 Hi, hi to everyone, sorry I'm a little bit shy, so I'm Katerina Demata and he's Luca Di Cicca. And we are from LNC studio, our studio was born in 1997. And I started with a little show reel. What you had seen are our latest TV shows. We work also on commercials and educational works, but we wanted to speak about those today. So, when our studio was born, my father founded to develop art and social issue documentaries. Since 2012 with Luca, we started working in animation and so we switched our basic field but didn't switch our core issues and core values. That's also why we wanted to work since the very beginning with Blender for the animation. We started with the GGI show that was called Spaghetti Western and was aired in Rye. Kids are a national broadcaster and we have developed many, many shows for Rye kids and for YouTube since then. We always have educational and social content at the basis of whatever we produce and with a very strong sense for community, social and shared culture and education. So this is also why we also started to teach at university, Blender since 2009 and my father started that, Luca De Mata. And Luca, Vicek actually was one of his best students and two other students still work with us. He's Umberto Saliani and he's our lead animator and also our executive producer, Afaila Copaneze. So that is also how we started. We started like a group of students and 10 years ago and here we can see a little bit of, no, this is me and this is the production that we saw and this is our studio. This is actually not the office view but the terrace where we can have the studio meetings. Now here are some of our shows, of our TV projects. The one that you see here, Buonanotte, is Good Night, had been all done in Blender. It's cut out animation and it's a short movie about living together and community. Everyone at night wants to play his own music but it's a total cacophony, I don't know if you know this word in English, it's like when it's a mess and when they start to realise that playing together is better, they start to play and make music, harmony. Then we had worked on Utopia, it's a feature film with an older director and we had done a video game style animation also with Blender and this is Take Flight where Luca Di Cicca and Nicolas Damoy spoke about it in 2019 here and it's a story of a little bird that is too scared to fly and how he overcomes his fear and now we had the developers of Season 2, it's both VR and for linear television broadcasting. This had been a very, very interesting experiment also for my kids. So this is Come Fogli al Vento, it lives in the wind and this is a project where it had been very personally involved also for the story. It's the story of Ricardo Calimani, he's a family friend and his parents survived Holocaust and we speak about how they survived. We had done a very, very experimental technique, it's a doco fiction with animation inserts and animation inserts are in 2D animation. We started to test Gris Pencil with that and also to test how to mix live action animation and the animation we had done it was done on real photos of nowadays backgrounds that we gave life to that. So there had been a lot of preproduction work and we will try to here you can see a little bit. Thank you. So we had done this production with Raya Gattai kids and Uche Uche is the Jewish national Italian community and the target were kids but also families and it had traveled all around Italian schools with a very good success especially teenagers and hopefully we think that this is also because we tried to change the language that was used to talk about Holocaust and to make it more modern, more somehow appealing and to talk directly to younger generation. We had worked a lot with YouTube for many, many years and that way we understood a little bit of the timing and what was searched, how much was the attention span and we tried to apply that to a way more difficult topic to speak about than like science actually. So Ricardo Calimani is an historian and writer and he walks around the Venetian ghetto. He's not an actor but the two kids that he speaks to are two actors but both of them are studied also literal history so they knew the topic so some of the questions that they had asked him through the documentary they're real they're not scripted while other things were totally scripted especially the parts in animation like we had so we had done a mix of scripted and unscripted shooting that was pretty interesting and pretty difficult also because he's not an actor of course so he was just saying what he wanted to say when he wanted but we had to be very careful that whatever was animated was carefully planned because what we had done also like here we had like the photos of the stumbling stones and then we animated them to show that Ricardo Brand is the name of Ricardo Calimani parents that went to Auschwitz but we're not telling the history we're telling the story of his parents and his parents survived because they understood that they had to run away not even they didn't understand what they had to run away but that they had to run and of course we speak about race and we speak about other teams and we stay strongly that race doesn't exist this is a little bit of the echo that the series had and this is some background material so we had collected all the archives photos and redraw it on top of that and then put other some animation some with GGI and Luca worked on that and then on the 2D animation another studio worked on that it's John Adapato Studios and he had worked with Gris Pencil also and a little bit on the script here are actors and the location is the amazing city of Venice and here is the Spanish synagogue where we had done most of the interaction between live action and animation because we is the same place where Ricardo Calimani parents got married they got married during Nazi occupation with all the Jewish community that came into the synagogue that seems crazy now and we had transformed and redrawed the synagogue to how it looked in the past adding people and the ceremony and also working a lot with colors to symbolize what was before when everyone was still in the same way of joy and then what happened after when they realized that actually what was the drama that they were working to since the location manager and this is a little bit of animation reference that we used and some color palette and we this was the palette that we started with but then we moved the the palette to a more brighter one because we felt that all the movies that are set in the world war two were too dark and not contemporary while what we wanted