Made by animators, for animators

A review room for animation. You upload a shot, everyone watches it together or in their own time, draws over it, and every note lands on the exact frame it is about. It is made by Animworks, built with working animators, and it runs in the browser.

The controls are animation controls. Onion skinning and ghosting, framing guides, a pass on every version rather than one status on the file, compare between takes, rendered image sequences played as shots, and a timeline that counts in frames. A general video tool gives you a comment at 4.875 seconds; this gives you a note on frame 117, and a drawing on top of it.

Both. A project holds people as editors or viewers, folders hold subfolders, and a review session groups a day of dailies into one playlist that opens from a single link. Every shot carries its own pass and can be handed to a named person, so a small studio in animation, VFX or games can run its rounds in it. It is just as happy holding one freelancer’s shot.

Yes. It plays rendered image sequences straight from the render folder, EXR, DPX, PNG, TIFF, TGA, JPEG and WebP, which is what a render produces. Motion runs from a proxy so it can move at all, and the moment you pause you are on the frame you rendered at source resolution. Converting a sequence to video first throws away the pixels you are trying to judge.

Write to partnerships@anim.works and tell us what you make and roughly how many people would be in the reviews. We will bring the group in together rather than making everyone request a place one at a time, and we will set the projects up with you.

They are good tools and they aim wider. Frame.io serves creative teams of every kind, and SyncSketch serves visual collaboration across VFX, animation and games. Keyframe is narrower on purpose: the controls are animation controls, the passes are animation passes, and the people you show work to are never charged for. If you need 3D model review or a deep pipeline integration today, they have it and we do not.

Animators, mentors and small studios. It suits anyone who sends a playblast and gets back a paragraph of notes that never say which frame the problem is on.

No. Keyframe runs entirely in the browser, for you and for anyone you share a shot with. There is no plugin to install and no version of it to keep updated.

Yes. Drop a folder of numbered frames and it plays as a shot: EXR, DPX, PNG, TIFF, TGA, JPEG and WebP. Motion runs from a proxy so it can move at all, and the moment you pause you are looking at the frame you rendered, at source resolution. Linear EXR gets a display transform on the way in, so 18 percent grey lands where it should instead of arriving crushed and dark.

Video files, image sequences and PDF storyboards. A storyboard pages like a clip, so a note can pin to page 7 the same way it pins to frame 613.

Press C and the previous version opens beside the current one. Link the playheads to scrub both in step, or break the link to hold a piece of reference against your own timing. Relinking snaps them back together so linked always means linked.

Everyone sees the same playhead, the drawings appear as they are made, and there is camera and voice in the room. Whoever is presenting can lock the playhead so the room stays together, and anyone can break away to look at something and then snap back. Drawings made during the session are kept afterwards, not thrown away when the call ends.

Yes, two ways. A branded PDF with the frame pictured under every note, which is the artefact a student keeps after a mentorship session, and a CSV shot list for whatever tracker you use. Both are included on every project.

Yes. A review session groups a set of shots into one playlist, which is how a day of dailies or one student’s work is usually looked at, and a single share link opens the whole session for guests. Everything else files into folders, and folders hold subfolders, clips and whiteboards. You can name a session after the person it belongs to.

Yes. Whiteboards live inside a project like clips do: make one, draw the idea, write the notes beside it, and it saves with a thumbnail so you can find it again. Keep them in a folder next to the shots they relate to. Finished PDF storyboards can also be uploaded and reviewed page by page.

Hand them the shot. It appears in their Waiting on you and they get a notification, so the request is on the shot rather than buried in a message. If they are not in the project yet, invite them, as an editor who can change things or a viewer who can only comment. For anyone outside the project entirely, send a share link and they need no account at all.

Yes. There is a bell for a note on your shot, a reply to a note of yours, and a shot being handed to you. It works the same whether you asked for the review or you are the one giving it.

Yes. A project is visible only to you and the people you invite. Nothing is public unless you create a share link for it, and you decide what that link allows.

No, and they never will. A share link opens for anyone, they can watch and comment, and they cost you nothing. Charging for the people whose opinion you asked for is the thing we most wanted to avoid.

You can set a password, an expiry date, whether the file can be downloaded, and a watermark carrying the viewer’s name across the picture. Revoking a link takes effect immediately, on the page and on the footage behind it.

Nothing. Every feature is open while Keyframe is in beta. When pricing arrives, beta testers hear about it first.

We invite in waves rather than all at once, so the room stays fast and each round of feedback is acted on before the next group arrives. Your invite links you straight in with your Animworks account.

Real shots and honest complaints. Review your actual work in it, and when something is missing or wrong, use the report button inside the app. That feedback sets the build order, and it has already changed it more than once.

The beta stays free for as long as it runs. After that there will be a paid tier, and there will also still be a free one: unlimited reviewers and the core review toolset are not things we intend to charge for.