KARLAB

KARLAB is an independent French CG animation and character production studio founded in 2016. It creates digital characters for animated features and series, live-action visual effects, video games, advertising, music videos and digital art. Its work spans stylized cartoon characters and photorealistic creatures, combining artistic asset creation with the technical systems needed to animate them.

Character production

The studio’s character work covers sculpting, modeling, texturing, look development and grooming for hair, fur and feathers. Its rigging capabilities include body systems, anatomical and muscle systems, mechanical rigs, facial blendshapes and performance controls. These services support both expressive animated characters and realistic creatures or digital doubles for live-action productions.

KARLAB also develops custom pipeline tools and provides technical consulting and character department supervision. Its specialists can work within a partner’s production workflow, helping establish character processes and resolve modeling, rigging and animation requirements. The studio combines asset production with technical oversight across different stages of a project.

Animation and collaboration

In 2024, KARLAB expanded into dedicated keyframe character animation through Karanim, an internal operating division. This added character performance animation to its established modeling and rigging capabilities, supporting broader animation assignments and co-production partnerships. The studio also offers artistic, technical and financial co-development support for animated films and series, alongside professional training, masterclasses and educational conferences.

Its production work includes technical modeling and rigging for My Dad the Bounty Hunter, character asset work for Belfort & Lupin, and body and facial rigging for Into the Wonderwoods. Other assignments demonstrate its range across formats, including facial blendshape sculpting for Batwheels, creature rigging for The Animal Kingdom and Vesper, and character production for the video game Wild.

Based in Montpellier with a direct presence in the Paris region, KARLAB combines a core studio team with collaborators across France to support productions with differing artistic and technical requirements.