The Faculty of Art and Design accompanied with Toon Boom Animation in workshop "Building script and storyboard techniques"

(VLU, 18/10/2021) On the afternoon of October 15th, 2021, the Faculty of Art and Design, Van Lang university accompanied with Toon Boom Animation to organize workshop with topic "Building script and storyboard techniques" on the MS Teams application platform, attracted student's attention as well as attendees inside and outside industry.

As one of the best story board animation software production companies in the world today with more than 25 years of establishment and development, Toon Boom has an easy-to-use interface and diverse tools, is the top choice of 2D and 3D animation studios all around the world. The application of multi-functional supporting software is a method to help students of Digital Art Design in particular and people pursuing this profession in general reduce sleepless nights because of projects, promote progress to make product. The workshop was organized under the leadership of the Faculty of Fine Art & Design, Van Lang University and with the participation of two guest speakers: Mr. Sylvian Grisollet and Mr. Harry Ravelomanantsoa (Toon Boom Animation Company), who brought students to approach to two useful software for illustration are Storyboard Pro and Harmony Premium.

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As a Production Manager working for many media companies in scripting, online and offline editing, directing, Mr. Harry Ravelomanantsoa shared with attendances about his journey to pursuit and develop passion in exciting. In 1995, Harry had gone to South Africa, studying media at Boston Media House, majoring in 3D animation and television broadcasting. With strong knowledge and extensive experiences, Mr. Harry introduced to students of Van Lang university about applicability of Storyboard Pro and Harmony Premium, how to exploit and use effectively. According to him, Storyboard Pro application was useful solution that combined drawing, scripting technique, camera control and the ability to create animations and sounds. He also detailed step by step, commands that supported script-to-scenario transitions in a seamless pattern in an intuitive way. Storyboard Pro also integrated bitmap and vector drawing tools with right to use a wide range of brushes and textures, giving students the freedom to be creative with any drawing styles and ideas.

Within the framework of the workshop, Mr. Harry also introduced to attendees the process of creating motion with a 3D camera with integrated lens view, how to import 3D models from FBX, Alembic, Collada, OBJ, 3DS; import commands from Final Draft and ways to format images, vectors and standard audio… It could be said that the utilities from the software not only helped users solve large workloads more quickly but also unleashed creative freedom, providing a lot of material to develop unique script ideas.

For the Harmony Premium 21 app recognized and used by the world's leading animation studio for 25 years, Harry shared many functions and usefulness, especially the enhanced color palette, which provided the ability to control texture and color on each frame effectively. Along with the development of today's technology, animators' work was not only with traditional paper but also developed rapidly and diverse with vivid 2D/3D integrated toolkits. An interesting point of Harmony Premium 21 was the camera angle, seamless scene synthesis and outstanding sound and light effects.

Besides, the workshop was attended by Mr. Sylvain Grisollet, an expert of Toon Boom Animation in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan and Cambodia. With the sharing post around 3 main contents: Full Digital Pipeline for Storytelling (Script, Storyboard, Animatic); Benefits of Digital Visual Storytelling and Opportunities in Animation for Vietnam, Sulvain Grisollet showed an overview of storyboarding and scripting skills, helping students grasp the process and potential of the industry. According to Mr. Sulvain Grisollet, the application of scripting and storyboarding techniques with the above software has brought many benefits such as improving storytelling, making storytelling more attractive and attractive; easy to change according to the production situation; the ability to work remotely in accordance with the current epidemic context; increasing production quality and efficiency, bringing many opportunities in the field of Animation to Vietnam.

Besides useful and interesting sharing, the speakers answered many questions from students. Wishing the relationship between Toon Boom and the Faculty of Fine Arts & Design of Van Lang University always be sustainable and good. Wish the new generation of Digital Art Design at Van Lang University will bloom with many new talents in the future.

Cao Thong - Van Lang University