Modern computer graphics production is not necessarily tied to the country where the client is located or where the finished advertisement will be shown. The creative concept can be developed in one country, the 3D animation created in another, and the final video content used on advertising screens or in digital campaigns thousands of kilometers away from the production team.
Lumenstory – a 3D animation and CGI studio founded in Dnipro in 2012 – also operates under this international model. The company creates promotional video content for brands, creative agencies, digital screens, and multimedia projects. Among the countries where the studio has experience working with clients are the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Poland, Ukraine, and a number of other European countries.
International experience in this field is defined not only by the geographic scope of its projects. Equally important is the ability to handle diverse creative challenges, technical requirements of advertising media, and communication formats – and these characteristics are clearly evident in Lumenstory’s specific projects.
Lumenstory – a studio operating in the international market
Lumenstory’s main production facility is located in Dnipro; the team consists of 12 specialists, and the company’s international presence includes a representative office in Katowice, Poland.
Amid the full-scale war in Ukraine, the studio is also utilizing production facilities abroad as part of its production strategy aimed at maintaining process stability while carrying out projects for clients from various countries.
The company specializes primarily in creating 3D animation and CGI content, including product commercials, FOOH videos, anamorphic ads for digital screens, projection mapping, and visual design for events.
These areas allow us to tackle fundamentally different tasks; for example:
- an advertising agency may need a short digital video for social media;
- a brand may need a photorealistic presentation of a new product;
- a media facade operator may need anamorphic animation tailored to a specific LED structure.
In international projects, in addition to creative and technical tasks, there is the need to coordinate production among parties who may be located in different countries and work on different schedules; so when evaluating a CGI studio’s experience, it’s important not only to look at whether their portfolio includes well-known brands, but also to understand exactly what tasks the production team carried out, for which channels the content was created, and what constraints had to be taken into account.
How does an international CGI project differ from a local commission?
At first glance, the process of creating 3D animation for a client from another country should not differ significantly from working in the domestic market, since in both cases it is necessary to agree on a concept, create digital scenes, perform the animation, and prepare the final video.
However, the international nature of the project can introduce several important production considerations:
- First, there is coordination between teams. Brand representatives, the advertising agency, the CGI studio, and the digital signage operator may be located in different time zones, and if approval of the creative concept or technical materials is delayed, it affects subsequent production stages. Therefore, a clear brief, designated points of contact, and prior approval of key creative decisions are of particular importance.
- Second, there are differences in content formats. For a social media advertising campaign, the vertical format, speed of perception, and proper placement of key objects within the frame are important. In contrast, outdoor advertising on a large LED screen may require precise adherence to its dimensions, pixel grid, and geometry.
- Third, there are the specifics of the local environment. If CGI is integrated into footage of a real street, it is necessary to take into account the local architecture, lighting, road infrastructure, and shooting perspective. For anamorphic advertising, the configuration of the specific screen and the main viewing angles become important.
- Another issue is the cultural and communicative context. Images, jokes, symbols, or visual associations that are understood by the audience in one market are not always perceived the same way in another country, so an international advertising campaign may require not only technical but also content-based adaptation.
At the same time, these nuances do not mean that every international project necessarily requires complex localization. The scope of such work depends on the format, the target audience, and the specific objective.
Vinyl in NY Street – CGI Advertising in the New York City Urban Environment
One of Lumenstory’s international projects is “Vinyl in NY Street”, created for Mode Mischief Studios in August 2025.
The task was to produce a short FOOH video in which an ordinary New York City street is transformed into the scene of an extraordinary event. The main object here is a giant vinyl record that moves down the city street, approaches a music store, and stops in front of its facade.
FOOH (Fake Out of Home) is a video format in which computer graphics are integrated into footage of real locations, creating the impression that fictional objects or events are physically present.
In this case, it was important not only to model a record significantly larger than its actual size but also to make it a convincing part of the New York street scene; to achieve this, the team worked on the object’s scale, the perspective of the buildings, the nature of its movement, and the record’s interaction with the surrounding space.
The final moment played a particularly important role: the record stops near the store, tilts, and sways slightly, as if it truly had significant physical mass. Such movement details help a digital object look more convincing.
Production involved 3D modeling, animation, camera motion tracking, processing of raw video footage, and compositing – the combination of live-action footage with computer graphics.
Since the video was intended for Instagram, it was important to ensure the action remained clear in a vertical format and to condense the main visual narrative into just 11 seconds.
The “Vinyl in NY Street” example demonstrates one of the unique aspects of international CGI production: the production team can create an ad campaign for a specific foreign urban environment, taking into account its visual characteristics and content distribution format.
“Vinyl in NY Street” featuring a giant vinyl record near a music store
Savanna Premium Cider – one advertising concept for four screens in South Africa
Another international context is demonstrated by the Savanna Premium Cider project, created for an advertising campaign on digital screens in South Africa.
Unlike FOOH videos for social media, the goal here was to produce a series of anamorphic 3D videos for physical LED installations. This type of advertising, known as 3DOOH or Naked Eye 3D, creates the illusion of depth without the use of special glasses; when the perspective is calculated correctly, it can appear to the viewer as if the product extends beyond the plane of the digital screen.
