E.D. films is first animation company to win Epic Games MegaGrant award

From GraphicSpeak

By Kathleen Maher

December 16, 2019

Epic Games announced e.d. films as their first MegaGrant award winner for an animation company. The company says they’ll use the money to continue production on three projects which include two shorts and a VR experience coming in 2020. The company has an innovative style that combines 2D and 3D and they’re using Epic’s realtime tools to efficiently produce their work.

 

We had the pleasure to work with Emily Paige of e.d. films for our panel at FMX last year, “Getting to Done.” Emily along with Hugo Guerra of Hugo’s Desk, Senior Director James Jeffers of Intel’s rendering and visualization team, and software developer Mauro van de Vlassaker from Maxon talked about the changes realtime technologies have brought to production pipelines.

Last year’s production from e.d. films, Giant Bear was selected for several film festivals including Annecy. The production was also a learning experience for e.d. as ramped up on the Unreal Engine. The team used Unreal’s Blueprints node-based scripting system to build their story meaning they could create the piece with less programming. But perhaps the real game changer for them is realtime rendering. “People don’t have to sleep under their desks anymore,” Emily told me as she described the differences her company has experienced using traditional production methods and in realtime via game engines.

 

Learning experiences are also part of e.d.’s core mission. The company creates tutorials to share their experience and they also sell tools and assets to help fund their filmmaking.

 

Read more in GraphicSpeak.