Chico & Rita

For this week's post, I'm going to be talking about an animated film called Chico & Rita that I recently watched and really enjoyed. 

Havana, Cuba 1948. Chico is a young Cuban pianist who dreams of making a place for himself in the jazz world. Rita is a singer with an extraordinary voice which captivates everyone. Music brings them together and they embark on a passionate and tormented love affair. With a soundtrack of latin jazz as background to their love story, we´re immersed in the world of Cuban passion, sensuality and music. 
Directors: Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal, Tono Errando

The film is 90 minutes long so here is the trailer:

The entire movie is filmed with live action actors.

The sets include dummy objects and tracker marks for camera tracking.

The live action shots are edited in Final Cut Pro and becomes the live action version of the animatic.

Approximately 2 frames of every second of live action is traced in TV-Paint and becomes the drawn version of the animatic.

The traced frames are printed on paper, pegged and sent through a classical 2D hand drawn production pipeline with rough animation, key animation, clean up, ink & paint and compositing.

The live action shots are used to create backgrounds in either 2D, 2½D or 3D where 2½D refers to 2D elements positioned in a 3D universe.

All 2D animation and coloring is done in ToonBoom Harmony.

The production takes place in 11 studios around the world.

Despite the artists working in 7 different studios they are all experiencing it as if they are working on one central server on their local network. 

Besides the sever installations HoBSoft has ensured that every studio complies with the productions security strategy in terms of firewalls etc. 

HoBSoft has also done the necessary training in each studio to make the local artist capable of working with the production standards in terms of where to save the files and in which format etc.

HoBSoft automatically renders and transfers the necessary movies and setups to the director and various supervisors in the main studio in Barcelona, Spain. 

Part of the automatic updates is to update Final Cut Pro in several studios with the new footage every time a scene is updated in any one of the studios. 

Mariscal´s recreation of the exhuberant Havana of the late 40´s is full of light and colour. He contrasts this with winterland New York, and the decadence of places such as Las Vegas, Paris and Beverly Hills. The film is packed with scenes of great beauty and visual richness.