Tiago Americo is a 23 year-old graphic designer, illustrator and animator. He works as a Creative Director at Sputnik Studio, Brazil. Tiago has already directed a couple of shorts, Cafe la Rochelle and The Chance and the Butterfly, and has also participated in several international film festivals around the world.
I started working in visual arts in 2005, as an assistant in an animation studio. After improving my skills in design and animation, I decided to create Sputnik Studio along with 2 great artists, Walkir Fernandes (Director of Animation) and Antonio Eder (Comic Book Artist).
I directed and produced some short films which were exhibited and received awards in several countries such as Slovenia, Brazil and Canada; I worked as animator in 2 feature-length animation projects and several short movies, advertising and web animations. Recently, I worked on the storyboard, character design and animation direction of the DuckTicks and Catapults TV pilot, which was awarded the AnimaTV prize for production of animated series in Brazil.
I started using the Toon Boom software family in 2004, during an animation course. At that time I was introduced to Toon Boom Studio 2.0. Since then, I went through several versions of Toon Boom Studio, and finally to Toon Boom Animate.
At Sputnik Studio, we create storyboards for cinema, advertising and internet projects. We have great storyboard artists working for us and our storyboard pieces are really sought after.
When the work requires 2D animation technique, we use Toon Boom Animate. However to produce stop-motion, pixilation or even cut-out animation, we use another animation and editing software.
I already have done animation using Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe After Effects. In any case, Toon Boom Animate is used in the overwhelming majority of our animation work.
All Toon Boom Animation software applications have very useful tools, especially the latest versions. They present good brush options, which give very interesting aesthetic results. The possibility of screen rotation also helps a lot in the process. I especially appreciate the integration of tools, which allows me to make sketches and line art, put backgrounds, sounds and camera all synchronized. The union of all these tools gives the closest experience of doing animation traditionally on paper. I think this is the reason why more and more artists are moving to Toon Boom software.
What is your pre-production process?
At Sputnik, we usually take turns producing the storyboard, character design and concept art. We do this to improve and enrich the results. After we have drawn all the storyboards, we start making the first animatic, adding the actor’s voices, and getting a more realistic perspective of animation timing. We always do research in this process phase and we are always open to working with new styles and techniques that will enrich the final animation piece.
What kind of animation do you create?
I’m open to working on almost every kind of technique, and mixing them as well. I guess this provides an appealing result. The only exception is that I just don’t feel really comfortable working with 3D animation.
What animation technique are you mostly using (i.e. cut-out, paperless, traditional)?
I mostly use 2D traditional animation. But I already have done works in rotoscoping, stop-motion, cut-out, and pixilation.
- “2D and a half” tool, during camera movement, it simulates relative movement between layers placed at a regular space distance one from another.
- screen rotation tool
- lip-sync tool
- good interaction between vector and bitmap elements
- multiple brush options
I believe that the graphical result aimed at can be achieved through a variety of ways and tools. However, what Toon Boom products do fantastically is provide a good ease of handling, and synchronization of all the animation production steps, giving the operator a large amount of autonomy.
I believe that one of the main Toon Boom Animate distinctions is the focus on productivity. The software blends all the tools needed to make the visual component of the animation into a single interface. This accelerates many steps and promotes re-use, the use of symbols and the library. All these tools give tremendous productivity gains.
As I’ve used Toon Boom's products since the beginning of my animation career, I can not answer this question properly. But, I believe the fact that I have never migrated to another software shows my satisfaction.
Sincerely, I believe that yes it is possible; it depends a lot on the artist’s capacity to manipulate his tools. By the way, I truly believe that the results can be achieved much more easily through the Toon Boom software family.
I feel very comfortable and satisfied using Toon Boom Products and I hope to use them for a long time. I always look for new product releases on Toon Boom site.
The first time I used Toon Boom Studio 2.0 I used the guide and the tutorials to learn how to properly manipulate the software. After that, even with the new versions, I’ve never had problems operating it. I guess Toon Boom Animate is a very practical software, especially the software shortcuts that mix old versions shortcuts with the well-known shortcuts of Adobe Flash.
I use both Mac OS X and Windows Vista systems. To draw, we use Wacom Bamboo and Intuos tablets.
