Today we're talking with Carlos Olarte from TUTU animation. The team at TUTU Animation is here to talk about creating their latest short film, The Pink Cat. The short film is a part of The Purplish Family, a pitch for an animation project that focuses on sharing values with kids through a quirky animation style. TUTU Animation is based out of Los Angeles, California. Currently, it consists of 6 people working on a variety of animation projects. The team uses Cinema 4D and Adobe products to create engaging content with a focus on storytelling. Carlos, can you tell us how your team has been working in the industry and what kinds of projects TUTU offers?
We come from different backgrounds with different years of experience as freelancers. We have combined the experience we have to form this company, and we have been operating for about two years now. We are looking to tell stories with a distinctive touch, from the development of the idea to the delivery of the final product. We try not to take any project in the production stage; we prefer to create content from scratch, either created in-house or from outside people who come to us with an idea.
The Pink Cat was created and rendered in Cinema 4D, a popular choice for stylized animation and storytelling. Carlos told us a bit of what tools TUTU Animation used on The Purplish Family and why:
We try to make our workflow as simple as possible. The tool that offers us the most with the least technical requirements is Cinema 4D. Although Cinema 4D is used mainly for its capabilities for motion graphics, it is an extremely powerful and efficient tool when working with characters. The render engine that we used is the native standard render, and we used the adobe family for post-production.
The project has a very colorful and friendly style mixed with a great story for kids. What is the driving force behind The Purplish Family and The Pink Cat? And what kind of message were you trying to communicate through the style and story you chose?
The whole project is about values and how we can share them with the little ones. The purpose of this short film is to show what the project is about and use it for the pitching stage.
What motivated us the most was the possibility of showing what we do with a personal touch, trying to show this strange style that we love, at the same time using the opportunity to share some values that we believe...are fundamental values for the times in which we live. Although we don't only want to make content for the little ones, this is a great project to start with.
You mentioned the short film is being used for pitching to platforms. What would success look like for you after the pitch?
Definitely, the fact of being able to finish it and be sending it and pitching it to different places is a great advance. I believe that the final success would be to position ourselves as a studio with a product in any of the platforms available today, either with this "The Purplish Family" or with the other products in those of us who are working, because we are constantly in motion.
Where can we see the short film and get updates on the project?
All the material can be seen on our official Instagram accounts, including work-in-progress posts and progress at each stage of the process.
https://www.instagram.com/thepurplishfamily/
Thanks for sharing about the project! Returning to the production process, what were the challenges in your pipeline that called for offloading rendering to external services like our cinema 4d render farm?
Definitely the rendering time. It would have been impossible to finish this project on time without the help of render farms. The project was roughly 8800 frames, and the time was pretty quick, adding up all the hours. The total time was just over a week, which includes the file upload time, so the rendering time was probably less than that.
Were there any issues using our platform or working with our support team?
No issues at all. It was great. The support team is always ready to help.
How did you find our pricing schemes?
The pricing schemes are affordable and good in relation to the quality of the service.
In what way has our service helped your work the most and would you recommend our farm to others?
The great help was the ease of service and the process of meeting deadlines. I would recommend it indeed. It is something that we are doing with all my colleagues and friends in the field, the benefits of working with his render farm.
As you know, the animation industry is constantly changing. Are there any new plugins, render engines, or programs that you feel will impact your industry in a big way?
We are especially interested in the technologies that Unity is bringing to the table. Using Cinema 4D as our main tool, our trend is towards what gives us the best result with minimal effort. The integration between Cinema 4D and Unity seems to be a great solution for the near future.
For those uninformed, the new Cineware plugin for Unity allows users to incorporate Unity into their animation workflow to leverage the features of both softwares in an animation pipeline. To follow up with that, is there any new technology that you think will change or enhance your work in the coming years? And how can we, as a render farm, help you adapt to changes brought about by these developments?
I think something we are exploring a bit more is in the area of video games and 3d printing. Definitely, GarageFarm is going to be a fundamental part of the process of creating and presenting products once created.
TUTU seems to have hands in a lot of emerging technologies and platforms. What is TUTU currently working on, and what are the studio's plans for the future?
At this moment, we are pitching our current project. At the same time, we have partnered with other artists to create a small project-oriented towards vinyl toys, collectibles, and mobile video games called All Panas. In the future, we see ourselves creating original content for different platforms and making the most of new technologies.
Where can we go to see more from TUTU Animation and follow the progress of The Purplish Family?
We are sharing everything through Instagram, including some things we are working on.
@tutuanimation
@thepurplishfamily
@allpanas
Thanks for talking with us! We're always excited to help studios and professionals fill gaps in their rendering workflow by speeding up development or by helping to complete post-production for projects like The Purplish Family.
