A few months back we asked those of you using Muvizu as a tool for education to get in touch and share your stories with us. We were delighted to hear back from Sooper Troopers Animation, a Sheffield based group enabling people aged 16 years and over with a disability to explore and learn about all aspects of animation.

We asked the group to tell us a little more about their recent production 'Donut Girls'.

Students Michael and Heather, created the imaginative short comedy about three women who escape a diet bootcamp in a bid to recover their stolen donut maker.

Michael and Heather had created some short experimental pieces with Muvizu and empowered by how easy they found it to work with, felt confident enough to tackle the larger, more complex story of the 'Donut Girls'.

The five and half minute story sprang from writing random words on bits of paper, placing them on the floor and shuffling them around a bit. As they did this, ideas for scenes, characters and the humorous plot jumped out.

Once they were happy with the story, scenes were storyboarded and a voiceover script produced. For voiceover they used a desktop booth with Yeti Microphone and Audacity audio editing software.

Heather voiced Nora delivering such lines as "I can't survive on one lettuce leaf a day", and Michael voiced the Dance Off Girls plus game show host ‘Swift Corniche’ who was named after his Father's caravan.

Michael especially enjoyed voicing the Dance Off Girls as he got to pitch shift his voice in Audacity with bizarre results. The other characters were voiced by Sooper Trooper staff, which added a great sense of collaboration to the whole production.

Donut Girls has several locations and both Michael and Heather were fascinated by the fact they could work independently on different scenes and edit them all together at the end of the animation process.
This is how they managed to complete ‘Donut Girls’ in just six Tuesday workshops. With the voices recorded, Micheal and Heather split the tasks for character design, scene creation and animation. One of Heather's favourite moments is the street chase scene built by Micheal and featuring Johan Tusselhoff, who is chased by a rather unfit Donut Girl designed by Heather. (If you have watched it you’ll know why!).

Heather shouts “Get him, get him!” every time she watches it! The Sooper Troopers love that with Muvizu they can upload their animations straight to YouTube and show their family and friends. Micheal has played 'Donut Girls' to friends who he says, "howled with laughter". Which is of course, exactly the response they were looking for.

Michael and Heather also used sound effects from www.freesound.org and their final edit was produced in Lightworks with help from staff.

Overall they tell us it was a wonderful collaboration for students and staff alike. Using Muvizu kept the fun levels up from concept to completion, allowed them to be really spontaneous and left them all with a very real sense of achievement. Michael and Heather enjoyed working together so much they’re keen to team up once more and have already started working on another short about a family holiday into space – bring it on guys!

We so agree with Shrek – especially when it comes to ideas! And here’s it is. Your chance to get it all out.

It’s competition time again here at Muvizu and we’re looking for all you budding animators to come at us with some more awesomeness, and if we’re impressed you may just win yourself a great prize!

The competition
This year the world is celebrating 20 years since the birth of one of the greatest animation studios in history, DreamWorks. In honour of this we are asking Muvizuers to create and submit Muvizu re-creations of their favourite scene from any of DreamWorks Animation’s long list of animated feature films. To jog your memory have a browse through the many options here.

Let’s keep the scope wide open to allow your creative juices to flow (flood even!). So, be true to Dreamworks vision or add your own creative twists or embellishments! There’s no limit on entries - you can even submit some wild and wacky clips – yes, we know you can do those! We’re letting this one run for a whole 3 months, so no excuses, get in there new Muvizuers - and those of you with busy schedules have loads of time to polish and show off your work. Post your entries to our gallery and then add a link over on our forum for your chance to win.

The prize
We have the complete DreamWorks Animation collection on DVD to give away to the Muvizuer who shines the most. Including no less than 10 films this prize is a great tool for those looking to learn from some of the most talented animators in the world.