to give was the idea of something that is still alive somehow it's not the past it's today's story so this is some stills from the storyboard animation outline here's the scene of the synagogue it's how we transform and redraw on top of it and then give life to that and we had worked a lot with a lot of consultancy from the historians so whatever you will see in the movie that you can find in rye play up it's totally historical accurate like also how the we had done some art graffiti and we had done it with the characters that were done in the times and this is the other show that we had worked at last year we started production in 2012 it's a tv series and with still like it's and this is about science this had been from a production point of view quite complex because we had to mix live action and animation in the same shootings so the two scientists you see here they're not actors they're two real scientists and what they speak about is the incredible of every day we see in color is incredible we don't work on water also that is somehow incredible we need to eat or to drink to be alive and we wanted to simulate curiosity in small kids so that they can start to ask questions about everything and also to find solutions in science to do experiments and so the three fictional characters are like the three small kids and the two scientists of our course the adults so we have a problem at the beginning of the episodes then the fictional characters try to serve it going in a fictional world but of course they make a disaster and they come back to reality and there with the scientists we do an experiment in that experiment we find out everything like about how a cloud is made or the solution and all the experiments that you can do at home we mix a lot of things in the series the their graphics that are 2d and CGI animation and live action and also at the end of every episode we speak about a woman that had a role in that particular science field just to give back woman a little bit of their place in history and this is she's Juliana Galati and she worked at a super quark italian snow the show and under a vehicle and he has a lot of experience also with kids now look i will thank you katerina so i'm luka i'm i work with katerina since 22 for 12 years more or less so i started with this father he was a teacher at university and he's a teach blender maybe 12 years ago so wow and i directed a short film arturian seagull that we presented in two years ago in the at the conference with nicolas arturial agabiotta and i directed i co-directed with katerina come for the albento live in the wind incredibly and a last short film are going on that we presented today so let's start with the three main characters that you saw before so we started from concept made by fabio santomaro who is the architecture on our studio so we started from this simple concept that clear also the the mood of the character so we have three main character to be that it's an ample yes an ample yes i don't know now key it's a monkey and a phone it's like a smartphone with a funny eyes so we start modeling we start of course by storyboarding the the entire scene the entire series and all the episode we use of course the grease pencil and now we have a little a little video about the storyboard we also edit in bsc this this storyboard and if the the final edit is made with the with davinci for for technical stuff and in this thumbnail it's just a thumbnail not a really complex storyboard we figure out the main poses and what an important thing the the expression of the of the character the important thing of this of this this series was have the voices before the animation so we we filmed the the live action more or less one year before the the the animation process and so we have the a voiceover to replicate the the voice when the the animation was was finished so we can go on because it's too long this video modeling still is quite simple for for the character and this is to be this is sorry this is phone it's a smartphone and for for the two characters we use the same leg and arm to simplify also the production because we have more like six months to to create 13 episodes so it was so complex also to to to to give in production also the modeling the rig and also the pipeline to the to the final animation this is what about the rig rig was made by Nicholas Namore who collaborate with our studio and for more or less all the three rig we use the rigify system and Nicholas I ask it we ask it to Nicholas to give expression and of course also for the for mouth for mouth for mouth rig and also for the for the eye you can see that there is um I think Nicholas used some Boolean operation to switch off the this kind of of a emoticon of the of the character and here you can see the this is the rig so the character has a single eye at the at the respose of the at the rig and when you switch off the the other emoticon there are Boolean to to create other expression for the rig for this was more simple I think about the rig also used a rigify system and I think the so moderate shape like for example for example tail and eye and for I think that for the the mouth we use it a lot the properties to switch off mouth in this rig and also in the other rig that is the the ample so to be so here you can see a quick drive a quick properties driven with driver that so drive the shape key so and at last there was this this character to be with the same armor legs of of fun and here we use lattice to to stretch the to squash the the eyes and for this rig in particular we use also the the the mask modifier to switch off the the all the mouth expression and also for the for the liquid inside the for the water inside the the ample we use some Boolean to to have a good result when also the the the character move and so thank you Nicholas here we are some animation test this is first animation test made by Daniela Scali who is the supervisor animator for this series so after the production of the of the entire series we of course we test and stress all the all the rig and of course we we try to organize all the production during the the covid pandemic so in particular Daniela Scali with the supervisor worker from for french and most of people by whom this one is just a test to we try to simplify all the interaction between men and the and the character because we had a lot of scene a lot of minutes to to produce and what about the look they looked at it's so simple because in fact we have a very complex scenario a real scenario so we decided to simplify the the look dev so the lighting a look dev so simply just three point light for