Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, today announced that Animal Logic, one of the world’s leading independent creative digital studios, has chosen AWS as its preferred cloud provider for visual effects and animation rendering. The studio is using AWS to support the delivery of the hybrid live action and animation feature, Peter Rabbit 2, due for release on 3 April 2020.
Using AWS Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Spot Instances, a service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity at a reduced cost, Animal Logic is able to quickly scale capacity both up and down as their rendering demands change. Animal Logic built a fully automated and elastic render farm, a high-performance processing system that delivers computer-generated images and videos on AWS. This works alongside the studio’s in-house Render Pipeline Manager to dynamically respond to shifts in production requirements, resulting in render performance to be 50 per cent quicker when compared to Animal Logic’s existing on-premises hardware.
Animal Logic also uses a combination of AWS EC2 Spot Instances and AWS Direct Connect, a cloud service solution that provides the studio with a dedicated network connection from its Sydney studio to AWS. This allows Animal Logic to reduce its on-premises computing overhead during peak production periods by ensuring key delivery milestones are met.
Darin Grant, Chief Technology Officer at Animal Logic, said, “The often unpredictable nature of film production means that we can’t always plan what IT resources we will need. AWS provides us with the tools to extend our internal render pipeline services to the cloud as well as the flexibility to scale resources up and down in a short space of time. We needed to deliver a high volume of complex frames in order to render the Peter Rabbit 2 trailer and AWS was able to provide a cloud solution almost instantly.”
Adam Beavis, Commercial Director for AWS in Australia and New Zealand, said, “With its core service studios located in Vancouver and Sydney, Animal Logic was facing high capital expenditure and ongoing maintenance costs at two different locations. With AWS, Animal Logic is able to adjust its render farm capabilities to the required demand, which reduces overheads and increases render performance and flexibility. We are excited to continue to support Animal Logic’s efforts to bring the magic of movies to global audiences.”
Animal Logic joins a growing list of Australian media and entertainment companies using AWS, including Seven West Media, Network 10, and Kayo Sports.
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