The rules

1. The promoter is Digimania Ltd, The Lighthouse, 70 Mitchell Street, Glasgow, G1 3LX UK (the "Promoter").
2. This competition will commence on 23rd July 2014 and the closing date is noon on the 26th of September 2014 – NB.
3. No purchase of Muvizu:Play+ is required for entry – though it’s worth bearing in mind it will make your Muvizu experience even better! ;)
4. There is one copy of DreamWorks Animation: Ultimate Collection as a prize for the best entry judged by the Muvizu.
5. All entrants must upload their video to the Muvizu site Gallery or post it in theDreamWorks Competition thread in the forum before the closing date in order to be in the running.
6. The winner will be notified via email by Friday 3rd October 2014 and will also be announced on the Muvizu Forum page. If the winner does not claim the prize within 14 days of notification, the prize will be deemed to have been forfeited and the Promoter may dispose of such prize without any liability to the winner.
7. The prize is non-transferable & no cash alternative will be awarded in lieu of the prize.
8. In the event of any dispute regarding the rules, conduct or the results of the competition the Promoter's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Entries that do not comply in full with these rules will be disqualified. The Promoter reserves the right to disqualify any entrant for any reason whatsoever in its sole discretion
9. If for any reason the prize is unavailable the Promoter reserves the right, at its absolute discretion, to substitute a similar prize of equivalent value.
10. The Promoter reserves the right to alter, amend, suspend or terminate this competition without prior notice in the event that circumstances make this unavoidable.
11. All entrants' personal data will only be held for the purpose of the competition and will not be used for any other purposes whatsoever without their prior permission.
12. Entry into this competition shall be deemed to be a full and unconditional acceptance of these terms and conditions.
13. The prize and or the competition is not offered in conjunction with any other offers.
14. The Promoter will not accept any responsibility whatsoever for any loss, expense or liability arising from the winner's use of the prize.
15. These terms and conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the United Kingdom and Great Britain.
16. All enquires relating to this competition should be made to Digimania Ltd, The Lighthouse, 70 Mitchell St, Glasgow, G1 3LX, UK or via the Muvizu forums.

Halloween has always been a favourite time of year for the scary lot that work here at Muvizu.

Look what they’ve done to the station clock right round the corner from Muvizu HQ.

Over the years, you’ve applied your creative genius to a whole host of creepy Muvizu animations:

Halloween competitions...

Spooky poetry...

Bathtime massacres...

Dracula’s birthday surprise...

This year keep your eyes peeled this year for some great, new spooky Star Trek work from fazz68 who’s been teasing us with some incredible, gruesome characters over on the forum.

Not quite managed to make your own Halloween short? Don’t despair!
Now’s the perfect time to start writing and planning your Christmas masterpiece.

Don’t forget, this year we’re celebrating the spooky season with a haunting £25 off the price of an upgrade to Muvizu:Play+ - only until midnight (GMT) on the 4th of November! Don’t miss it.

Today sees the latest version of Muvizu go live – and at a new and exciting lower price too!

As you know the team have been beavering away on RenderDigimania for a while but we did promise you bug fixes and by jingo bug fixes we have here!

For a while now this first one has been a source of some pain and frustration for Muvizuers. Occasionally, some of you'd get so far into making your animation and the character would suddenly stop responding to movement commands. Well, no more! It’s officially fixed. So all of you hiding behind the sofa, scared to even attempt movement in your animation can come out and get back to it! The movement bug is squished.

Some of you budding directors are just not satisfied with working on one scene at a time and need to be able to multi-task between between scenes to maximise your creative output. We unintentionally reduced the productivity of several of you by introducing a small bug that prevented more than one instance of Muvizu from running at a time. We've fixed this now, so you can ramp up your productions to full capacity again!

As we’ve made Muvizu even more affordable we’ve decided folks will be less inclined to pay by the minute for watermark-free renders. We’re sure many of you will now want to jump in there and create endlessly with not a watermark in sight!

There’s a load of other minor tweaks that collectively will just make things even smoother and better than ever for us all.

Oh and ZIGGY72! Brace yourself. Dead bodies! CAN now actually stop breathing – takes them 3 seconds to actually stop mind you (bit morbid), but they will now stop.

OK, let’s brighten things up a bit after that! Alongside these welcome little bug fixes, we’ve also unleashed a new character. Meet Mandy!

Some of you might have seen Mandy before in a series of sketches produced by some of the team at Digimania last year.

She a sassy chick with attitude and we can’t wait to see how you all write her into your Muvizu work.

Here’s what Mandy brings with her to help you to craft her into your leading lady:

We have also introduced half a dozen new items for other characters (mostly male):

Remember if you’d like to have the ultimate Muvizu experience and while you’re at it make Mandy really happy by giving her a mobile phone then now really is a great time for an upgrade.

If you are a student you can now access discounts of up to 50% on our Muvizu software! (terms and conditions apply)

We are pleased to announce our recent partnership with Studica and OnTheHub - the leading sites for academic software discounts! Please click on the relevant organisations name to claim your discount.

The future is exciting for Muvizu. We are working hard on several new developments that will bring Muvizu’s future right to your fingertips.

We have taken a long look at our product and development has been halted for far too long. Over the next couple of weeks and months you can expect to receive news updates on this blog as well as via email.

If you haven’t yet registered, click here now

It is hard to contain our enthusiasm so here is a quick peek at what’s to come: we are working on updating the look and feel of Muvizu, we are creating new features and we will start to release new content.

We plan to create and release regular content packs for our customers.

Imagine new characters, new environments, new objects and artefacts, new functionality and a clear and easy way to download them and use them in your Muvizu.

