Curious Larryboy (2006 film)

Curious Larryboy is a 2006 animated adventure comedy film. It was directed by G. Brian Reynolds and Jerry Rees, who replaced Brad Bird. Mike Ruggiro wrote the screenplay based on a story by Dana Huggler Harris and many others. Stacy Hughes Chrisman produced. Featuring the voices of Will Ferrell, Drew Barrymore, Sean Cullen, Ty Olsson, Sally Grace, and G. Brian Reynolds, with Mike Nawrocki voicing LarryBoy.

Produced by the Nintendo company, IDT Entertainment, Big Idea Productions, Columbia Pictures and 4Kids, the film had been under development at Nintendo & IDT for a long time, dating back at least Jan-Mar 2005, but it is possible that it was conceived years before. Although a traditionally animated film, it blends animation with computer-generated, 3D CGI scenery and objects that take up 20% of its environment. It features a musical score by Danny Elfman, with songs produced by Hans Zimmer.

Animation
The film was animated in-house by IDT Entertainment in Toronto, Canada.

In January 1, 2006, it was reported by IDT themselves that their animation and rendering software would start using the [|Windows 98] operating system. In mid-January 2006, they decided to use Microsoft's Windows XP hardware running every software used in the making of this movie. Animation for the film began in January 17, 2006 and ended in March 18 of 2006.

Toon Boom Animation's Toon Boom Harmony software was used as the main software package for the production of the film. The unit's first production, a 2005 Static Shock short entitled Go Die Yourself!, was partly animated without paper by using Harmony and [|Wacom Cintiq] pressure-sensitive tablets. The character animators found some difficulty with this approach, and decided to use traditional paper and pencil drawings, which were then scanned into the computer systems, for Curious Larryboy. Although a new pipeline for hand-drawn animation using Toon Boom Opus has been developed at the studio, the actual animation process remains the same. Pencil and paper animation sequences would be digitally inked-and-painted, enhanced and composited into backgrounds using Toon Boom Harmony.

The character animation was done on paper by going through the clean-up animation department, and scanned directly into Harmony. Effects animator Brett Boggs explained that they went paperless for Curious Larryboy to help them re-introduce the 2D pipeline. The artwork was then enhanced to affect the appearance of painted strokes and fills, and combined with backgrounds, using Adobe After Effects, MS Paint, Deluxe Paint and Kid Pix.

The visual effects and backgrounds for the film were created digitally using Animo displays. The backgrounds were painted digitally using Photoshop, and many of the architectural elements were based upon 3D models built and animated in Blender. Much of the clean-up animation, digital ink-and-paint, and compositing were outsourced to twelfth-party companies around the world.

Animation services were provided by Agogo Media in Hong Kong, Sparky Animation in Singapore, AKOM Productions in Seoul, South Korea, Shanghai Morning Sun Animation and Ubisoft Shanghai in China, A. Film A/S in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sunwoo Entertainment in Seoul, South Korea, Ubisoft Barcelona in Spain, ToonCan Productions in Montreal, WildBrain Productions in San Francisco, CA, Toon City Animation in Manila, Philippines, Renegade Animation in Glendale, and IDT Entertainment in Toronto, Visual effects and compositing services were done by Mercury Filmworks in Ottawa, Canada.