Modern movie production, especially effects heavy and animation films, require collaborative workflows with artists at a number of locations. ArtForge from French specialist HD3D is a production management tool designed for just this sort of application.For the new 3D film Kirikou, des homes et des femmes, production company MacGuff Ligne used it to track the project over more than a real. “A production like Kirikou requires perfect co-ordination, and ArtForge is the collaborative tool that we needed to master our production in real time,” said Jacques Bled, president of MacGuff Ligne.Where traditional project management tools are designed to keep a job on track to a pre-defined plan, in the real world things rarely go that perfectly. As problems arise and priorities change, so the production manager needs a modify the plan. ArtForge was designed, with support from the non-profit business organisation Cap Digital, to meet the needs of the creative industries where plans change often and where users create a lot of data.ArtForge is a web services system, with Python APIs to develop interfaces to any creative tool. The client runs in any web browser so naturally supports the mixed environments found in most post production facilities.