If you want to keep at the forefront of what’s happening here at Muvizu then keep checking in or subscribe to our Muvizu newsletter for updates.

Muvizu CEO, Maurice Van Sabben

We are thrilled to share the news of the First Minister of Scotland’s visit to launch Muvizu to the Chinese market. The opening of the training centre at the Shanghai Art & Design Academy took place yesterday, Wednesday 29th July by the Right Honourable, Nicola Sturgeon MSP, First Minister of Scotland and is just the beginning of our presence in the Chinese education market.

The event was a resounding success and marked another milestone in our partnership with Chinese animation specialist Pikatoons Inc.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said:

"Scotland is globally renowned for its innovative work in software design and animation, and is an industry which has enormous potential. Digimania moving into China is testament to the company’s expertise and knowledge, and I hope this move will enable the firm to expand further and spread Scotland’s influence".

Paul Collimore, Commercial Director added,

‘We are passionate about our industry and want to ensure the future quality of the industry by teaching the younger generations the skills required at an early age’.

‘I am very happy with the partnership with Digimania. Pikatoons has been focused on creative software solutions for the animation industry for over 15 years. We see the launch of Muvizu as key to the growth of our industry by attracting K12 students to 3D animation' said Mr. Felix Yip, Pikatoons Inc.

We have been working hard at Muvizu and render layers were one of the many things on our to-do list.

This means that you will be able to put different items in to different ‘layers’. Of course, there will always be a background layer that contains the main sky-dome and this will be the default layer that items are created in.

So, you can choose which items are visible when you work in a scene and which are to be rendered out (not with videos). This can be incredibly useful if you are working in a busy scene. You will also be able to render shadows and depth to separate images so you can composite them differently at a later stage. We think this is a great addition to Muvizu Play+ and we hope you do too!

Coming soon - content packs and key framing.

We’ll be in touch again soon!

As many of you will know, we recently returned from an incredibly successful trip to Shanghai where the First Minister of Scotland opened our first training centre. As part of our trip we had also planned to have a presence at CCG, which is an annual 5 day 'comic-con' style show where animation enthusiasts meet, go to massive efforts to dress up as their favourite anime characters and sample the latest products. This was Digimania's first outing at CCG showcasing Muvizu and the new Chinese version, so we were extremely excited to be taking part, alongside our Chinese partners, Pikatoons.

Our funky booth meant we could demonstrate the latest version of Muvizu where we also ran a number of promotions offering the chance to win all things Muvizu!  from mugs to fans and even Play+ licences! The show was enormously successful and we have had over 700 Chinese users register to date. We are expecting more to follow. We are now looking at a number of opportunities to kick-start sales in the Asian market. We'll keep you updated!

Martin Lawrence, Sales Manager

The content store is open and ready for business.

The content store is a new place where additional content for Muvizu can be purchased.

We will be releasing new content packs starting this month with a Chemistry set, followed by a Chinese history pack!

We are also in the early stages of planning Indian, Chinese, Caucasian and African characters. The timeline for these new additions are still being finalised but when we know more you will be the first to know.

Ultimately the store will turn into a market place where users can upload and sell their own content.

Thank you for your continued support. Enjoy!

This is only the beginning.......

We are thrilled to announce our recent award winning success in Shanghai!

Muvizu, or rather Man Xiang Jai - walked away from the PSPE show (Popular Science Products Expo) with best new product, best value product and popular booth award! We are so pleased that Muvizu was celebrated and recognised in such highly competitive categories.

The PSPE show is dedicated to the science industry. Its key aim is to promote and celebrate the science industry and to engage the general public in new and exciting inventions.

We are now busy making plans to take Muvizu to more and more people around the world – so watch this space!

2016 is looking to be an exciting year!

Our thoughts, from all of us at Muvizu, are with Dan’s family and friends. We wish them strength in this sad time. We’ll remember him for his contributions to Muvizu, its community and through his creativity.

Experiencing a burning desire for football content and satirical funnies?

Well, we’ve designed something unique to fill the hole. The Football Special, our new weekly animated football show, is back today over at www.thefootballspecial.com.

It’s a weekly digest of football’s finer points created by our studio in London using Muvizu – it puts the over-paid prancers of the English Premier League right under the microscope, squeezing them into a tight ten minutes of non-stop hilarity and video commentary.

With more bite than Suarez, the balls of Roy Keane and the wizened wisdom of Fergie, TFS aims to restore the passion of the modern football fan. We’ll be pulling in opinions from the cream of the football blogging crop alongside alternative chants from Jim Daly and showmanship from our anchor, Malcolm Best.

The show’s for every fan of the game – whether you’re a football anorak, fair-weather fan or trophy-chasing glory-hunter. Visit the fully-interactive TFS site where you can watch, chat and revisit the glory of the beautiful game.

