| July 26, 2007 - Vancouver Sun | | Print | |
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Vancouver Sun Computer graphics pioneer ReBoots Rainmaker Animation bringing TV series to big screens with trilogy of films
Thursday, July 26, 2007
VANCOUVER - ReBoot, the 1990s animated TV series that kick-started Vancouver's animation industry, will have a second life in feature films and online.
Rainmaker Animation this week announced plans to make a feature-film trilogy based on the popular TV series, which was the first computer-animated series in the world and pre-dated the computer-animated feature Toy Story by a year. The show, produced by Vancouver's Mainframe Entertainment, ran for four seasons on YTV in Canada, and ABC and Cartoon Network in the U.S.
In addition, Rainmaker is partnering with Zeros 2 Heroes, a Vancouver-based website (zeros2heroes.com) and social network for comic book fans, to put a ReBoot comic book online. Six writers have partnered with Rainmaker artists to develop five separate storylines for the comic, which online readers can view for the next month, make comments and suggest embellishments. Fans will vote to select the winning story.
Rainmaker's takeover of Mainframe, finalized earlier this year, helped streamline the ReBoot revival, which has been in the works for months.
"When I first looked at purchasing Mainframe, I wondered if there was a way to bring ReBoot back," said Warren Franklin, CEO of Rainmaker Animation. "We got busy with other things, but there was all this ReBoot memorabilia around the office, and Paul [Gertz, executive vice president of Rainmaker Animation] said, 'I think it's time.'
"We came up with the idea to have artists in the studio participate in re-imagining ReBoot."
For the online comic book, the half-dozen Vancouver-area writers -- Jeffrey Campbell, Angelo Eidse, Kelsey Kirvan, Jennica Harper and Julie Puckrin (writing as a duo) and Steve Moody -- are teaming with Rainmaker artists on the five storylines.
Rainmaker's plan for three ReBoot features will have artists at the studio busy for years to come. Rainmaker is working on its first computer-generated feature, Escape from Planet Earth, which will use about 140 artists and production staff and will be made in 3-D stereoscopic form. Franklin said he doesn't expect the first of the three ReBoot films to be completed for at least two years.
Franklin said the company will make a trilogy of films because of the huge interest in the original series by its original fans -- there are more than 100 fan-based websites and user groups dedicated to ReBoot, and DMF Comics recently published a 104-page book, The Art of ReBoot -- and because he feels a whole new generation of fans is out there just waiting to for something like this.
"CG [computer-generated imagery] has advanced so much, we felt we could really take this and make something really stunning visually," said Franklin, who knows the significance ReBoot has in Vancouver's bustling animation industry.
"It really broke new ground. It was one of the pioneering pieces of computer graphics," said Franklin.
"It really established Mainframe, and from Mainframe it established [computer companies] Nerd Corps and Studio B and Bardel. It really is the genesis of a lot of [CG] work."
Matt Toner, president of Zeros 2 Heroes, said one fan website has had 5,000 postings from ReBoot enthusiasts in the 48 hours since it posted news of the revival. Toner's own website has had to handle the extra traffic.
"We have one person dedicated full time to working with the community, and I have to add another before the day's out," said Toner in an e-mail Wednesday. |
