Showtime/Colbert Premiere First TV Series to Use Character Animator

Stephen Colbert is producing the first TV series to use Adobe’s latest animation software, Character Animator. The series, Our Cartoon President, is an extension of a comedy bit Colbert does live on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert which also makes use of the software.

Colbert has liked comics and animation for years. He used animation and published a comic book, Tek Jansen, years ago during his Comedy Central run with the Colbert Report.

Before The Late Show started using Character Animator, they would spend months producing a 3 ½ minute animated short. Once they incorporated Character Animator into their production pipeline, they were able to create unlimited amounts of animation with Colbert interacting with the animated characters, all in real time.

Lead Animator Tim Luecke had started playing with Character Animator when it was in Beta testing. He built a test character in his own time over a weekend and showed it to production. Their first test was a pre-produced piece. Working with the team at Adobe, they worked out a system to create the animation live and run it live on the air so Colbert could interact with the animation.

A basic character can be built for use in Character Animator in just a few hours. The more motions and triggers a character has, the longer it takes to prep. But once the character assets are built, you can create an unlimited amount of animation with it in real time.

Characters are usually built in either Photoshop or Illustrator layered files. The layers need to be organized and named a specific way so the Character Animator software can manipulate your character.

There are a few ways you can control your characters in real time. Using just a simple webcam, the software automatically tracks your face and translates your movements to the character. The webcam also tracks your eyebrows, eye movement, eye blinks, head turns and mouth movements. Lip sync is perfectly matched to the audio as the actor speaks.

 Production can also control movements with keyboard strokes, mouse movements, midi and/or digital controllers. Movements can be as simple as an arm wave or as complex as walking and running.

Colbert, Luecke and their team created a half-hour series based on the popular cartoon Trump character that Colbert interviews on his The Late Show. As an artist, I appreciate that the character designer and lead animator of the original cartoon Trump bits on The Late Show, Tim Luecke, not only stayed lead animator for the series, but he’s also credited as an executive producer.

For the live animated bits on The Late Show, Luecke tended to limit the quality of the character animation. On a live broadcast (or at least live-to-tape) there’s no time for re-dos. But on the half hour animated series they can add not only more animation, but more effects and more characters as well as revisions and editing.

The show also adds nice After Effects shots to enhance the production value, like the simulated multi-plane push-in shots of the White House.

Colbert states, “We had to do this cartoon show. Whether or not you like Donald Trump, he is the most important man in the world right now. This is not jokes about what happened in the news today. This is what it’s like to work in the White House.”

Production for the animated series is officed in the Ed Sullivan theater where Colbert produces The Late Show. The process of controlling animation in real time is surprisingly fun. Colbert admits, “When I go down to visit, I never want to leave.”

Character Animator is the perfect software for this style of show, which is mostly talking heads. Once the assets are created, production moves much faster than standard hand drawn animation. But the production is pushing the software to it’s limits.

The first episode can be viewed for free on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbrdfG6CX68&t=175s

Our Cartoon President now airs on Showtime.

#ourcartoonpresident #adobe #characteranimator

Mark Simon is an award-winning director and story artist. He also produced a course on Using Character Animator in Production for Lynda.com. Check it out and learn to use Character Animator on your productions at www.Lynda.com/MarkSimon