TeamTO is launching a new free and open-source tool for studios to take on one of the most complicated and time-consuming parts of the animation process: rigging. 

The software, called Mikan (pictured), is rolling out this week via GitHub, and TeamTO hopes it will help democratize the tools that make animation possible, says president and CEO Marco Balsamo. 

Rigging is a time-intensive process that involves mapping points all over a CG-animated character so it can be manipulated by animators. This process can take hours or days—or sometimes even longer. For average TV series productions, it typically takes 10 to 20 days to rig a main character, says Balsamo. Creatives who’ve mastered Mikan can expect to spend 20% less time rigging, he says—that’s a whole two to four days for those time-intensive main characters. 

The tool can achieve this because it includes prefabricated rigs that can be combined together, instead of requiring animators to make new ones from scratch. It can also save assets to be reused on other characters, and includes functionality for quickly rebuilding rigs in 20 or 30 seconds, instead of the several minutes it typically takes, Balsamo adds. 

An image of TeamTO’s Mikan, which can shave off 20% of the time typically spent rigging, according to CEO Marco Balsamo.

The amount of time rigging takes can sometimes cause friction between rigging artists and the rest of the animation team, says Jean-Baptiste Spieser, TeamTO’s CTO and director of R&D. “I often have this feeling that in the studio there is a loss of time, loss of energy, loss of artistic sensitivity because of the rigging,” Spieser says. “Because it’s too complicated, because it’s hard to reproduce, that the animators cannot animate in real time.” He hopes Mikan will help other studios avoid that production headache. 

TeamTO plans to announce in September some of the studios that have been quietly testing Mikan in recent months. So far, the responses have been positive, Balsamo says. 

The launch is part of a new chapter for the studio that Balsamo and his RIVA Studios co-founder Tara Sibel Demren purchased for US$3 million in December. Beyond developing new content (they’re both heading to Cartoon Forum in September with the studio’s first anime-inspired series, Shadow Soccer), they also want to establish TeamTO as a technology company with a suite of tools that can enhance how other studios work, Demren says. 

The company has already taken two tools that its Mighty Mike and Jade Armor teams built and have been using for the past 10 years, and will start licensing them out this fall. Unlike Mikan, these tools won’t be free. Tangerine, a real-time CG-animation software, will cost US$163 per month per user, and Yuzu, a management platform that can predict schedules and budgets, will cost US$35 per month per user. 

The company is packaging these tools alongside Mikan in a suite called Citrus Software, and is currently demoing the technologies for other companies. Demren will run this part of TeamTO’s business, and right now, she is focused on building out a team to take the software to market. The company expects to announce its first paying client in December. 

“We like the idea [that we’re] democratizing [technology] because it makes it more accessible,” Demren says. “It really empowers animators and studios to reach newer levels and keep up with the modern age.”