Forged Review
Production tracking and frame-accurate review in one platform — with free, unlimited client seats.
Forged Review is the studio platform for animation and VFX production. Episodes, seasons, sequences, shots, assets and tasks live alongside the dailies they produce, so a shot's status, its schedule, its notes and every version it has ever had sit on one page instead of across three tools.
Artists push versions straight from the pipeline; reviewers open a link and start marking up. Annotations are drawn directly on the frame and pinned to exact timecode, so a note is never ambiguous about which frame it refers to. Build playlists for a dailies session, step through shots, compare any two versions side by side, and set approval status as you go — all of it recorded against the shot, not scattered across Slack and email.
Because it runs entirely in the browser, there is nothing to install and nothing to support on a client's machine. Reviewer seats are free and unlimited: bring in as many clients, directors and stakeholders as a show needs without watching the bill climb.
At a glance
- Shots, tasks and schedules tracked alongside the work
- Frame-accurate notes, drawovers and version compare
- Free, unlimited reviewer seats
Key features
The studio platform built for animation and VFX production. Browser-based, with no plugins and nothing for artists or clients to install.
Review & annotation
Frame-accurate reviewing — every note is pinned to the exact frame it was left on; click a note and the player jumps straight to it
Full drawover toolkit — pen, line, arrow, 3D arrow, rectangle and ellipse, in five colors, drawn directly over the frame
Reference images on notes — attach a visual reference to any note so feedback shows instead of describes
Nine-stage status workflow — Waiting to Start, Work in Progress, Pending Review, Retake, Approved, In Final Review, Delivered, On Hold, Omit — color-coded across the whole platform
Complete version history — every upload is a daily; the full version stack lives on the task forever, with one-click switching between versions
Attribution everywhere — every daily shows who posted it and when, on every screen it appears
Source file links — attach the project or scene file link to any daily so the working file is always one click from the review
Download the original — available to every role, including artists
Compare
Side-by-side comparison player built into the reviewer
Compare against any version of the same task — not just the previous one
Synced playback — the main timeline drives both players frame-for-frame
Independent scrubbing on the compare side when you want to isolate a moment
Automated timeline
Self-assembling sequence timeline — shot cuts flow into a full sequence edit automatically as artists upload; nobody has to conform anything
Handle-aware playback — toggle between the trimmed cut and full frames with handles, using each project's handle-frame setting
Professional transport — timecode ruler, thumbnail clip track, scrubbing playhead, frame-step and shot-step controls, keyboard shortcuts
Three-row audio bed — separate music, sound and voice tracks with individual mutes, a master mute, and a collapse toggle
Animatic track — the approved animatic sits alongside the cut for reference
Click any clip to jump straight into the full reviewer for that shot
Any format, handled automatically
Video, stills, documents and audio — mp4/mov, png/jpg/webp, PDF, and wav/mp3, all reviewable with the same annotation tools
PDF review mode — page-flip navigation with arrow keys, built for storyboard artists who work in PDF
Audio dailies with generated waveform displays
Automatic transcoding — everything is normalized to web-ready H.264 on upload, with thumbnails, frame counts and frame rates detected automatically
Bandwidth-optimized streaming — files are capped and re-encoded for smooth playback for remote artists worldwide, not just in-house
Client review
Secure share links — send a client playlist by link; clients review in the browser with no account and no login
Clients leave notes and drawovers that land directly on the version in your pipeline
Client-facing QT lane with its own status tracking and overview
Customizable review-link emails — edit the subject and body of what your clients receive
Emails & notifications
Every in-app notification also sends an email, with per-user mute toggles so nobody drowns.
Welcome email on account creation, carrying an auto-generated secure temporary password
New note on your daily — the moment feedback lands
New client note — client feedback surfaces immediately
Meeting invites, RSVP replies to the organizer, and cancellation notices
Day-of meeting reminders, delivered on the recipient's own timezone
Task deadline reminders as due dates approach
Editable email templates so everything that leaves the system sounds like your studio
Scheduling & availability
Calendar-style meeting system — project meetings, studio-wide meetings, and personal meetings anyone can schedule
Invite and RSVP — accept or decline, with organizers notified
Repeating meetings — daily, weekdays, weekly, biweekly or monthly, ending on a date or repeating forever
Series-aware editing — change one occurrence or the entire series, including changing the repeat rule itself
Color coding — automatic per-project colors plus a full color picker for any project or individual meeting
Timezone-correct availability tracker — artists enter hours in their own timezone; everyone else sees them converted to theirs, DST-accurate, with overnight spans split across the right days
Availability with calendar context — the weekly availability prompt shows what is already on that week's calendar
Production tracking
Five project templates — VFX, Animation, Episodic, Sound Department and Scratch — each with the right tabs enabled out of the box
Full structure — episodes and seasons with custom season names, sequences, shots, assets, and shot groups
Previz pipeline — storyboards, animatics, concept art, categorized reference libraries and scripts, with multi-file upload
Shot and asset instructions with attached reference imagery
Shot sheet view for at-a-glance department status across a whole sequence
Project overview dashboards with step-by-step progress
Pending-review counters on project cards so supervisors know where the work is waiting
Task assignment and due dates across every department
Interface & workflow
Deep zoom — up to 800% in both the viewer and the timeline, with scroll-wheel zoom that tracks your cursor, drag-to-pan, and instant reset
Marquee selection — click and drag to lasso a hundred dailies at once in the Media tab
Bulk actions — mass approve or change status on an entire selection, or push it all to a playlist in one move
Modern dark interface designed for long review sessions in dim rooms
Playlists for structured review sessions, with navigation built into the reviewer
Roles & permissions
Seven purpose-built roles — Founder, Producer, Supervisor, Coordinator, Director, Artist and Client
Per-project team management — tasked artists appear automatically; producers add anyone else
Scoped access by design — coordinators only see the shows they are granted, in-house directors only see projects they are attached to and can review without changing anything, and artists gain project access automatically the moment they are assigned work
Studio operations
Payroll and contracts — per-project, per-shot and hourly rate structures with payroll tracking
Show tools — show guides, drive links and downloadable project files in one place per production
Artist profiles showing everything a person is working on across every project
Secure account handling — auto-generated passwords, and password reset with security questions
Licensing
Per creator seat, per month
Seats count creators, not reviewers — bring in as many people as a show needs without watching the bill climb. Hosted by us by default; studios working under content-security requirements can deploy on their own infrastructure on Enterprise terms.
Always free
Reviewer seats
Free and unlimited at every tier. You are charged for creators — the people who upload and manage reviews — never for the clients, directors and stakeholders leaving notes.
Mini Team
Under 10 creator seats
Self-serve, by card
Small Studio
10–99 creator seats
Self-serve or invoiced
Large Studio
100–199 creator seats
Invoiced, at a volume rate
Enterprise
200+ creator seats
Custom terms
- SSO
- SLA
- Security review
- TPN
- Self-hosted deployment
Pricing is announced at launch. Tell us your team size and we'll come to you with numbers first.
Interested in collaborating?
Book with us today
Tell us about the project. We answer every inquiry within 48 hours.