The 35th Annual Telly Awards has awarded Mark Simon and Toon Boom Animation as a winner for the animated show The Key, from over 12000 entries.
The Key was created to show the power and options of the Toon Boom suite of animation software tools and the goal was to include elements such as integrating 2D and 3D elements, atmospheric mist, fire, liquid, shadows and more.
“Toon Boom gave me a list of parameters they wanted to show off with this short. I wasn’t interested in directing scenes that didn’t mean anything, so I wrote a story that incorporated all of it and more. It was a fun challenge,” said Simon.
Simon and Castro storyboarded the project using Toon Boom software Storyboard Pro. The finished board and animatic were sent to Yeson in South Korea, where they used Toon Boom Harmony animation software to finish the project.
The story is about a young man and his grandfather who fight for control of the family car (a hot rod) for a night on the town. The look of the show was designed by Simon with character designer Willie Castro and concept painter Humza Khan to have a mix of Eastern and Western styles.
“I was stunned by how few notes I had on the production,” said Simon. “The software tools work so well together that the project looked exactly the way I wanted it to after the first pass.”