Computer animation: a new way to move.

Bob frowns and Frisket wags his tail as a new game descends into Mainframe. Meanwhile, Megabyte roars with laughter as he hatches a new plot and Enzo jumps on his cyberboard and soars off in search of his sister, Dot.

It all looks normal to the viewer, but creating the characters who come alive on the Vancouver-produced hit television series ReBoot (seen on YTV) is a lot harder than you might think. The process is called computer animation, and it's a high-tech, virtual reality exercise that uses some of the world's most powerful computers to convince you that the computer generated imagery (CGI) you are watching is the real thing.

According to ReBoot producer Chris Brough, computer animation involves developing three-dimensional characters inside a computer and then moving them around in cyberspace. Creating them is the hard part. You start out by building a 3-D model of the character. Then you paint it, texture it and use it to develop an understanding of how the character is going to move.

Once you know how it works, you begin to enter the information into the computer, move by move, frame by frame. At the same time, you have to create a database of settings in which the figures will move around. In this case, the database would include the backgrounds and sets of Mainframe.

After all the data has been gathered, they are "output" from the computer and converted into images that are then transferred to videotape. The process is so complicated and time-consuming that as many as 20 animators are needed to produce each episode.

But it does get easier over time. The computer has the ability to remember what characters look like and how they move after they've been created. It also has a stockpile of backgrounds and sets in its memory. What that means is that after you have all the information logged in, you can use this huge database to set the players in motion.

"To give you an idea," says Brough, "the first episode of ReBoot took almost 17 weeks to animate. The last episode took 18 days. You have to have all the VARIABLES at first - how Enzo walks and talks, lifts his hands and so on - but after that, there's a lot of memory to the character as to how they move."

And contrary to what you might think, the process starts with the people who provide the voices.

COMPUTER animation

HOW ABOUT YOUR?

So, you want to be a computer animator? The good news is that being young doesn't mean you won't be able to get a good job in the computer animation business. "We have several employees just out of high school who, within as little time as four to six weeks, were producing as much as 30 seconds of animation a week for ReBoot," says producer Chris Brough.

Provided you have the power - Brough recommends a Pentium-based computer with an Intel chip inside - there are several software packages you can use to familiarize yourself with computer animation. "Play with the technology and concentrate on character animation. Anyone can make a flying logo. . .but how do you create characters? What do they look like? How do they move? Think along these terms because that's exactly what we're looking for."

"We sort of do a radio play first," explains Brough. "We try to get a lot of action inside the voices - a lot of emotion - and then we (edit) it to fit the 22-minute segment. After that, we assign the individual elements and scenes to the animators."

As for the computing power required, ReBoot is put together using a total of 73 "boxes" worth anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000 each! And that doesn't include the RAM needed to turn it into animation. In fact, says Brough, more computing power is used to make ReBoot than was needed to make Toy Story, the popular full-length feature film.

So, what's next? Where does computer animation go from ReBoot and Toy Story? Well, says Brough, it's already on its way, and the possibilities are limited only by the imaginations of the users.

"I don't think there's a limit to computer animation," he says. "The animation will become more SOPHISTICATED because the technology is improving all the time." What's more, the same data used to make the TV series are now being used to make interactive games, comic books, trading cards and lasercarved toy models.

Brough says he's currently working on a new series called Beast Masters, due for world-wide release some time this fall. "It will have all types of animals, insects, robots and prehistoric creatures," he says.

As for the gang at ReBoot, Brough promises that the third season will be even more spectacular than the first two. "We're going to be travelling into The Web. Bob's there now, drifting in cyberspace." As well, for the first time ever, the characters will be leaving Mainframe and exploring other parts of the computer.