Industry Overview 10: DAM and Anime Production ~Savior from the Mess~

Here, we will introduce to you 4 reasons why Anime Production Companies chose DAM to manage their works.

2.1 Minimize the Data Search Time

An anime project progresses through consecutive phases, from layouts, key animation, and in-betweens to digital ink-and-paint, background art, audio engineering, and final compositing. And inevitably, the volume of derivative assets expands exponentially. And the major problem of managing a tremendous amount of data is that it is hard to search for the asset or production you want, due to highly identical filenames, nuanced version increments, and fragmented storage locations. Operational data from various animation studios reveals that individual production staff lose an average of over 30 minutes per day simply searching for necessary assets. It can be a great disturbance to the workflow, and become a potential bomb for the project.

But with DAM, data search is never a difficult task. DAM allows assets to be ingested alongside extensive metadata schemas including title, creators, character name and more. All this data can be used for data search, the staff can get the asset they want shortly and precisely. The production teams can spend more time on creation rather than data search, which can reduce their workload but improve the quality of the production at the same time.

In addition, the integration of AI-driven indexing has further elevated discovery workflows. By leveraging Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and speech-to-text technologies, modern DAM platforms can automatically extract and tag textual data, dialogue, character names, and timecodes directly from raw video and image files. In other words, even without knowing the explicit filename or path, the production teams can search the data even by the content on the image or video. It also means that by searching a single word from a video file, you can even know the exact time and scene of the dialogue.

2.2 Provide Comprehensive Management for All Review and Markup Annotations

For anime production, the "review and markup" process is just as critical as file delivery. The review and correction processes by the Animation Directors are iterative until the title is broadcasted. The interactions between the directors and the production teams are ununified, the communications are fragmented across disparate communication channels including emails, sticky notes or even in a verbal way. It can bring you a lot of troubles if the instructions are unclear and untransparent to the whole team.

But, a robust DAM integrates multi-format file previews, digital annotations and side-by-side version compare functions. In other words, users can:

• Drawing freehand markup and overlaying correction notes directly onto layouts using digital pen tools.
• Instantly reflecting status (Approved/Rejected) updates of the productions
• Automatically consolidating and versioning files upon uploading an updated iteration.

They granted both reviewers and creators total visibility into who requested what change, on which file, and at what precise moment, ensured the entire production team shares an identical status overview and information to eliminate miscommunication and redundant corrections.

2.3 Refrain from Security Risks through Granular Access Governance

Modern anime production relies on collaboration with external partners. Sound, Subtitle, Background design, Multi-platform distribution…all these jobs are now outsourced to different companies. Which means the production team also has to transfer their jobs to external partners in one project. In this case, how to transfer sensitive creative intellectual property without compromising data integrity will be a challenge for the production house.

If you use traditional delivery methods like email attachments, you may have the risk of accidental distribution and link leakages. Information leakage of an anime title can inflict severe damage on brand value and trigger public relations crises, not only in Japan but all over the world. It is necessary to have the top-level management system when you are handling the unreleased character designs and the pre-production storyboards.

A DAM platform solves this security challenge by enforcing sophisticated user permissions at file-level: admin can set download, upload, preview permission for each single file based on each user. The external users can only access the specific assets they require, with the minimum operations they need. Additionally, the system generates immutable audit logs capturing every user interaction, production managers maintain a transparent view of exactly who accessed what material and when, preventing the security risks.

2.4 Provide Multi-language Support

For some of the production studios with larger scale, they may usually have overseas production partners, which comes to another problem: language. Sharing data and the rules of data use is truly complicated for members who are not articulating the same language.

In fact, the modern DAM system usually provides multi-language support, so the global teams can also share the data and rules precisely without any of the constraints. Besides, as DAM is the only, central file system for all the project members, admin can easily unify all the rules and conditions. Even if the project members are in different locations, they can still have the same mindset of how to use the data properly.

CIERTO, the DAM system developed by VPJ, engineered specifically for the rigorous demands of anime, film, and advertising production ecosystems. CIERTO has high flexibility, which can adapt to complex workflows and can be applied to any kinds of the organizational structures. Here are some core functions of CIERTO:

Metadata Management: Users can register metadata including shot number, episode number and creator name or ID in every asset. And metadata in CIERTO is also a part of the searching criteria. It allows production teams to search and isolate files to reduce the search time.

Consolidated Review & Approval System: CIERTO has on-screen text annotations for users to indicate the area needed to be corrected precisely. It also provides approval and reject workflow, while all the members can make/see the reviews and decisions on the single platform transparently. Besides, the audit trail helps admin to track all the activities to prevent any malfunctions.

Secure External Collaboration System: CIERTO has highly flexible, user-level permission structures governing download/upload/preview restrictions. While processing the data with the external parties, users can control the user permission strictly and freely to avoid information leakage and protect intellectual property security.

AI-Driven Functions: Not only the basic DAM function, CIERTO also equipped the latest AI functions to enforce the user experience. Functions including Optical Character Recognition (OCR), automated speech-to-text processing, and reverse-image similarity vector search, help users to hit the data they need more precisely.

In fact, TMS Entertainment, a well-known anime production studio of “Detective Conan” is one of the customers of CIERTO. They are now keeping over 4 million assets on CIERTO, including drafts, pamphlets and logos. The sophisticated search system and AI-driven function help them to search the data they need and streamlined their whole workflow.

As an anime creator, if you or your company are facing the problems of inefficient workflow and redundant jobs, we strongly advise you to check the information of CIERTO. Feel free to contact us via the buttons below.