Yakari switched to 3D for the 4th season
Number of episodes : 52 – Runtime : 12 min
Director : Xavier Giacometti
Film production : Ellipsanime Productions, Belvision, 2 Minutes,
Les Cartooneurs (Season 4), Dargaud Média (Season 5)
Partners : France Télévisions, Degeto, Ard & Wdr
First aired : November, 2016
3D transition with 2D rendering
For this collaboration with Ellipse Studio, Toonkit built all characters and animals rigs.
We were able to quickly rely on the line up to define bipeds and quadrupeds templates to set up.
Special attention was paid to the 2D rendering constraints and toonshading to ensure the respect of Yakari’s design.
It seems it was a success as we were reached to continue the adventure on season 5.
This will result in the reuse of the rigs and the creation of 12 new characters.
Locomotions, deformations and dynamics
Characters diversity, especially their modes of locomotion, was one of the exciting aspects of the project.
And that was quite a bestiary.
Bipeds, of course, but also unguligrade quadrupeds (horses, bisons …), plantigrades (bears), digitigrades (dogs, wolves …), even a mixture of all (squirrels, beavers, wolverines …).
We could develop several Control Rigs to account for each of these particularities, which facilitated the animation.
A large part of our intervention focused on clothes deformations and their dynamics, and therefore the “tkSpring”, to give an illusion of flexibility and fluidity.
The 2D rendering constraints gave everyone a hard time, but the result is there !