each character and one word to to to illuminate all the environment and here there are some some tests some render in the in we call limbo so in in this episode there is a real part where the character interact with the real actor and another part with where the the character alone in their in their limbo so these are the example on how we match the so you can see the scenario are very very complex and full of props and now you can see a small compositing of the tele transport when the character goes to the the limbo the limbo part so this was for incredible incredible the last project I want to present today is a garden so this is a project that a project that I wrote I think three years ago and I remember that Katharina's father Luca Demata encouraged encouraged me to to make a short movie so in fact in the in the opening of this short this is a dedicated praises to his father so what about target audience so I wrote this script three years ago as I said and I want to to tell a story about a dog and his and a boy Argo and audience so if you remember Argo was the name of the dog of Ulisse Ulipsis that it's also called Odysseyo so I tried to switch off the the story so during a journey during the long trip along the Mediterranean Sea Argo and not Odysseyo Audi forgot his his path so during this nightmare during this this trip he met all the character that in the in the real of the sea Ulises Ulises meet but under the shape of animal and this short film was uh we we presented to the to the Italian minister what culture mystery yeah so there is a little trip little trailer about this project that we finished almost one month ago and now we can and now we will present to I think to the to first well sorry okay so the duration this short movie is five minutes of course for kids and we produced it this this year so we started always from our our director Fabio Santomaro who made the concept and the particularity of this short short film were to uh match the 2d concept and try to replicate it in a 3d look in fact you can see that the character are not completely 3d there are no no 3d no real 3d and and of course we created a lot of mood board and concept before starting modeling rigging and then animating so here we can see some concept for from Fabio Santomaro and in particular for character we create to replicate the this style there are a lot of concept of course we created that hand-made hand-made storyboard but it was this was a very old storyboard uh I think three years ago a preliminary storyboard and here we have some video about the the modeling so as you can see modeling is so simple so we we have less few polygons and as you can see if the video turns the body as a as a shape almost 3d instead the the face is similar to a plane because we want to replicate the the the concept of course also for for this for this character I think yes for this character we created a base rig with with rigify in particular as for incredibly TV series we in particular for the eye we we created almost the same technique with the driver and and a mask a mask system tools which off the the various shape of the of the blink so a base rig for this character I don't know if I can yes so you can see you can see the the rigify in in this character and of course this this is almost look that so more or less we use always only vertex vertex color for this for this character except to the for the t-shirt because it's a simple concept of course and and just for the eyes yes we have two properties tools tools which off the the blink I want I want to go again because there is also for the for this character for Argo is the dog we also have a simply a simple model with with with the rigify system so let's okay in particular for this dog that switch I don't know if you remember in the odyssey uh uh uh ulysses uh meet uh the church who transform him the his uh his colleague in pig so for this character we create to switch mesh in particular of the of the tail to a pig shape and also the color so most of the of the material in some shape are regulated by by a little rig and in particular maybe I can go on because the video is so slow I can't so we also try to um to switch the rig of the eye so um for most of time the character are are in this position so the the body goes from for example right left and the and the face it's also always in front so we created a switch between eyes to swap the the the eyes when the the rig when the model have to rotate we have some some animation preliminary animation test so for dog and for the for for for for adi these are some play blasts about the last scene of the of the short and all just in the in the first outline we try to create a match between 2d scenarios not not all not only 3d it's all it's just a paint and 3d part we have also some some animatic here so final scene just in in play blast also there are a lot of secondary character but they are very simple in shape and also in the rig so in particular in that short film it was important to create a match between these two character uh a few simulating system but very very simple because the style is not is not going to a photorealistic uh photorealistic way and some shot of the uh the final image when you you can see also that there is not there's not a um a great match between the 3d part and the and the sky we we try to uh to find a way to interact these two kinds of of seeing of of technique some scene of the of the short film here you can see that the the moon is completely painted and so that's for me cadrina if you want to come thank you so uh now it's 12 years that we work with blender for us had been very important for our productions we have a very simple pipeline more simple than other animation studios we do all in house all with very few artists around 15 20 and some work remotely on but most of them are in the studio so they can interact one another and we think that this from a creative point of view is very important and we kind of miss it during covet time of course and actually last year we had around 50 people working in their studio because we had done also the live action part and so that had been quite massive at least for us and we had done so shooting live action to the animation live action and ggi animation and of course what we had tried to do and our gaudi we it's more poor animation what we had done we started with more simple shows and we had developed it into more and more complex and and next year hope we will pitch you another show that is a tv special that it's a 2.5d if you have questions we're here and if you want to send our portfolio your portfolio we're here and