Visible Ink is a creator and producer of fantasy live television series for national and international markets. The company’s previous productions are in drama, documentary, comedy, children’s TV and dance for Sci Fi Channel, Discovery Channel, Children’s Channel and ARD in Germany.
Visible Ink is was founded by cameraman, writer, director, and producer Martin Fisher. Drawing on its live action and animation expertise, Visible Ink is working to develop MoPaCT, a performance capture and precise positioning system that allows animated characters to be precisely integrated into video footage.
The company was recently awarded a resident entrepreneur grant from Creative Informatics. It plans to start hiring for multiple positions in the near future.
Company Name:
Visible Ink Television Ltd
Date Founded:
1991
Business Type:
Limited Company
Location:
Edinburgh
Founder(s):
Martin Fisher
Key Staff:
Principally working into the television, films and animation sectors VITV is a longstanding team of freelancers, associates for business development, financial advisors, marketing and of course content creators and a couple of Star names.
Number of Employees:
One (but expanding to many, when in production. We’re now hiring).
Contact:
Main Areas of Business:
Visible Ink are creators and aim to be producers of fantasy live television series and national and international markets. For one live series pitched to BBC (they funded script development) where the protagonist is an animated character we needed to devise an animation into live integration tool. We have the live action expertise, we have the animation capability all we need is the all embracing performance capture and precise positioning system. It must be time and cost effective and work anywhere: studio or location. The development of this exciting much needed industry product is now the principle thrust of the company.
Elevator pitch:
For Visible Ink’s world class concepts the company finds and keeps world class members. As a small team we empower one another whilst being naturally very agile and inventive. With our established network we draw together expertise to write and produce for linear and non-linear projects in live action and animation and now to realise our integration technology product. We are supported and encouraged by high level know-how and internationally famous Star names from the worlds of Children’s, Situation Comedy, Scifi and Dance.
(Why you’re awesome in <100 words)
Projects and Partners:
Currently our principle project is MoPaCT , (motion, performance and critically positioning) which is now patented in the USA and Great Britain, with EU to follow. It has achieved a successful feasibility study and through a process of constant development we are moving forward to building the initial minimum viable product (MVP) to be the rudimentary demonstrator to excite further investment and customers These are very encouraging times for us as we move MoPaCT forwards.
The clever tool is to integrate animated characters into live action shooting by re-skinning a live actor – even before your very eyes! The precise positioning and perspectives are derived from a single or multiple high-end production camera(s) anywhere – in a studio, on location or even underwater. It requires no machine learning or green screen. The new skin is fully synchronous and overlaid to the live in a regular composite edit. All audio is recorded live whilst performances of the animated character to the live are automatically theatrically correct. MoPaCT has a host of other features.
Highlights To Date:
Our previous broadcast one-offs and series are in drama, documentary, comedy, children’s and dance for ScFi channel, Discovery Channel, Children’s Channel and ARD in Germany.
Greatest achievement So Far:
Moving the company to Scotland.
Tell us something about the company that nobody really knows:
There is enough comedic performance talent within the team to put on our own musical if only someone else can make the tea – challenging because we set high standards at that too!!
Willing to challenge other companies at which online/multiplayer game:
It seems that we are so sad because collectively we don’t game.
So it will have to be a tea or coffee making contest with the odd scone thrown in too!
We also like throwing parties so maybe we could devise Olympic styled points system (distance, weight, consumption, duration etc) for a party throwing contest?
If your company was a movie, it would be:
Its got to be dare I say – The Matrix.
Current/forthcoming vacancies:
- Coding engineer / software associate
- Person Friday / performer
- Motion Capture suit associate
