Jay Jay The Jet Plane - How The Series Was Produced

How The Series Was Produced

The series was produced by Modern Cartoons in their works in Oxnard, California, USA. Unlike Thomas the Tank Engine, this series used a mixture of techniques:

• The backgrounds were miniature sets (usually built on 2 4'x8' sheets of plywood)
• Brenda Blue was a live action actress shot in front of a greenscreen
• The planes were computer models created in Maya and a proprietary software.
• The movement of the planes was recorded by playing out the scene with wood models that had magnetic position sensors. The planes had a switch to aid landing and taxiing, due to some minor fluctuations in the magnetic positioning data.
• The planes' faces and lip synching were done by "face tracking". This is a technique where reflective spots are put on a voice actor's face. The voice track is being digitally recorded along with the spot data. Then using a form of parametric animation the face is rendered.
• Head movement and other effects were done by joysticks.

The complex mathematical and CGI issues were solved by Frank Ford Little, PhD.

A number of proprietary software systems were used:

• The data/audio recording and smoothing was done on a Windows machine.
• The daily cuts were done on "Compaq Alpha" computers running a 64-bit version of Windows NT 4.0.