Archive notice: This article was originally published on November 11, 2014. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The French studio Buf may not immediately be familiar to some. Nevertheless, the company, which operates branches in Paris, Los Angeles, Montreal and Brussels, can look back on a 30-year company history. A successful one. The team around company founder Pierre Buffin supplies visual effects for film, advertising and music videos and contributed VFX to "Game of Thrones", "Life of Pi" and "Jupiter Ascending", among others, to name only the most recent examples.
Two new production arms were also recently opened: AngeleFine Productions is intended to develop projects in animation, full CGI and live action for the international market. Fine Productions, by contrast, concentrates on developing animated films for an international audience.
Software
According to the company, it has made a major leap forward in recent years. The time now seems to have come to consider distributing its in-house software as well. The special feature: all the software was always developed in-house, as Redshark reported. It has been refined for 30 years and can certainly be described as production-tested. Furthermore, this software represents an overall package, a complete pipeline in which everything interlocks. It is not a pieced-together work made up of many individual solutions somehow assembled over the years.
Another special feature, according to Redshark, is that Buf has no specialisation into departments/jobs, such as modelling, animation, compositing and so on. Buf’s software is based on one artist supervising a shot from beginning to end. This distinguishes the software/workflow from many other studios — a possible obstacle to entering the market?
Nevertheless, individual parts are intended to be available, such as asset management and particle effects, which in turn are also intended to be available as a bundle.
In short: the willingness seems to be there to earn money from the R&D resources developed over the years — at least a little. And it is said to be more Linux-oriented. Implementation is still very vague. However, a little more is expected to be revealed at the upcoming SIGGRAPH Asia in December. It is about time, because according to the owner, the plan is to enter the market as early as the beginning of next year.
In short: we will see.
Looking ahead: we will definitely continue to follow the topic and are eager for concrete information from Buf, which will come in December this year or January next year.
Image: Buf was also responsible for "Auf den Spuren des Marsupilami", a film about the quintessentially French character Marsupilami. It was conceived by André Franquin for the comic series "Spirou und Fantasio" (source: Wikipedia).
"Sur La Piste Du Marsupilami", Buf/Senator Filmverleih, director Alain Chabat, Production Chez Wam
