Cosmic Dino Studio Creates Out Of This World Content With Digistor Animation, Rendering and Post-Production Solutions

Cosmic Dino Studio was formed to produce high-quality animated feature films and TV series for award-winning clients from Australia and internationally. Recently the studio undertook the production of a CG-animated feature film adaptation of the award-winning graphic novel Scarygirl, made for theatrical release around the world for Passion Pictures Australia and Like A Photon Creative. For this project, the studio not only had to significantly scale up their number of employees but also their animation, rendering and post-production solutions and for those, they turned to Digistor.

The goal was to acquire the right talents and resources for Cosmic Dino Studio to find the appropriate number of animation, rendering and post-production solutions. Their production pipeline was primarily focused on Autodesk Maya, for asset creation across characters, environments, props and rigging, as well as for CG cinematography and blocking and 3D animation. Their lighting department utilised Maya for its lighting and completed its compositing in Blackmagic Fusion 18 and some work in Adobe After Effects. Rendering was completed in Redshift by Maxon, utilising the company's powerful render farm for the highest quality results.

Cosmis Dino Studio not only had to scale up their number of employees significantly but also their animation, rendering and post-production solutions and for those, they turned to Digistor. Therefore, once the animatic has been finalised, it was shipped down the studio's bespoke and highly efficient pipeline to their layout department which takes the storyboards and matches the camera framing within Maya in 3D space. They in turn ship that to the animation team who studied the performance of the voice actors and brought the inanimate 3D characters to life, adding nuance and flair to their movements. This was then shipped to the lighting and compositing team, who added digital lights to each set the characters were in and render the final image, using a mountain of computer processing power to see all the department's hard work combined.

Cosmic Dino Studio co-owner/co-director, Ricard Cussó, added, "Digistor provided us with all of our Autodesk Maya licenses and we had up to 40 artists working with purchased licenses at a time.

Digistor also provided us with our Fusion and Redshift licenses, really efficiently dispensing more Redshift licenses if we needed more render power during some of the heavier months of production. We have been really impressed with the quality of images Redshift has produced, yielding really impressive results for our feature film, which was produced on a limited budget and making it look significantly more expensive."

Digistor has provided Cosmic Dino Studio with a competitive edge in the Australian animation industry on a limited budget and made it look significantly more expensive by providing them with fast and efficient turnarounds on software solutions, so there was zero idle time for their artists when hiccups on the road occur.