17.04.2020
“Hero Dad” is centered around a father who gets home from work everyday, changes into his superhero costume -rain boots, kitchen gloves, a tablecloth cape and a swimsuit over his pants- and takes care of, plays with and teaches, his curious 3-year-old daughter, Miao. The animated comedy, aimed at preschoolers 2 to 6 years old, shows the adventures of this homemade superhero, who is kinda clumsy, and ultimately always ends up being rescued by his clever little daughter, who ends up learning the lesson of the day.
The CGI animation series, whose first season consists of 26 x 5 minute episodes, is directed by Maxi Valero and Nathalie Martinez and is being produced by the Spanish Wise Blue Studios, in co-production with À Punt Mèdia and with the collaboration of the Institut Valencià de Cultura IVC.
In the production of Hero Dad, Wise Blue Studios is employing groundbreaking technology by utilizing Unity’s real-time rendering technology. It is one of the first television series to ever employ this cutting edge technology, which allows 4K rendering in real time, and as a result has created a completely innovative, extremely stream-lined workflow for CGI animation. The technical and artistic team at Wise Blue Studios has invested considerable R&D efforts to implement this technology, which up to now has been used in the video game industry, into their production pipeline to take advantage of the best of both worlds.
VisDev supervisor, David Martinez, says “the biggest challenge has been to get the style of a traditional animation series for children, with degraded tones, soft shadows, diffuse lights, etc., and separate this type of image from what we are used to seeing on the screen of a video game.” The team, also headed by art director Pablo Martín (Pablín Dibujín), feels very satisfied with both the creative result and the enhanced workflow efficiency, and that sentiment is echoed by production manager, Juan Calabuig, saying “we are very happy regarding both the efficiencies in production and the artistic results.”
This new production pipeline represents one of the very first successful combinings of the technologies of television animation and video game production, and is providing a successful case study for what is clearly the future of streamlined television animation workflow, and will set a new standard for the industry.
“Hero Dad" is an innovative series from a technological point of view that allows us a versatility and efficiency that did not previously exist. But it is also an innovative series in the very conception of the theme” says Valero, director and creator of the original story. Nathalie Martinez, co-director and producer of the series, adds that “in the end, technology is a vehicle that is at the service of storytelling, and in this series it helps us focus on our story of the life of a single-parent family, where the father takes care of the daughter as they work together to solve the daily challenges, and learn the daily lessons, that every little kid faces in their life.”
The series is very solid in its philosophical approach but, above all, it is fun! We never lose sight of the fact that children, especially at these ages, learn best by having fun!
Based on materials from: https://www.wisebluestudios.com/2019/05/09/herodad_tvshow_unity/
