Gidday,
A small studio in Athens called Yafka (formerly Yattica) started popping up as creators of some real intelligent visuals on the History Channel. I had to find out a bit more about them. Their story is one of home-grown VFX, lots of long hours and a sense of holding to what is important in a story.
Click on the image to read the story, and feel free to comment.
Wow, what a great story!
Good to see little VFX studio’s holding there own!
Great Work Yafka!
The site link is wrong.
It’s www.yafka.com
Very nice to hear that Greece has some good VFX facilities. And people with experience not just random fellas…
The title image (w/ the polar bear) looks like it’s rendered for fulldome projection (modern planetariums). Is that true, and what is the title of that show?
It’s in the text
Polar bear Dome
Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW) is a privately funded not-for-profit cultural institution based in Athens with a mission to preserve Hellenic history and tradition. FHW was asked by a big client to make a Dome format movie about the effects of climate change. This film was going to be screened inside Domes in planetariums. Each frame needed to be a minimum of 3.2K and the film was run at 30fps. It was to show the story of a polar bear needing to migrate because their natural habitat has changed. The story of the polar bear is presented in stages and the whole film is created in CG.FHW assigned the project to three VFX computer animation houses. Their in-house department, another house called Cinepos, and Yafka. With Vangelis Christodolou, the Head of 3D at FHW as director, Yafka was assigned to do the story of the polar bear and its hazardous journey from Antarctica into the stormy seas through hurricanes, earthquakes to a destroyed city engulfed in water ending up to a desert.
Every shot was a challenge. Making a dome project requires a five camera rig, each 90 degrees FOV at 1600x1600 resolution. Then using special software, they assembled the five images into one that has a fish eye appearance in order for it to be displayed correctly in the physical dome. Andrea Carvey had a detailed analysis of the process in HDRI magazine and he gave Yafka advice on how to do it properly.
I’m also amazed that a greek company was put under the spotlight !!!
Kali doulia pedia !!! 
Nice. I’m delighted to see both LW and Greek studio featured. Some amazing worked they showcased.
Does anyone knows how to contact people from Yafka? There seem to be no contact info on their page…
Thanks
Well… for starters we don’t know what their deadlines are like. One hint though; they rendered 2 minutes of 720p animation in 2 days…that is 3000 frames if the project is done in 25 fps… maybe a hint towards what kind of deadlines they are working towards? Little time = little polish.
I agree about the quality and flashiness of the whole reel but since they are working mainly in the documentary field (history channel) by definition the quality isn’t up to par as in feature length movies.
We’ll have to see more of their other work to figure out if they’re good or not.
That’s a common problem. When you work in documentary field, similar to medical field, more often you are required to make things right rather than make them look good. You spend way more time figuring how things should be, so there’s less time to polish stuff. Multiply that with tight budget and deadline and there you go. I think they do more than decent work.
Hi Guys i am working occasionaly as a freelancer here in Greece and BELIEVE me that the timetables are so tight that you can’t even have the time to review your work…
If this work i saw from this guys are with the timetables that the Greek companies gives you then the guys make miracles…
Good work Yafka keep on…
Cool work! For foreign critics I must say that for Greek standards and deadlines these jobs are excellent. As mentioned in the article the deadlines are SUPERTIGHT and the budgets are limited. Not to mention that most Advertising Creative Directors (of some age) have minimun to no knowledge of the 3d medium, which makes them go for the cheap jobs of cheaper rates.
Super happy to have yet another Greek company producing nice work! Thumbs up! Keep em coming! 
I couldn’t agree more to what you said…
Feels nice to see a Greek studio featured here,great work guys 
