Do you have the skill and capacity to create competition winning animations? The knowledge and skill needed to create an effective architectural animation is immense. By "effective animation" I mean visualizing exactly what needs to be seen, the way you want to see it. Comprehensive architectural knowledge and extensive CGI skills take years to acquire... ...and the final production should aim to achieve the desired result. Be that winning a design competition, gaining planning consent or selling off-plan. Can you achieve all the above in-house? If yes, then perhaps you may wish to save time and stop reading now. If you would like to know more, there are several key stages to producing an effective architectural animation. The first is an initial meeting to discuss the scope. This may sound blatantly obvious, but very few services go through with it in any detail. Assuming [incorrectly] that an email description of requirements will suffice. Your meeting should help all concerned understand the scope and end-objective in full. What is the duration and delivery deadline? What size of screen will it be played back on? To get a better feel for the project, you may wish to ask more in-depth questions that may include: • Does the story-board flow logically, scene by scene? • Is there anything unique that should be highlighted? • Does your design solve a specific “problem”? Asking these questions [and others] is one thing. Having the experience to visualize the answers effectively is another matter entirely. Click to watch some of the example productions on this page. They may not be to all tastes... ...but they were exactly what the clients wanted to see. More importantly, most were successful in achieving their objectives. “Very good news! Our client developers won the project. Congratulations to you and the team. The clients were extremely impressed with our design and the visualization was superb - we won the first phase of the competition”, Associate Principle, CallisonRTKL In terms of production capacity, there seems to be an assumption that animations should take less time to produce given recent improvements in internet speed (?) hardware and software. Strange but true. For example, a 2 minute HD quality animation would normally take up to 4 weeks to produce from start to finish. If you need it in half that time, then your production capacity needs to be a considerable size… …with many coordinated hands manning the pumps around-the-clock to achieve that critical deadline. “Lifang's CGI team are our number one visualization provider and have always delivered superior quality final visuals to our very tight deadlines. All this combined with a level of professionalism and flexibility I have seldom seen” Head of Visualization at DMU If you would like to learn more about the many other details required to produce a successful architectural animation... Send me an email now to learn more, sales@lifangcgi.co.uk I will answer right away. Project collaboration is very important too – you don’t want to waste time holding your service providers hand. You want to have them do the hard work for you right? That’s why we employ architecturally qualified project managers that cross-check all in progress drafts – leaving you to focus on your day-to-day requirements. "Thanks for being so incredibly easy to work with during this process, I really appreciate it!", Vice President, Film Creations, Ltd. Stuck for ideas? Lifang can create your animation storyboard for you, providing as many drafts as you need at the modelling, rendering and post-production stages. Use our unique services with confidence, safe in the knowledge that what you’ll receive as the final HD animation will be exactly what you want to see - before you agree to the final sign-off. With over 20 years architectural CGI experience, our clients use us time and again. Send me an email now to learn more, sales@lifangcgi.co.uk http://youtu.be/cX0h_Xnlncc

• published: 19 Feb 2013
• views: 58677