Repost: Adobe Character Animator Receives Emmy® Award for Technology and Engineering

Today, the Academy announced that it will honor Adobe Character Animator as a Pioneering System for Live Performance-Based Animation Using Facial Recognition, showing excellence in engineering creativity. In the biz, this is an Emmy! We might be on a bit of a roll here, for industry bling, since this latest award follows on from our two technical Academy Awards in 2019 for Photoshop and After Effects.

A lot has changed in the six years since Character Animator began as a research project. Through technology powered by Adobe Sensei, like auto lip sync, face tracking, and triggerable animation and audio, Character Animator complements traditional tools. And it empowers storytellers to bring artwork to life, in high-quality recorded and live animations faster, and with new levels of flexibility.

We share this award with the visionary customers who took the leap with us — the actors, animators, and directors who were willing to “perform” their characters, in real-time, in front of the whole world.

Some of the pioneers using Character Animator include the ever-imaginative team at The Simpsons, who took a chance and used it first in live TV broadcasts. Talk about jumping in at the deep end. The result – hilarious and improvised ‘audience call in’ segments featuring the great man himself, Homer J. Simpson, live on air at primetime.

Tim Luecke and the small team at Showtime’s Our Cartoon President bet an entire production pipeline for a network show on Character Animator. Character Animator is probably the ultimate tool for our time as Tim and his team leaned on it to keep up with the wild developments in current events every week. And thanks to the countless artists, professionals and early adopters that created live interactions with their cartoon creations, and let them speak directly with fans, young and old, across broadcast and social media.

We are honored by the award and share it with all the creative minds who have trusted Adobe to bring their characters to life.

And last, but certainly not least, thanks to everyone on the Character Animator team and in Adobe Research who had a hand in envisioning the possibilities, bringing the technologies through research to the users, building out the user experience, and continuing to develop this tool.

We can’t wait to celebrate with you at the awards ceremony in Las Vegas on Sunday, April 19, 2020.