Jun 8, 2015

CGI Pioneer "Reboot" Reboots with "The Guardian Code"

ReBoot, television's first fully CG-animated series, recently celebrated its 20th anniversary with a new 26-episode upgraded version.

Vancouver-based Mainframe Entertainment, a subsidiary of Rainmaker Entertainment, has begun production on ReBoot: today at the Banff World Media Festival, Rainmaker President Michael Hefferon and Canadian media broadcaster Corus Entertainment announced that they have begun production on ReBoot: The Guardian Code, a "hybrid series of live action and CG animation". The series will be distributed outside Canada by The Weinstein Company/Dimension Television.

"The new 'ReBoot' will feature the same action and comedy that viewers loved in the original series, but with a state-of-the-art technology worldview," explained Jamie Peakers, content director at Corus Kids. Envisioned as a "multi-platform experience," the new storyline will expand beyond television, although details have yet to be announced.

"Technology is always changing, and 'ReBoot: Technology is always changing, and 'ReBoot: The Guardian Code' is the very concept of the show, leveraging the technology that permeates the everyday lives of children."

Originally aired on ABC in the US and YTV in Canada in the 1990s, ReBoot was created by Gavin Blair, John Grace, Phil Mitchell, and Ian Pearson. Set in the computer world known as the mainframe, where the main characters, gamers Bob, Dot, and Enzo, battle the villainous viruses Megabyte and Hexadecimal, and their clueless minions Hack and Slash, its manic vocabulary and boxy animation were characteristic of 90 s, it embodied the hallmarks of the computer culture of the 1990s. [Referencing Ang Lee's classic martial arts film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and the "Saturday Night Live" spin-off "Blue Brothers," ReBoot: The Guardian Code is set more than 20 years after ReBoot was first activated and follows four teenagers (Austin, Parker, Gray, and Tamra) are transformed into new Guardians tasked with saving the world "with the help of VERA, the last surviving cyberbing from the original Guardian program. They take on a nefarious hacker known as Sorcerer and an upgraded megabyte that seeks to unleash a virus that can remotely open dams to flood cities and destroy nuclear power plants.

Of course, CG animation has come a very long way since 1994, when "ReBoot" was relatively lonely in its style and structure. Indeed, Adobe's acquisition of Mixamo has made CG animation production accessible to those who do not specialize in CG animation. ReBoot: The Guardian Code" will compete in a competitive marketplace where TV series like "Beware the Batman" and "Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness" are striding at will through the CG wonderland that ReBoot helped pioneer decades ago. In such a competitive marketplace, where TV series like "Beware Batman" and "Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness" roam at will, ReBoot: The Guardian Code is a tough job.