Digital Anarchy to have another hit

At NAB, I got a guided tour of ToonIt! from Jim Tierney of Digital Anarchy. We’ve all seen those moderately creepy Schwab commercials where the speakers are rendered as cartoons which are most likely inspired by Richard Linklater’s moderately creepy Waking Life.

What’s always impressed me about Jim is that he takes a concept that every client is asking for, but we as designers have already grown tired of seeing, and makes it interesting. Remember the Matrix text effect? Text Anarchy for After Effects was a complete tool box of text effects that went way beyond falling green gibberish. Long after clients (finally) grew tired of the Matrix effect, Text Anarchy remains an indispensible tool.

ToonIt! does the same. The thing about guided tours from the developer is that I’m never able to reproduce effects of the same quality back at my studio, so I was skeptical. But I have to admit I’ve been playing with a beta version, and have been having an absolute blast experimenting with it, and I think some of my results are better than what Jim showed me in Vegas. Like Text Anarchy, ToonIt’s just plain fun to play with. Unlike so many other cartoon-like plugs, ToonIt! does not posterize the image. It gives it a very natural painted effect.