were needed.

“Not only does Harmony cover the entire production process which translates into significant savings and efficiencies, it also enabled us to keep the project in Europe and hire over 100 people between Luxembourg, Belgium and France. Our turnover is faster and the proximity to our two partners means greater flexibility and higher quality,” stated Eric Anselin, CEO and Producer at Luxanimation.

Initial broadcasters for Le Petit Spirou include M6 and RTBF. International distribution is handled by Mediatoon Distribution.