Showcase: Huminah Huminah Animation

A service studio with a bespoke approach, Huminah Huminah Animation is able to build a custom production pipeline tailored specifically to a project’s needs. “We are artist owned and operated,” says Adam Mimnagh, CEO. “We employ the principles of animation in our work. Yes, it’s easier today to use technology with rigged assets, but we don’t just ‘slide assets across the screen.’ We believe strongly in solid acting, timing, weight and storytelling—things that AI cannot do.”

Huminah Huminah has two production pipelines: 3D Maya/Unreal and Harmony Toon Boom. And while “Unreal” has been an industry buzzword as of late, it has been a part of Huminah Huminah’s production line for years.

“Our innovative 3D Maya/Unreal pipeline is years ahead of others,” Mimnagh says. “We don’t just use Unreal for rendering. We’ve built a custom process and tools to fully integrate it into our productions. We use it for world-building, scene setup, animation, lighting, FX, comp and rendering. In fact, our lighting, FX, comp and render team is now just one team—the Unreal team.”

The savings on the production line are measurable in that the teams are smaller and far more efficient, he adds. “Rendering in Unreal is lightning fast. A traditional 3D pipeline renders a five-minute episode in two weeks through the use of a render farm. With our Unreal pipeline, we are able to render that same episode in full 4K quality in under four hours.”

As a Canada-based company, the exchange rate adds to the affordability. One U.S. dollar is currently valued at C$1.35—a 35 percent savings to clients’ production dollars. Production services labor tax credit is at 67.5 percent (or up to 45 percent on all spend). “If we spend $1 million on production, times 45 percent, we are able to reduce our cost down to $650,000,” Mimnagh explains. “Or, using the tax credit and exchange rate, we can change the value of that $1 million to C$2.38 million. That’s a lot of financial incentive.”

Huminah Huminah Animation has been positioning itself as the premier 3D Unreal partner to work with when producing animated kids’ and family content. “We’ve been using gaming engines (Unreal/Unity 3D) for years before most others,” Mimnagh says. “We first used them as game development engines and then years ago built a custom process and tools to fully integrate Unreal into our animated series content production pipeline. We’re experts with it now.”

He describes the resulting look and feel as “magic. We are bringing pixels to life.”

“Watching a very detailed, lit, 4K render with high-end key-frame characters and environment animation popping off of your workstation in minutes is magical,” Mimnagh continues. “People are looking at our work and are amazed at how fast we can deliver at this level.”

In addition to being cost-effective, the services help to greatly shorten the timeline for traditional 3D rendering. “We’ve all been in the edit suite when the director calls for a revision; there’s a scene hook-up that was missed, or a character’s arm needs to be adjusted ever so slightly,” Mimnagh explains. “In a traditional render farm, it can take over a week for that scene to be fixed. With our pipeline, the scene is sent back to production, fixed and re-rendered in less than an hour.”

Above all, Huminah Huminah is getting the message out that it is a studio of “passionate producers and artists who want to make sure you sleep well at night while we are producing your content—we love it; we want to make your content and you look great,” Mimnagh says.

It’s no secret that production timelines and budgets are shrinking; therefore, there’s a need to innovate in every aspect of the production line. Mimnagh stresses that, at the same time, it’s important to keep human creativity at the heart of it all. “Working with a real-time rendering system, plus our financial incentives, is allowing Huminah Huminah Animation to be the most affordable premier 3D production partner for your next 4K project.”