Paprikaas rebrands as Technicolor India

Paprikaas has been renamed and rebranded as Technicolor India by its corporate owners. The studio, based in Bangalore, was fully acquired by Technicolor earlier this year. Technicolor has been using the studio to build on its relationships with clients such as DreamWorks Animation, Electronic Arts and Nickelodeon. The studio, founded in 2001, also has added visual effects, compression and authoring services to its menu.

Nickelodeon's new Kung Fu Panda TV series, produced for the worldwide broadcast market, and initially comprising 26 episodes, is currently being animated at Technicolor India. Nickelodeon and Technicolor have developed a strong production relationship based on the studio's CGI work on Penguins of Madagascar.

"India has emerged as the Asian destination of choice for animation. This enhances our India investments in Paprikaas over the past few years. We have aggregated and developed the best and the finest skill sets in the industry blending international and local artists," said Frederic Rose, CEO, Technicolor.

Chicago's Lift Motion merges with Vitamin

Chicago animation and motion graphics producer Lift Motion has merged with the digital production studio Vitamin. The combined company will operate under the Vitamin name and will be headed by Vitamin creative director Danny DelPurgatorio. The company will offer concept-through-delivery services for commercials, broadcast promos and graphics, online content and music videos. Both companies are affiliates of the post production company Filmworkers. As part of the merger, Filmworkers producer Larissa Shames has joined Vitamin. The company also has added Ilene Silberman as its East Coast representation.

Vitamin has recently worked on commercials for Jeep, McDonald's, Steelcase and Budweiser, as well as music videos for Alex Metric and Maroon 5. Lift's recent credits include work for ABC, CBS, FOX, SPEED, Leo Burnett, DDB and Energy BBDO.

CIS VFX Group strikes landmark deal

CIS Visual Effects Group has acquired the assets of Postmodern Sydney. CIS, based in Hollywood (USA) and Vancouver, Canada, is an award-winning brand in the international visual effects industry. Postmodern, established in 2001, is a fast growing design and visual effects business servicing high-end feature, commercial and television clients in Australia and throughout Asia. Recent commercial projects include McDonald's McHappy Day for DDB Sydney and Macquarie Bank's Out of the Box for Leo Burnett.

Andrew Robinson, managing director of Postmodern Sydney said, "We're at a point in our business growth where we've got some amazing work under our belt but for some time we've been looking for a strong partner to help us spread our wings. For us that meant finding someone with great creative and technical credentials along with global recognition."

Flash CS5 new version

Animator's favourite Flash has got an update in the form of Flash Professional CS5. It boasts better animation physics, improved typography controls, new ways of building webapps using ActionScript and new data formats. It also has options for exporting, or cross-compiling, files into iPhone/iPad friendly code. Adobe has updated the physics engine in this new version of Flash, which promise more lifelike and realistic animation.