Are you guys using any plug-ins to enable you to do the show?

Everything that is Worley, apart from FPrime. It will be involved but we are still fighting some legacy issues. Once we get rid of them, we are away.

How long does it take your team of animators to put together a show?

It takes a team of 16 people - animators, lighters, and TDs - eight weeks to complete a show. We have four teams, so we are producing a show every two weeks.

With the Maya/RenderMan pipeline we were getting between .5 and 1.5 shots per day. With LightWave we are averaging 16-20 shots per day without losing any quality. That's the thing with TV... it's an endurance test.

How many episodes will the series be and when is the show going to air?

There are initially 26 episodes, but we are hoping for more, of course. We haven't got a precise date for airing yet.

You say it's not animation in the traditional sense. Why?

Animation done the traditional way really inhibits the quality of a photoreal show. They are different disciplines, and the rules are not interchangeable. For example, in cel animation you could make a helicopter fly to the vanishing point in a matter of 20 frames and it would look okay - if you did the same thing with realistic-looking CG it would look stupid. It's unfortunate that both disciplines use the word animation. Because it confuses people into thinking they are the same thing. They are not. The way we approach creating the show is scene-based, not shot-based. A scene is animated, or mo-capped, for its entire length. Then we go in and "cover" the action with different camera angles, and lenses. This leads to a much more photographed look. Putting in camera shakes and sometimes re-focusing the virtual lenses. LightWave is the only solution for this kind of work.

Over the years many different facilities have tried other packages for long form TV CGI. Nothing and I really mean nothing comes close to the quality and speed of LightWave. So I kinda hate it the least... :)

Thanks for taking the time out to speak to us Ron! I for one can't wait to see the new series as a long-time fan of the original Captain Scarlet! You can get in contact with Indestructible Productions through their website.