Bazelevs Innovations is a venture-backed start-up founded by Hollywood director and producer Timur Bekmambetov (Day Watch, Wanted, “9”, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter).

Our current product – Cartoon Messenger – is a mobile app that combines both SecondLife avatar component and WhatsApp functionality.

Our goal is to create a completely new way of mobile communication, with innovative and cool functionality. The app will have a massive marketing exposure with global launch on several territories and celebrity endorsements.

We are looking for a creative person who can guide the character design, which will include not only the visual look but also close collaboration with our technical team and constant experimentation.

You should keep in mind that our target audience is High School teenagers 12-17.

Requirements:

• Strong characters portfolio is a must
• Previous experience in character design
• Some familiarity with 3D gaming engines or 3D modeling is a plus
• Some experience with mobile applications is a plus

Additional Information:

• We have an office in Moscow, Russia and Los Angeles
• We have no preference on you location since we favor very flexible agile development style not tied to a specific place
• Fluent English or Russian

Please send your portfolio to demenchoock@filmlanguage.ru

FilmLanguage founder Timur Bekmambetov, Adviser to Skolkovo President Alexander Turkot and Sergei Kuzmin discuss FilmLanguage and its applications for animation production, education and mobile.

FilmLanguage is coming to Helsinki, Finland for Slush 2012! Slush is the largest tech, design & startup conference covering Northern Europe and Russia.

Please check us out at the Skolkovo stage. We’ll be giving a presentation at 11:00 am on November 21st.

Map of the Venue:

Check us out at Russian Innovation Week 2012 at COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM (Mountain View, California, USA) on October 25-26, 2012.

Here are all the details regarding the event – www.riw-sv.com

Also we’ll be participating in the panel “Media, Mobile and Entertainment: designed in Russia” moderated by Pavel Cherkachin at 16:00 Hahn Auditorium on Friday, 26 Oct. 2012.

Hit us up if you want to catch up!

Hooray! We are launching closed beta testing for our Chromosapiens prototype. So far we included two characters and one location with a limited number of supported actions.

The first testing cycle will be on Russian only (sorry guys) with English version coming out later this fall.

Primarily we are looking for testers interested in UGC creation. Anecdotes and stand-up comedy types of jokes that’s what we are shooting at. All you need to participate is to subscribe

HERE

and follow further instruction. We’ll provide you with guidelines and Chromosapiens’ universe description to better understand the concept. Please note that you will have to log-in to our closed Facebook group.

We are really excited to offer the very first beta at this point. Thank you all and good luck!

Bazelevs signs to Paramount Comedy for Russian TV animation series. Viacom International Media Networks is partnering with Russian production house, Bazelevs, on an original, locally produced short form animation. The animated series, Chromosapiens (working title) will be aired exclusively on Paramount Comedy across the whole of Russia this autumn.

The project also includes patent-pending technology FilmLanguage, developed by Bazelevs with the support of Russian non-profit organisation, The Skolkovo Foundation. FilmLanguage will enable users to create their own animated shorts featuring Chromosapiens characters by converting natural language text directly into animation. This platform will be released on Paramount Comedy’s Russian web site and available to fans across the country.

Produced by Bazelevs owner and renowned Russian director and producer Timur Bekmambetov – Abraham Lincoln: The Vampire Hunter; Wanted starring Angelina Jolie; Russia’s biggest grossing comedy franchise Yolki – the 12 x 2 animation is the first made-for-television animation project from Bekmambetov, who has chosen the newly expanded Paramount Comedy for his new project.

Variety: Bekmambetov’s Bazelevs to produce toon series ‘Chromosapiens’ to air on Paramount Comedy in Russia

Chicago Tribune: Bekmambetov’s Bazelevs to produce toon series: ‘Chromosapiens’ to air on Paramount Comedy in Russia

- Specialist should have extensive programming experience and should be excited and challenged by the opportunity to build a remarkable new technology from the ground-up.

- Very organized and can manage large-scale complex projects and build a roles-based, community architecture.

- Extremely competent coder who’s comfortable in multiple languages, frameworks, and environments.

- Intensely hard-working, proactive, and self-motivated individual that thrives on risk and uncertainty and looks forward to working with A-players.

Requirements:

• Deep knowledge of C++. Practical experience 3+ years.
• Experience with game engines and 3D graphics.
• Good teamwork and communication skills.
• Experience with version control systems, bug trackers, and continuous integration systems.
• Intermediate English level (tech documentation, e-mail communication)
• Good problem solving skills

Pluses:

• Knowledge of С#
• Experience with Unity 3D
• Experience in multi-threaded development
• Experience in client-server development
• WinForms, WPF

Candiate will be hired under Russian law and should be eligible for employment.

Please send your resumes to: jobs@filmlanguage.ru

The last pitch I got was from Bazelevs Innovation, and it was also the most original idea: Bazelevs has built a technology called FilmLanguage that can turn text input into 3-D animation. It was initially built to visualize ideas during the production process of a movie, but the company quickly realized this could be used in a whole range of settings.

What if you sent someone a text message, and the recipient’s phone would turn it into a small animated clip? Or how about helping lawyers and insurances visualize accidents based on witness reports? Bazelevs Innovations Business Development VP Sergei V. Kuzmin told me the company is especially targeting the U.S. for this kind of forensics visualization. “We don’t have the liability industry,” he joked.