here<\/a>.<\/p>\nComposition has used Unreal in TV and film productions, Reed said. \u201cIt augments our current pipeline. We might have a Blender pipeline or a Maya pipeline plus Unreal. We haven\u2019t made the transition to all the way animating in Unreal yet; we still do a lot of the character animation elsewhere, but the biggest efficiency we get is the ability to set up an entire location, almost like a video game where you can walk from one shot, one location to the other and set up lighting. There are often things like effects and generators that are available on the market and can speed up our process tremendously. From there, we usually export for composition in some other tool.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cheeky Little Media made Vegesaurs<\/em>, a property distributed by Studio 100 International that is now in season four, in Unreal, Egerton said. \u201cVegesaurs <\/em>needed to have a big scope as a preschool animated show, but we needed to deliver it on a challenging budget, especially at the season one stage. We wanted the show to have a real high fidelity; it needed to feel like you could reach out and touch it. That was going to be extraordinarily challenging to realize in traditional animation methods. We had an opportunity to give Unreal a go. The promise was this ability to build very big, complex locations quickly and render these quickly and easily. There were far more advantages as we dove in.\u201d<\/p>\nComposition is tapping into a variety of tools, Reed added. \u201cWe have three principles that we follow for integrating any tool, especially AI: they need to be accelerated, adaptable and artist-driven. Accelerated\u2014if it\u2019s not making us faster, why not just do it the old-fashioned way. Adaptable\u2014we have to be at the control. If we can\u2019t do what our storyboard or animatic is telling us that we have approved, then we can\u2019t use it. Artist-driven\u2014we need to have these tools in the hands of our artists in order to not start from scratch. That\u2019s how we decide which tools we use. It\u2019s speeding things up remarkably and affecting what an independent studio can do from a cost\/time perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Egerton, a key advantage of Unreal is its use in preproduction processes. \u201cIn your traditional CG animation methods, you would be storyboarding in 2D with 2D drawings. There is this uncomfortable and sometimes hazardous jump from those 2D drawings into layout and staging. When you\u2019re taking that into the three-dimensional world of a CG animation program, that transition often doesn\u2019t work and needs quite a lot of massaging. The big gain was successfully merging our Unreal sets with what our board artists are doing in their storyboarding programs. That has been a game-changing process; it allows directors and board artists to collaborate much more in an iterative way and to understand and work with how things are going to look in the scene with the camera and the CG assets rather than guesswork. We\u2019re effectively bridging those two silos of a traditional production pipeline and allowing much more fluidity between the two.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing able to have that real-time render and quality is game-changing,\u201d Reed added. \u201cWe also leverage mocap and things like that to speed up the process and allow us to get a quicker iteration of our vision that we then refine. It\u2019s always an iterative process, but the sooner we can get to that Eureka moment and we know what the scene is, the better off we are, and we spend the rest of the time refining.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Unreal has created efficiencies, \u201cWe are still taking a similar amount of time to make a show in Unreal than we were using a traditional pipeline,\u201d Egerton noted. \u201cWe\u2019re not making shows at half the price. However, we are making shows at a higher level of production quality in the same time. You could argue it is probably more efficient and cheaper, but we\u2019re still taking the same amount of time to turn a show out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Egerton added that Unreal doesn\u2019t work for every production. \u201cIf you are in the feature film space and want to create a very stylized look, which would require multiple passes and lots of comping, or if you need to do a large amount of visual effects, then you might look at Unreal and decide that it\u2019s not necessarily entirely suited to your requirements. You might need to put a lot of investment in terms of time with your team to adapt and make it work for your requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s not a lot of animation happening in Unreal yet, Egerton explained, \u201cSo we are still doing our preproduction in Unreal and then we are going out of Unreal into Maya for animation, and then we are coming back from there into Unreal to light and render and execute. That\u2019s not ideal. The perception is still there that the rigging capabilities in Unreal are not yet the level of sophistication to make character animation work in the same way as we know it works in animation software like Maya.\u201d<\/p>\n
He does believe the industry is at the \u201ccusp of that becoming possible. In the new version of Unreal, there is a sense that the animation tools are there. However, there\u2019s always going to be a lag in terms of animation studios and teams being ready to use those tools. We are very close. That will be a major tipping point. When we\u2019re animating in Unreal, that is going to have an enormous impact on the efficiency of pipelines.\u201d<\/p>\n
The conversation then moved to the use of AI in animation production pipelines.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s another tool in the toolbox,\u201d Reed said. \u201cIf you need to hop in there and do something real quick, that\u2019s where it fits in. From experimentation in the development phase to training a model to rapidly iterate on different 3D trees in the same style, we will use it to add on to what we do in all capacities. We like to say we give our artists superpowers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Egerton said that Cheeky Little is not using AI \u201cin any significant capacity\u201d currently. \u201cWe are sometimes throwing things at AI tools at the very early stage of concepts for new IP that we\u2019re creating. They\u2019re being used as discussion starters on the creative journey. We\u2019re not using AI to finesse anything or design anything. We\u2019re not using AI yet in the animation process itself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Composition Media\u2019s Carl Reed and Cheeky Little Media\u2019s Patrick Egerton joined the TV Kids Festival to share their thoughts on animation innovation today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":29102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[7381,101,7383,9157,10494],"class_list":["post-29099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-carl-reed","tag-cheeky-little-media","tag-composition-media","tag-patrick-egerton","tag-tv-kids-festival-2025","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\n
TV Kids Festival Spotlights Animation Innovation - TVKIDS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"TV Kids Festival Spotlights Animation Innovation - TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Composition Media\u2019s Carl Reed and Cheeky Little Media\u2019s Patrick Egerton joined the TV Kids Festival to share their thoughts on animation innovation today.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-02-06T17:01:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-02-06T17:22:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2025\/02\/2024-02-06-Unreal.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"394\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/\",\"name\":\"TV Kids Festival Spotlights Animation Innovation - TVKIDS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2025-02-06T17:01:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-02-06T17:22:05+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"TV Kids Festival Spotlights Animation Innovation\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\",\"name\":\"TVKIDS\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. She can be reached on mdaswani@worldscreen.com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/author\/mdaswaniworldscreen-com\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"TV Kids Festival Spotlights Animation Innovation - TVKIDS","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"TV Kids Festival Spotlights Animation Innovation - TVKIDS","og_description":"Composition Media\u2019s Carl Reed and Cheeky Little Media\u2019s Patrick Egerton joined the TV Kids Festival to share their thoughts on animation innovation today.","og_url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/","og_site_name":"TVKIDS","article_published_time":"2025-02-06T17:01:10+00:00","article_modified_time":"2025-02-06T17:22:05+00:00","og_image":[{"width":640,"height":394,"url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2025\/02\/2024-02-06-Unreal.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Mansha Daswani","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Mansha Daswani","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/","url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/","name":"TV Kids Festival Spotlights Animation Innovation - TVKIDS","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website"},"datePublished":"2025-02-06T17:01:10+00:00","dateModified":"2025-02-06T17:22:05+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/tv-kids-festival-spotlights-animation-innovation\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"TV Kids Festival Spotlights Animation Innovation"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website","url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/","name":"TVKIDS","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad","name":"Mansha Daswani","description":"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. She can be reached on mdaswani@worldscreen.com.","url":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/author\/mdaswaniworldscreen-com\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}