Animation has become the low cost solution for presenting complicated ideas and demonstrations

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then moving pictures are worth tens of thousands!

Millennium special set for Univision Network

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3-D color model and animation video of a special set for Univision Network Sabado Gigante.

Below are case studies that will show examples of animation for nonlinear systems, using 3-D animation, with conventional composition software like After Effects.

3D logo in 20 second opening animation, 3D Logo animated loop "bug" with alpha channel for easy composition. Total cost, just under $200

At Home Tutor is a set of instructional videos with manuals, marketed to parents, to help tutor children at home. To get the seed money he needed, the owner decided to create a promotional video, and an infomercial. We created a 3D logo animated it using alpha channel transparency, for use on the Media 100 nonlinear video editing system.

He easily raised all the money he needed and is on his way. The product is great and we think we really helped him attain market success with very little out of pocket, even in tough economic conditions such as now. Back to home page

Univision Networks
We were given the task of designing a studio set for the Ver Para Creer show, which airs weekly to an international audience. The Art Director at Univision, sketched out an idea for a bank of video monitors arranged in the shape of half of a sphere. This set piece needed to rotate, with a self contained motor and was to be constructed with the ability to be broken down, and fit into a 20' truck.
To the right, is a color rendering of our 3-d model. The construction drawings were completed, and sent to Univisions' contract shops for bids. The bids returned in a range from $60.000 on the high end, and $45.000 for the cheapest.

Univision felt these were inflated, but had little recourse, as the shops were adamant about the estimates, and the bids were firm. They returned to us and reluctantly asked for help in cutting parts of the job, to get under budget. After going over the bids from the shops, we discovered that the shops had indeed over priced the job, claiming that the rigging of the motor and drive unit would cost around $12.000. They also had over priced the material costs and labor, due to just "padding", to the tune of about $8000.

We quickly rendered an animation to show the simplicity of our design, and that is should be no more than $1000 to rig the motor and attach a crank arm between two disks. Since the design was already modeled in 3-d, outputting the animation took only five minutes. The finished animation was emailed to them, in gif format so it played right in Outlook, no player or plugin needed. The small file, of only 160k, could be downloaded in 33 seconds, with a 56k modem. In a matter of minutes, the shops called and accepted our pricing, feeling confident enough to significantly lower their bids, after seeing the animation. This resolution was accomplished in less than one day, and all the parties involved were satisfied. Buy the way, the final cost of the job was under $20,000, and is still in use over a year later, with no problems. That was a savings of almost 50%.

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