It has never been so easy to create and publish art as now, and if you believe that companies that build technology around AI, the production process will become even more effective. This is particularly the case with video production, with companies of all sizes using major language models to create tools that allow you to prepare videos and decent quality animation with some prompts and actions.
Popular tools in this space include VEO 2 by Google, Sora, Runway, Luma AI of Google and Hailuo based in Shanghai. Now a South Korean startup called Cinamon Hanging of efforts to be part of this booming market – he recently collected a series of $ 8.5 million to continue building his “Cinev” animated video generation platform, which should be launched in beta First half of 2025. Altos Venture, an existing donor, as well as the risk capital of Saehan invested in this Tour.
The height of Cinamon is that its platform provides a video generator that can allow you to create 3D environments, direct scenes and actions, place characters, modify the camera angles, and more – all with Text prompts and sliders.
According to its CEO Doosun Hong, the company’s approach fundamentally differs from existing AI video generators, which create videos by generating pixels using text, images and videos as reference material. On the other hand, Cinev combines a library of 3D active ingredients, a generation of AI movement and a model of large language focused on cinema to first build 3D scenes with characters and elements, then allows you to modify them using Its suite of video production and publishing tools.
“Our approach allows easier orientation and modification without problems of consistency / physics, which makes it particularly suitable for content of longer form like films and dramas,” said Hong. “We plan that CINEV be complementary to existing AI video tools, potentially allowing new workflows where the CINEV release could serve as high quality reference equipment for other AI video platforms.”
Cinamon started his life in 2019 as Cinamon Games, a subsidiary of the Vonvon content production company. Cinamon initially set up a JV with Naver Webtoon, a Korean digital narration platform, to perhaps create an interactive narration application. Faced with growing data confidentiality problems, Vonvon merged with Cinamon Games later in 2019 to focus solely on narration in social content space.
While his competitors like Crazy Maple Studio began to offer animated interactive history applications, fictional applications, narration applications and short videos, Cinamon has chosen to focus on creating the animation tools 3D that could accelerate and set the animation production for content creators and studios. Even if it costs more investment than tools for 2D content, they have experienced greater scalability potential.
In 2022, the startup began to build its 3D animation platform, then integrated AI features to improve production efficiency. In September of the same year, the South Krafton Games Company, Naver Z (one unit of the Naver Internet Internet Internet) and Snow (a camera application managed by Naver), $ 10 million in the Cinamon series has invested .
In the future, Cinamon plans to use the IPS and 3D assets of its investors to strengthen its offer. Krafton has substantial intellectual property and 3D assets used in his battlefield games, while Naver Z operates the Zepeto Metaversse platform. Cinamon says that Cinev can help extend these IPS beyond the game by allowing content creators to use these IPS and potentially acquire users for Krafton and Naverz. Cinamon also entered the NVIDIA startup accelerator, Inception, last August.
“Our potential users include comics, manga, webtoon artists, web novel writers, game developers, video creators and traditional animators looking for easier workflow,” said Hong. “In 2025, we plan to focus on customers [ranging] From individual creators to the content of IP companies in search of easier, faster and cheaper ways to create animated, vtuber and cinematographic video game content. »»
Cinamon plans to use the new capital to hire more IA engineers and for R&D. The startup has a team of 60 employees with expertise in 3D graphics, AI, games and content production. This series B reports that its total capital raised so far at $ 18.5 million (25 billion KRW).