Welcome to a new season of football and to The Football Special.

Get in there!

Hi All,

As most of you will know - we launched our Oculus experience expansion pack this week and so far the feedback has been very encouraging.

Veronica from Go Media Academy was one of the first people to tweet their appreciation.

'OMG, I'm shocked at the VR package you now have. I just can't believe it! I've been waiting on something like this for a long time! And the fact that young kids can use this too - INSANE! You really have no idea about the possibilities of this. Thank you for all of this'

Well, thank you Veronica and we look forward to hearing more about the work you and your students produce.

If you haven't yet checked it out - go to the store area in our website.

We are incredibly proud at Digimania to announce the release of our new 3D modelling software Voxelise.

Voxelise makes 3D modelling easy by using versatile little cubes called voxels.

Voxelise is a fresh take on voxel modelling and produces overall, a different style to Muvizu. Free trials are available to all - visit voxelise.com to download a copy.

Voxelise allows models to be exported as .FBX which can be imported into Muvizu as demonstrated in the above tutorial. Models can also be exported in a host of other formats including; .GIF (Animated), .STL (for 3D printing), and Minecraft Schematic. (More tutorials are available on the Voxelise website)

St. Mary's Primary School and Nursery Class (ages 4 to 12, for our international users) held a board games design competition. The project was started back in October 2016 as part of Technologies curriculum and Primaries 5, 6 and 7 (ages 9 to 12) took part. On Friday 2nd December Digimania were asked to help judge the grand finale.

The competition was tough with each team, made up of 1 to 5 pupils across the years, presenting so many unique and inventive board games. There was a Mars to Earth escape game where you simply had to return to Earth from Mars. There was a "Scotopoly" game, taking the classic Monopoly game but all the streets were from Glasgow. ‘Make up street’ where you add make up to a character as you move around the board, whoever has the most make up at the end wins. ‘Dragon Mania’ where you collect gems to buy and trade dragons, ‘Hero’s Vs Villains’ where you need to battle Marvel villains as you move around the board. There were so many fantastic entries how they managed to pick the finalists we have no idea!

The finalists were made up of the winners from each year group. There were 4 strong contenders for the top prize. First was Primary 5 with ‘Treasure Island’, in which whoever gets to the end first gets the treasure. Next up, ‘Let’s Get Active’, where as you move forward, if you land on an "act" square, you need to act out a character, like prince charming for example, and if your team guesses the character correctly you earnt 10 dollars. At the end, whoever has the most money wins. The fantasy role playing game "Thrones" was fascinating - where you play a character battling your way to the end after travelling across several islands. And finally, we have the winner of the competition with their game "Stranded" where you are all stranded on a desert island, with a variety of dangerous animals - as if being stranded on a desert island wasn't enough of a problem! - the goal of the game is to reach the radio transmitter and call for help.

Well done to everyone that took part! We were incredibly excited to witness so much talent on our door step. Once again, Congratulations!

Jamie Hill

We are thrilled to announce our attendance for the second year running at the BETT Education Show. This year we will be showcasing two new products – Minimaker, our 3D printing app and Voxelise, 3D modeling made easy. This latest software simplifies the modeling process with little cubes called voxels.

Live demonstrations will be available at the stand (C401) and of course an opportunity to meet the team of developers and artists at Digimania.

Lee Antony Manning and Michael John Magnay were appointed Joint Administrators of Digimania Limited (“the Company”) on 18 April 2017. The affairs, business and property of the Company are managed by the Joint Administrators. The Joint Administrators act as agents of the Company and contract without personal liability.

As a consequence of the Joint Administrators appointment, the Company has ceased to trade with effect from 18 April 2017. The Joint Administrators are currently exploring the potential sale of all or certain parts of the Company’s business and assets. Please note that the Company is unable to continue to provide ongoing technical support to customers for any of its products including Muvizu, Voxelise and Minimaker.

Whilst the Joint Administrators explore potential options for a sale of the business, download of the Company’s applications will temporarily be suspended. Free trial downloads will continue to be available to customers until further notice is provided.

Partners and Directors acting as receivers and administrators contract without personal liability. Unless otherwise shown, all appointment taking Partners and Directors are authorised by The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. All licensed insolvency practitioners of Deloitte LLP are licensed in the UK to act as insolvency practitioners.

Deloitte LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with registered number OC303675 and its registered office at 2 New Street Square, London EC4A 3BZ, United Kingdom.

Deloitte LLP is the United Kingdom member firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (“DTTL”), a UK private company limited by guarantee, whose member firms are legally separate and independent entities. Please see www.deloitte.co.uk/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of DTTL and its member firms.

Announcement