Toon Boom Goes Manga with HeARTBIT in Japan

MONTREAL, April 15, 2013 /PRNewswire/ - Two-time Emmy award recipient, Toon Boom Animation Inc. announced today that HeARTBIT Digital Creation, one of Japan's promising animation studios, has signed a memorandum of understanding formalizing their intention to use the Toon Boom pipeline, namely Toon Boom^® Storyboard Pro™ and Harmony™, in their upcoming production titled Francesca. In addition to Steven Chu, Toon Boom's Chief Operating Officer, and Hitoshi Kumagai, HeARBIT's Chief Executive Officer, The Honourable Edward Fast, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway; The Honourable Christian Paradis, Minister for Industry; His Excellency the Ambassador of Canada to Japan, Mackenzie Clugston attended the signing ceremony which took place on April 11, at the Canadian Embassy.

This first project titled Francesca is based on a highly popular Manga icon, which has already ramped up a great fan base on Facebook and YouTube.

"I feel extremely honoured to use Toon Boom technology. I find it far superior, providing users with unlimited functionality and efficiency while creating projects. I'm sure Toon Boom will bring the Japanese animation industry to a new level unattainable before. I'm hoping that lots of Japanese animators will find as much excitement in using Toon Boom's first-class tool as I did," states Mr. Hitoshi Kumagai, chief executive officer of  HeARTBIT Digital Creation.

"We are delighted to welcome HeARTBIT Digital Creation in the Toon Boom family. Their property will be a great opportunity for Toon Boom technology to demonstrate its efficiency at producing Manga according to the unique production style of Japan," says Joan Vogelesang, president and chief executive officer of Toon Boom.

About Toon Boom Animation Inc.
Toon Boom Animation Inc. (toonboom.com), a Corus® Entertainment Inc. company and a 2012 and 2005 Primetime Emmy Engineering Award recipient, is the worldwide leader in digital content and animation creation software, delivering products and services online to its global community. Toon Boom carries user-friendly applications for all, catering to children, home users, creative professionals as well as students, educators and schools. Toon Boom is fully dedicated to education and goes far beyond just developing technology and curriculums that enhance the classroom experience. Toon Boom is an influential advocate of bringing industry and education together, while partnering with value-added partners to help students achieve their goals.

At the high-end studio level, Toon Boom offers a wide product range from powerful pre-production tools to leading-edge animation production solutions. Relying on its extensive expertise in animation production, Toon Boom provides consulting services in the fields of optimization, pipeline integration, production assistance and custom development.

About HeARTBIT Digital Creation
HeARTBIT Inc. was founded in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan in 2001 by Hitoshi Kumagai (present CEO). Until now, they have created as many as 200 titles of mobile contents in Japan. In this growing mobile content market, which is closely related to the Anime industry, their products account for more than half of all the productions in Japan. They have been granted approval by the copyright holders of major Japanese Anime and Manga publishers.

In recent years, they have been designing and developing more varieties of digital content, including Android/iOS apps, SNS games, 3DCG, and more, along with the rapidly changing digital content industry requirements.

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Copyright © 2013 Toon Boom Animation Inc. All rights reserved. Toon Boom^® is a registered trademark and Storyboard Pro™, Harmony™, and the Toon Boom logo are trademarks of Toon Boom Animation Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE TOON BOOM ANIMATION INC.