(Cites Tight Integration, More Streamlined Workflow and Easier Collaboration, London--March 17, 2015) LAIKA, the award-winning animation studio behind The Boxtrolls, ParaNorman and Coraline, has chosen The Foundry's web-based FLIX software solution to enhance its pre-production and storyboarding process for animated features. LAIKA is using FLIX for its latest animated film project, Kubo and the Two Strings, which uses a 3D stop-motion and CG hybrid technique to tell the story of a sweeping, swashbuckling adventure set in a mythical ancient Japan and is set for release on August 19, 2016.
LAIKA cited FLIX's tight integration with other popular 2D and 3D creative applications and web-based infrastructure as driving factors in adopting the solution. The workflow and steps necessary for managing versions and publishing to editorial was more streamlined than in-house tools, and we thought working with The Foundry would ultimately lead to a more feature-rich toolset for story development than we could develop internally, says Jeff Stringer, director of Production Technology at LAIKA.
Storyboarding for large animated feature films can get complicated in a hurry, which is why directors, artists, and producers find tremendous value in tools that streamline production while boosting the creative process. Prior to adopting FLIX, the teams storyboarding process relied primarily on in-house tools paired with commercial products to assemble and review panels in editorial. Unpublished panels were stored locally and individual artists each had their own methods for managing their work-in-progress panels. The system worked, says Stringer, but it required more formal steps for publishing and access to editorial in order to get revisions turned around.
Switching to FLIX sped the studios workflow along, streamlining the process and allowing for easier collaboration among the story team, says Stringer. The work across sequences is more visible to the team, and collaboration on a sequence is easier to manage -- as are reassignments, he says. The head of story has better access to everyone's work and a good toolset for making updates and managing the flow of boards to editorial.
The director and producers have easier access to the latest work, and iterations are moving faster. Version management and publishes are also streamlined, and there is no need for coordinators or PAs to assist in the management of boards.
FLIX, winner of a 2013 HPA Engineering Excellence Award, was developed as an in-house solution at Sony Pictures Imageworks before The Foundry acquired it. It has been battle-tested
in production at SPI since 2008 and has been used on more than 15 projects including
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, The Smurfs and Hotel Transylvania.
About The Foundry
The Foundry develops award-winning creative software used globally by leading artists, designers and creative professionals. The portfolio lets users create inspiring and technical high-end visuals in the areas of Media Production (film, commercial, episodic, gaming and VR/AR), and Design (enterprise and creative), as well as participate in emerging high-growth markets such as 3D printing. The Foundry's wholly owned subsidiary, Made With Mischief, develops simple, creative and accessible tools and applications that empower people to explore ideas and create. Clients include Pixar, ILM, Double Negative, The Moving Picture Company, Walt Disney Animation, Weta Digital, Framestore and Sony Pictures Imageworks.
In 2013, The Foundry's CEO Bill Collis was recognized as the UK Technology winner for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, and the company made the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 for the fourth consecutive year.
In 2015, the London Stock Exchange named The Foundry one of its 1000 Companies to Inspire Britain.
The Foundry, its logo and product names are registered trademarks in the UK, USA and/or other countries.
To find out more, visit us at
The Foundry
or follow us on
LinkedIn,
YouTube,
FACEBOOK,
Twitter,
Google +
and
Vimeo.
To find out more about Made With Mischief, visit us at
Made With Mischief,
FACEBOOK and
Twitter.
About LAIKA
Fueled by the vision of its owner, Nike co-founder and Chairman Philip H. Knight, and its President & CEO Travis Knight, LAIKA (www.laika.com)
is an animation company specializing in feature films. Located in Portland, Oregon, LAIKA celebrates its 10th Anniversary in 2015. LAIKA's third feature film, The Boxtrolls, scored the highest opening weekend box office of any LAIKA film when it was released domestically by Focus on September 26, 2014. It was honored with OSCAR , Golden Globe, Critics Choice and PGA nominations. The company's first feature, Coraline (2009), earned Golden Globe, BAFTA, Critics' Choice, PGA, and ACADEMY AWARD nominations for Best Animated Feature Film; and was named one of the year's 10 Best Films by the American Film Institute garnered BAFTA, Critics' Choice, GLAAD Media Award, PGA, and ACADEMY AWARD nominations, won two Annie Awards (the animation community's OSCAR equivalent) and was cited as the year's best animated film by 14 critics' groups.
LAIKA's next production, Kubo and the Two Strings, boasts an all-star voice cast includes Academy Award winners Matthew McConaughey and Charlize Theron; Academy Award nominees Rooney Mara, Ralph Fiennes, and Brenda Vaccaro; and Art Parkinson, who plays Rickon Stark on Game of Thrones and who is providing the voice for the title character of Kubo. In the epic fantasy, scruffy, kindhearted Kubo ekes out a humble living while devotedly caring for his mother in their sleepy shoreside village. It is a quiet existence - until a spirit from the past catches up with him to enforce an age-old vendetta. Suddenly on the run from gods and monsters, Kubo's chan
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
(Cites Tight Integration, More Streamlined Workflow and Easier Collaboration, London--March 17, 2015) LAIKA, the award-winning animation studio behind The Boxtrolls, ParaNorman and Coraline, has chosen The Foundry's web-based FLIX software solution to enhance its pre-production and storyboarding process for animated features. LAIKA is using FLIX for its latest animated film project, Kubo and the Two Strings, which uses a 3D stop-motion and CG hybrid technique to tell the story of a sweeping, swashbuckling adventure set in a mythical ancient Japan and is set for release on August 19, 2016.
