The Key Ring

Adam discovers a secret about the crazy homeless man, Lew, which might help him find the answer to his mother's disappearance.

Zixx Phunkee Zee, Adam Frake, Griff Chalanchuk, Deeth, Flanngo, Lew, Uncle Murray, Anna Frake, Homeless Man, Depot Man

Working Title of Series: "Phunkee Zee."

The series officially began on January 17, 2004, but had a "sneak peek" on January 1, 2004.

With combined live action and animation, "Zixx Level One" is the first show for broadcast to contain animation created by a game engine. The Lithtech Engine was provided to the makers of the show as the platform for the animation.

Live action was shot on sets designed by production designer Benno Tutter. All the sets were built in an empty high school in downtown Toronto. Each set was built in a different room in the school, with four sets being built in the gym alone. Even the boiler room was made out of plywood. The shoot lasted three months and wrapped just before Christmas 2003.

Once the kids get into the Keep, they are transformed into animated characters operating in a gamelike animated environment. This animated segment of the show was supposed to look like a computer game, and someone had the idea that it should be created using a game engine. That's when Elliot Digital came on board. The Elliot team designed and created all the elements of the Keep.

After the animation was finished, the actors came back to do the voices for their animated characters. Finally, the live-action and animated segments were combined.

The process began, like most computer animation projects, with designs, storyboards and a dialogue track. The Elliott Digital modeling team created and textured the characters, sets, and props using Discreet's 3DS Max, but that's where the similarities ended.

Elliott Digital used a game engine called the Lithtech Engine from Monolith Productions, as well as 3DS Max and a proprietary program called the "Choreographer." By interconnecting the three programs, the team was able to use 3DS Max to create the props, sets and characters, and then to export them directly into the game engine and convert them into short film segments.

The animators then took the characters and generated "cycles" of animation. For example, a "walk cycle," approximately 15 frames of animation consisting of the character taking two steps, would be recorded. When repeatedly applied to the character in the game engine, the character appears to walk across the set. These cycles were then stored in the game engine.

Next, artists took the storyboards and applied the various pre-recorded cycles to the characters to make them walk, run, jump and act out the story. The game engine combined all the elements and rendered the resulting animation sequence.

The result is a unique style of animation which, according to its creators, looks exactly like a video game.