For Savanna Premium Cider, the studio developed 15-second CGI videos in which a bottle of cider, lemon wedges, and dynamic streams of liquid come together to form a single advertising composition. The creative concept was designed to work across four advertising venues: The Maslow, Oceans Mall, Innovocean, and the V&A Waterfront.
The main challenge was that each LED display had its own geometric characteristics, proportions, and viewing conditions, so simply resizing a single pre-made video wasn’t enough. Anamorphic perspective is calculated based on the specific display and viewing angle, which meant separate adaptations had to be created for different screens.
During production, the team fine-tuned the perspective, verified how objects were perceived, and adapted the scenes to the parameters of each location. Realistic simulations of liquids, droplets, and their interactions with the bottle and other objects presented a separate technical challenge. These elements must look convincing not only in the final CGI render but also when displayed on a large LED screen.
Savanna Premium Cider is an example of an international project in which working with several overseas advertising venues required not only a shared creative concept but also separate technical preparation for each display location. For DOOH clients and operators, this is an important factor in evaluating a production partner, as a studio’s portfolio must demonstrate not only the ability to create spectacular 3D videos but also experience in adapting content to real-world advertising structures.
Savanna Premium Cider on one of the LED screens in South Africa
CGI for international exhibitions and events (Alpha in Budapest)
A separate area of international advertising production involves industry trade shows, conferences, and other events where brands need to draw attention to their presence. For such campaigns, CGI can be used not only directly at the exhibition venue but also in digital communications surrounding the event.
One example is Lumenstory’s work for Alpha, created for the SiGMA CIS Budapest exhibition in September 2025. The studio produced a 35-second FOOH video in which the Alpha logo transforms into a massive transparent inflatable structure, seemingly installed in a real urban setting.
The animated scene is built around the gradual inflation of a three-dimensional logo, inside which red branded elements are located. Thanks to the interaction of computer graphics with the architectural surroundings, the structure is meant to be perceived as a physical object.
A key challenge in production was simulating the inflation of the transparent surface. It was necessary to create a convincing transformation of its shape, materials, reflections, and interaction with light; to integrate the CGI into the live-action footage, the team used camera motion tracking, 3D modeling, and compositing.
The content was also adapted for viewing on smartphones, tablets, and computers. This is important for event-based advertising campaigns, since a single piece of digital content can be used across various communication channels.
It is important to distinguish between a physical advertising structure and an FOOH video, which merely creates the visual illusion of one. In this project, the result was specifically a CGI video, not the actual installation of a giant inflatable logo in Budapest.
The Alpha example demonstrates how international trade show activities can be complemented by digital video content that leverages a recognizable urban environment and the brand’s visual identity.
Alpha SiGMA CIS Budapest with a transparent inflatable logo integrated into the urban environment
What Matters to an International Client When Choosing a CGI Studio
Collaborating with a production team from another country can be beneficial for a brand or advertising agency if the process is organized transparently and the result meets creative and technical expectations; however, evaluating a potential CGI partner based solely on its country of location or the total number of projects in its portfolio is insufficient.
First and foremost, you should pay attention to the relevance of the studio’s completed projects. For example, experience creating product animations does not always indicate that a studio is ready to tackle complex anamorphic advertising, which requires working with the geometry of real screens.
It is equally important to understand:
- What specific tasks did the studio perform in previous campaigns?
- Did it develop the concept, or was it responsible only for a specific technical aspect?
- Did it work with ready-made source materials, or did it develop all digital scenes from scratch?
- Did it prepare content for specific advertising media?
Special attention should be paid to the approval process. For remote CGI production, it is crucial that the client and the production team share a common understanding of the video’s structure, the expected image quality, technical requirements, and project scope:
- Storyboards, animatics, and preliminary visualizations help align these aspects before moving on to the most resource-intensive production stages.
- If the project involves multiple advertising platforms, it is also necessary to determine who is responsible for obtaining screen specifications, agreeing on file formats, and verifying future adaptations.
- Deadlines, the speed of feedback, rights to the finished materials, and the ability to use the content in different countries and distribution channels remain important. The specific terms regarding these issues must be determined separately for each order.
Having an international portfolio does not in itself guarantee that any new project will be implemented without risks; however, detailed examples of previous work help assess the types of production challenges the studio has already tackled in practice.
International experience as a combination of creativity and production discipline
For a CGI studio, international work is more than just an opportunity to collaborate with clients from different countries. It requires the ability to adapt creative solutions to specific usage formats, advertising mediums, and production conditions.
Lumenstory’s examples demonstrate various aspects of this kind of work:
- For “Vinyl in NY Street”, the studio created a short FOOH video for Mode Mischief Studios using the real urban environment of New York City.
- For “Savanna Premium Cider”, a single advertising concept required separate adaptation for four LED screens in South Africa.
- For Alpha, a digital advertising campaign was developed in connection with the brand’s international exhibition activities in Budapest.
Despite their differences, all three projects required a combination of creative ideas, computer graphics, and consideration of the specific conditions under which the finished content would be used. For international brands and agencies, this is one of the practical criteria for selecting a production partner. What matters is not only the studio’s geographic presence but also its ability to demonstrate its expertise through projects that clearly define the objectives, implementation specifics, and the role of the CGI team.
Through such projects, the company’s international CGI experience takes on concrete form: from promotional videos for digital platforms to technically complex content for large screens and campaigns that extend beyond a single local market.