Where studio work goes wrong
Studios sell fixed bids, staff shows across sites and time zones, and report to clients and finance at the same time. Most still do it in spreadsheets and tools that were never meant to talk to each other.
Bidding guesswork
Bids built in spreadsheets from rough estimates. Two producers can reach two different numbers, and past actuals are rarely used.
Margins at risk
Cost-plus pricing leaves margins exposed when projects and people are tracked in generic or homegrown tools.
Staffing headaches
Managers can't see who is best suited to which work, so artists end up over- or under-allocated.
Endless update meetings
With no single source of project and staff data people can trust, status meetings fill the week.
What Projectal brings
One platform for the whole life of a production, from the bid to the post mortem, with every team working from the same live data.
Project bidding
Import client requirement documents, build from task templates with known costs, test what-if scenarios, and apply regional rebates and tax incentives.
Planning and scheduling
Task and booking sheets, Gantt charts and Kanban boards, with dependencies and automatic scheduling.
Staff management
Studio-wide availability, crew sheets, skill-based matching, and heat maps that show who is over- or under-used.
Project tracking
Progress, effort, budgets and milestones in one shared record, with alerts on late work and budget issues.
Scenario planning
Model changes to staffing, budgets, scope and timelines in a private sandbox, then publish the plan the team chooses.
Reporting and post mortems
Live reports and dashboards, delivery milestones tracked to the work behind them, and estimates compared with actuals.
AI agents and workflows
A dedicated MCP server connects Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and other assistants to live project data, within your existing roles.
Integrations
Connectors for ShotGrid, ftrack, Kitsu, Perforce, HR, finance and payroll tools, plus a REST API, webhooks and a Python library.
Human-led. When AI drafts a plan, it goes into a private sandbox. The team reviews the assumptions, compares options and decides what moves into the live plan.
In production: Dimension and DNEG 360
Dimension, the real-time virtual production company and division of DNEG, chose Projectal as its workflow platform when it launched DNEG 360 with DNEG in 2024. About 200 people work across many time zones and two studios, in the UK and the USA.
Projectal merged business data from DNEG and Dimension into one source for resourcing and financial reporting. AI-powered staff planning covers bookings, tasks, activities and holidays from development through to final pixel delivery, and permissions and custom fields keep sensitive data protected.
Often the key point of failure in business operations will center around communication. Projectal as a live source of truth – feeding all the way through our pipeline from business development to resource management, department planning, human resources and financial reporting – is a huge win in efficiency.
We are incredibly pleased with how Projectal has matched our vision for creating a modern, streamlined workflow at Dimension. This allows our team to focus more on the creative aspects of our projects.
Dimension story based on an article first published by befores & afters on 20 September 2024. Read the original on projectal.com
Why it runs on JanusKS
Projectal keeps people, projects, bookings and money in one JanusKS model, with history and access rules built in. That is why a second company's data can join the model instead of starting another spreadsheet, and why a scenario can be tested without touching the live plan.
It matches our vision for Projectal to modernize and streamline the workflows of VFX studios, animation companies, game developers and other creative businesses worldwide.