Started in the industry as an animator at Warner Bros. and went on to animate at Dreamworks and Disney on such features as Iron Giant, El Dorado, and The Emperor's New Groove. She has also worked as a story artist at Disney and Universal. Jennifer co-produced Picnic's first film The Chestnut Tree.
Based in Glendale, California, Picnic Productions is a unique independent animation studio recognized for its high quality standards and for its passion for traditional animation. Considering their studio size, they are the masters at the virtual studio concept. Indeed, they have the ability to expand or contract with the needs of the production by using freelancers all over the world that communicate with them and send their work to them online. “We can see and show story reels, pencil tests, clean-up work, and approve final color scenes without anyone ever having to travel. This is a great way to insure that we have the best artists possible working for us since location is not an obstacle- for example, on Pups of Liberty we had a background painter send us her files from London. Toon Boom software makes this all possible,” commented Jennifer.
The team has made three short independent films with original content, namely Pups of Liberty (2009), Official Selection of the Austin Film Festival 2009; The Chestnut Tree (2007): nominated for 2 Annie Awards and winner of multiple Film Festival Awards; as well as Boys Nite Out (2003) produced in association with Barley Films in Ireland and nominated for an Annie Award. They have also done vendor work for Disneyworld Project
The team brings together a wonderful pool of talent and an impressive track record. Bert Klein, Producer, Director, Animator, has been an animator on such movies as Hercules, Fantasia 2000 (Rhapsody In Blue), and Treasure Planet. At Warner Bros. he was a Supervising Animator on Looney Tunes: Back in Action, the Director of Animation on Fat Albert: the Movie, and lead animator on The Simpsons Movie. Most recently he animated on Disney's The Princess and The Frog and served as co-producer of The Chestnut Tree. Jennifer Cardon Klein, Producer, Director, Writer/Story Artist, started in the industry as an animator at Warner Bros. and went on to animate at Dreamworks and Disney on such features as Iron Giant, El Dorado, and The Emperor's New Groove. She has also worked as a story artist at Disney and Universal. Jennifer co-produced Picnic's first film The Chestnut Tree. Dan C. Larsen, Digital Ink & Paint, Compositing, has been in the animation industry for 41 years and 28 of those years were working as an animation cameraman, so needless to say he knows what he's doing. During those years he's worked on over 12 feature films and hundreds of Saturday morning/syndicated TV shows and commercials. He started working with USAnimation software in 1995. James Lopez, Art Director, was Supervising Animator on Disney's Hercules, The Emperor's New Groove, and Home on the Range and animated on Dreamworks’ Flushed Away and The Bee Movie. He has served as Production Designer and Art Director for Pups of Liberty. Most recently he animated on Disney's The Princess and The Frog.
Created using Toon Boom Animate Pro, Pups of Liberty, their most recent project, is already getting a lot of attention. And rightfully so. Based on the story of the Boston Tea Party told with cats and dogs, the story was written by Jennifer, who wanted to find a way to retell stories from history in an interesting, fun, and animated way. “We are 2D traditional animators by trade and we really enjoy what we do- when the hand drawn films receded we needed a way to keep doing what we love. This film provided a way to get together a large group of artists and enabled them to continue applying their talents while creating a feature quality short film, even when a lot of them had moved out of the LA area” explained Jennifer.
As a 15-minute theatrical short, Pups of Liberty is fully animated, feature-quality, hand drawn animation. The character designed can be likened to Winnie the Pooh; the background styling looks like an old 18th century illustration.
As far as the production workflow goes, all tasks related to traditional animation production were lined up as follows: Story, Layout, Backgrounds, Animation, Cleanup, Effects, Scanning, Ink & Paint and Compositing.
