Animated details: animation studio Titmouse dives into the high-def waters.(USER FOCUS: BROADCAST)

HD. It's awesome. Just ask anyone who has been mesmerized by sporting events in HD, or has grown to love a favorite television sitcom in high-definition detail. But what about richly colored CG "cartoons"?

Thanks to Titmouse, viewers soon will enjoy Metalocalypse, an animated series on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, in high def, too.

Recently, Titmouse, a full-service animation studio founded in 2004 by Chris Prynoski and his wife, Shannon, installed a new HD workflow for a seamless transition to the new HD formats of the (very near) future. As a result, the facility will be producing film and television works--created using traditional animation crafted with the latest digital techniques, as well as traditional non-digital media--in high definition.

Titmouse's first series gig was Metalocalypse, seen on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. The first season of the show, comprising eleven-minute episodes on the exploits of a fictitious death-metal band known as Dethklok, has a large audience worldwide. The crew composited the series' material in HD, but posted in standard clef, partly due to budgetary constraints and partly because the network didn't require HD. Going into season two, Adult Swim decided to begin looking forward to future platforms so that content would transition seamlessly to the new high-definition formats, including HD and Blu-ray.

"Most important, they wanted to be able to fit as many pixels of blood and guts and gore into each frame as possible, so naturally we began upgrading our facility to handle a full-HD workflow," says Prynoski.

The Move to HD

As far as new equipment was concerned, the group was already sold on Blackmagic: The studio's animators and editors had been using Blackmagic products already, so when they were ready to make the jump to HD, it made sense to stay within the Blackmagic family, says Prynoski. For the main edit systems, Titmouse chose the Multibridge line due to their 4:4:4 capability and connectivity.