Animation powerhouse Digimania strengthens offering through merger and ex-BBC and Disney hires

Technology Uncategorized

The creator of ground-breaking 3D movie-making software Muvizu has merged with the award-winning animation production house Zubox, and hired two ex-broadcasting executives to increase market share.

 Julie Adair

The group’s private equity investors have brought together Glasgow-based Muvizu and London-based Zubox to create a vertically-integrated software platform and creative production business in one.

Newly appointed Digimania CEO, Julie Adair, has been tasked with leading the company through the next stage of business development, including commercialisation of the Muvizu platform and capital fundraising.

Julie’s background in television production at the BBC and specialism in developing children’s media – including games, apps and social experiences at Disney – was deemed a perfect fit for Digimania’s new combined offering.

Julie said: “The way we consume content is changing, so production and processes have to keep pace and evolve with these shifts in audience behaviours and expectations. The speed at which Zubox can write, voice and animate content is breath-taking and will open many new and exciting doors for animation creators.”

Having been at the forefront of the inaugural launch of the BBC’s online offerings in the 90s, Julie comes to Digimania having worked as EMEA Director for Online at The Walt Disney Company. She is also a Professor of Interactivity, Content and Communities at Abertay University.

Carole Dunlop becomes Marketing Manager at Digimania, building on her career in Design, TV Production Management and Web Content Production at the BBC where she was a pioneer of Online Community Management. She also recently managed broadcast training charity TRC media’s acclaimed digital media development programme Cross Creative exploring markets in both the UK and San Francisco.

The two new appointments will work with the existing talented Muvizu and Zubox teams, to develop and deliver a new combined strategy.  Digimania (http://www.digimania.com/) has significantly impacted on the speed to market for animated content and will continue to develop their innovative new production processes at Zubox.

Digimania is already generating significant interest from some of the biggest names in content production and brands are keen to be involved in this exciting new wave of slick, topical animated story-telling. They are also working with several industry-leading IP holders to devise and implement revolutionary, rapid animation pipelines that deliver real production savings.

Muvizu is a ground-breaking, intuitive 3D software package that lets anyone create pro-looking HD animation clips, whether a young enthusiast with no technical experience or an industry professional.

Zubox is a London-based animation studio whose unique and innovative pipeline combined with the power of Muvizu, produces entertaining shorts for clients including MSN at unprecedented speed. Their aim is to be the ‘go to’ place for entertaining animated content, using different themes, such as topical entertainment, news and football clips.