Developed independently of any brand, ACE is designed to empower agencies and brands to create their own short form animated content for social media platforms, utilizing their existing 3D assets and brand character mascots. Using our proprietary real time animation tool they can be far more agile, tactical and responsive when they have control over creation and publication of an animation sequence in real time.

ACE offers our clients a fully tested, optimized, and rigged version of their 3D/CG character, embedded within the ACE software. These are coupled with a library of hundreds of animations/actions for the character, plus the option of bespoke animation cycles created through our Motion Capture pipeline. With facility to import branded assets and visuals as backdrops to images and animations, captioning and sound-tracking, the software offers brands options to create and publish stills and video instantly in a variety of share-friendly formats, empowering customer engagement.

The key to this innovation lies in the adaption of the Unity 3D real time engine at the software’s core, into a user-friendly tool that can be used by anyone, independent of any previous experience in 3D design or animation. Utilising real-time 360 manipulation and animation, we have developed intuitive UI, 3D scene control, caption-generation and export facility to put the skills of CG and 3D animation into unskilled hands. A standalone application that is designed for ease of use on Mac or Windows, easily installed and supported via a flexible license agreement and automated updates. Exported files are optimised for most social media platforms, but can be adapted according to client needs/publishing platforms. The tool provides an alternative to more costly and time-consuming animation pipelines, giving the keys to animated content production to brands and their creative agencies.

Released publicly on a monthly license model, and already used both as a tool for social-driven campaigns, as well as the core engine behind expanded functionality in online games and mobile apps. Plug-ins to allow for facial-capture driven face animations are underway, alongside expanded export options, sound edit capabilities, closer timeline control, font generator and simultaneous control of multiple characters.

The software, developed independently of any brand, has been tested by national brands since its 2016 release to drive social media campaigns around TVC campaigns. John Lewis used ACE to speak directly with their audience on their official Twitter channel, sending customers photographs featuring their own images enhanced with animated creatures from their Christmas 2016 campaign.

For the launch of the new Rubicon Spring, we teamed up with BMB; the £2m campaign for this brand-new product launched across TV, OOH, and social platforms. ACE was used to generate a series of supplementary films published on the brand’s dedicated Facebook page, with the five bespoke video clips picking up over 2.5m views, over 23000 likes, and almost 2000 comments in just two weeks.

ACE is a pioneering and highly creative tech solution to clients’ most urgent communications needs in an age of proliferated content across multiple platforms.

ACE (Animated Character Engine) can truly change the communication landscape for brands, allowing creatives, social media teams and marketers to react to the changing needs of their audience. With the evolving media ecosystem, tools and processes for animated content production need to adapt quickly. ACE is new and innovative software that gives clients the opportunity to extend their campaign and license a proprietary real-time animation tool, allowing brands and agencies full control of their animated assets to develop short form animated videos within seconds – ideal for real time, responsive brand/customer dialogue across social media.

The rapid pace of social media demands brands to be more creative and responsive than ever before, with audiences craving fast turnaround, creative, topical and visual content across a range of media channels. Timing is everything; miss your moment and the opportunity has passed. In response to this, we developed a brand new software application called ACE (Animated Character Engine) to help brands and entertainment platforms enhance audience engagement.

We’re aiming to put control of animated content production into the hands of the brands directly, with a simple and intuitive tool, designed to run easily on standard Mac or Windows. With full software support and bespoke plug-ins, the software is intended to be instantly accessible for any level of user, and produce and export stills, video or GIF content instantly. It is handling specialist animation design skills to the people on the front line of brand dialogue.