“We organize by department: Story- writes the script, draws out entire film in storyboards and scans boards into an editing software to be viewed as a storyreel. On Pups of Liberty I was the only story artist, boarding 15 minutes of material in 4 weeks. A feature length film would have 8 to 12 board artists. Once the storyreel is approved it is given to the layout department. At the storyreel stage we also do a 'scratch' soundtrack and record the actors' dialog, and this is when our composer begins writing the score” explained Jennifer, describing the rest of the rest of the pipeline as follows:
“Takes the storyreels and breaks the film down into sequences and shots in a 'workbook'. Then draws the background in each shot, deciding what a location will look like, how it will be lit, and the final composition and camera moves. James Lopez is our lead layout artist. He drew all the layouts for Pups of Liberty.”
“Almost all of our background painters worked remotely and communicated exclusively online. We were able to do this by uploading scanned layout files to them and they would upload the file back to us when completed. The layout files were scanned into Animate Pro and Dan Larsen set up the scene with the correct fielding and camera moves so that when the artwork was completed it would all work together. This made the background painting process very clean and efficient.”
“Our animators worked traditionally, drawing all of the characters in each shot and animating in feature quality style. Sometimes one animator would be able to animate a sequence of shots, which enabled him to follow through with key acting moments between the characters. The animator would be issued a shot from the director with a layout and exposure sheet. He would then animate a rough pass of the shot, film a pencil test and upload it online to the director for approval. Once the pencil test is approved the drawings would be given to a cleanup artist. On Pups of Liberty we had about 30 animators, and each one did varying amounts of footage. The animators worked from their own homes and came to our studio for the initial scene briefing and to be given the paper scene layouts and then again to hand in their completed scene, but occasionally an animator was located elsewhere and in that situation we could just mail the materials to him and it worked just as well.”
“The cleanup artists put a paper over the rough drawing and does a clean version of it so that it can be scanned properly. This is another position where the work can be done well remotely, as it only needs to be sent back to be scanned into Animate Pro.”
“We animated traditional effects on our film.”
“Dan Larsen and his studio would scan all of our artwork, from layout to cleanup. Once a scene was established in Animate Pro Dan could just upload versions of it for us to see. We were able to easily make changes and additions to scenes as production went on and were also able to see color renders frequently.”
Dan Larsen explains how Toon Boom products were used and what features he appreciates the most: “On Pups of Liberty 
I started with the Toon Boom Digital Pro software package and finished with the Toon Boom Animate Pro package. All pups artwork was scanned using Toon Boom software and a Fujitsu 3096gx black and white large format scanner. Toon Boom Animate Pro has been the workhorse since upgrading from Digital Pro. From vectorization to making palettes and dealing with color issues Animate Pro has been top notch.”
“One of the many features I use all the time is the ability to make a standard palette for a character and then clone it to make another palette for a different time of day or for a painters palette. Another feature that I use a lot on this production is the "duplicate element columns" function. I use this feature to split a character into as many pieces as needed for drawing to drawing and drawing to BG registration. Another feature in the ink and paint application that I use for registration is the ability to copy a line on one drawing and paste it to another drawing for perfect registration. Another very helpful registration tool is the ability to make vector mattes in the camera window.”
“My favourite feature is the ability to generate remarkable looking Camera moves. Working in a 3D environment allows me to place all of the elements anywhere in Z depth to achieve a stunning move through the artwork. I can't say enough about Toon Boom's fantastic animation products. Also, their support staff is the most talented and helpful I have found,” Dan concluded.
“Both Bert and myself like how vectors provide easy re-size without any loss in resolution. Also, we like how Animate Pro does camera moves and multiplane effects better than other packages. It replicates camera moves like a traditional animation stand. We also got a lot of mileage from drop shadows and tones generated in Animate Pro” commented Jennifer.
The team at Picnic Productions looks forward to classical 2D animation coming back in vogue in the marketplace after the release of The Princess and The Frog. Pups of Liberty will show that the Picnic Productions team is ready to handle short or feature projects. “We have an extremely flexible group of artists that we work with both as in-house and freelancers, and Animate Pro simplifies and complements our pipeline” concluded Jennifer.
