Dubai-based post production house Blink Studios recently upgraded its facility with a number of solutions including 10 new HP workstations, Final Cut Pro and Avid Media Composer edit suites. The solutions were supplied and integrated by local distributor MediaCast.
The expansion will enable Blink Studios to undertake more sophisticated 3D animation projects. The post production house presently produces 3D animation using 3DS Max and Maya and finalises the output using After Effects and FCP. It also produces 2D animation using Flash and Adobe Media packages.
However, its long-term vision is to produce long-form 3D and 2D animation for feature films, shorts and TV series, also accommodating short-form 3D and 2D productions for both commercial and entertainment purposes.
Speaking about the new investment, Nathalie Habib, general manager of Blink Studios said: “In addition to the 10 HP workstations, MediaCast had previously equipped Blink Studios with 13 HP workstations. It also installed and integrated the FCP and Avid edit suites.”
Director and producer Hani Kichi added that the production house invested in Avid to “accommodate an international animated TV series production currently running within Blink Studios pipeline”.
“Blink Studios is one of the regions first animation studios to produce a pre-school show for Cbeebies, the BBCs pre-school channel as well as its Arabic adaptation for Baraem, the preschool arm of Al Jazeera Childrens Channel. Both of these are being done in partnership with twofour54 in Abu Dhabi. The 52-episode international version is being co-produced with a UK-based animation studio.
“We invested in Avid to accommodate the requirements of long-distance production and to ensure equal and similar quality output throughout the production process.”
Blink Studios already has a fairly sophisticated setup in place to undertake major animation projects. It houses a series of iMac machines; includes render farm cubes with 384 processing cores to render high quality HD animation in a short time and has a main server with 20 terabytes storage and a back-up system that is scheduled to be expanded to accommodate a heavier production pipeline. This was accompanied by a large investment in external storage hard-disks ranging from 1 to 8 terabytes. This was also procured from MediaCast.
GM Habib says this investment “is part of a long term investment strategy”.
“This entire highly-integrated set up is part of a long term investment strategy that Blink Studios has put in place and constantly revisits in order to ensure animation production of the highest quality for short-form commercial projects as well as long-form entertainment productions such as features films, shorts and TV series. The new system we have deployed guarantees the delivery of on-time and on-budget high quality production.”
