3D animation & video for brands & agenciesSão Paulo · Worldwide
Direction + Technique. Delivered.
Plate Studio is a 3D animation and video production studio in São Paulo. We make commercials, product films and campaign content for brands and agencies, from the first idea to final delivery.
Plate is small today, but our history is long. Before we started the studio, we spent over 15 years making films with the studios below, as freelancers and in-house artists, and we are proud of that work. These projects were produced by them, and all credit and rights are theirs. We show them here for the part we played.
Hero films for launches and campaigns, from product reveals to character spots.
PrevisAnimationFXRender
02
Product Visualization
Photoreal products and packshots that match or beat the real object.
StillsTurntablesE‑commerceCMF
03
Lighting & Lookdev
We light CG like cinematographers and build materials that hold at 4K.
Solaris / USDKarmaMaterialXACES
04
CG Integration & VFX
CG that lives inside live action: tracking, light match, compositing.
TrackingHDRINuke
05
Creative Direction
We join at the idea stage and carry the visual language to delivery.
StyleframesStoryboardSupervision
06
Motion Design Brand Guidelines
How a brand moves: motion principles, signature animations for logo and mascot, and the files your team and agencies apply across product, social and video.
Concept to master. One owner, one pipeline, one invoice.
By stage
Lighting, lookdev or FX inside your pipeline and your deadlines.
Creative direction
Look development and supervision for your team or vendor.
ProcessFive stages, one owner
01
Brief
Idea, audience and media plan first.
02
Look
Styleframes lock the aesthetic in week one.
03
Previs
Timing and camera approved before heavy render.
04
Production
Animation, lighting and FX in one pipeline.
05
Delivery
Masters and cutdowns, color-managed.
StudioTwo partners · One studio
Small on purpose. Senior by default.
Plate Studio is a creative duo formed by Eliel Guimarães and Vinícius Ale. Together we bring over 15 years of animation, 3D and VFX work for agencies, production companies and brands, as freelancers and in-house artists. Now we've joined forces to sign our own projects.
Team
Eliel Guimarães
PartnerDirection · 3D animation
15+ years in lighting, look development and VFX for commercials, series and animation. Work for Samsung, Paramount, Amazon, Nestlé, Itaú, Hasbro and HBO Adult Swim.
Multidisciplinary artist, 12+ years in advertising, digital content and entertainment for brands, agencies and studios across Latin America and Europe. Motion design, 3D animation, editing and art direction, from concept to delivery.
When a project asks for more hands, senior specialists join from our network, so the team always fits the brief. Remote pipeline, international standards, work in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
We use AI the way we use every tool in our pipeline: as an ally to the creative and technical process. Our job has always been to keep up with whatever arrives in the creative and business field, and AI is one more of them.
We are not against it. Like every program, plugin or software that arrived with big promises, it opens new ideas, new points of view and new ways of working, and we stay just as human.
This wave is bigger, mostly because of speed. Nothing that human direction can't handle.
Principles
01
Tool, not author
Every frame still passes through a director's eye.
02
Always updating
We test new tools as they arrive and keep what serves the image.
03
Human direction
Speed comes from the tool. Judgment comes from us.
JournalTalks · Notes · Breakdowns · Lab
Notes from behind the frame.
What we learn on real productions, shared with the community: how we light, how we build pipelines, how new tools change the work.
Voice · Lighting & lookdev
Eliel Guimarães
Fifteen years lighting commercials, series and animation. Writes and speaks about light as storytelling, USD pipelines and how studios adopt new tools without losing direction.
Light as storytellingUSD · SolarisAI in productionFreelance to studio
You'll get a calendar invite and a short brief template by email. Prototype: nothing was sent.
Article · 24 Sept 2026
The easier MCP makes it, the more it costs.
Connectors, tokens and the "unlimited" plans that aren't unlimited through MCP.
Eliel Guimarães Voice · Lighting & lookdev
Lately, working on client projects with a 100% AI pipeline, I've noticed that some ways of working burn a lot more tokens than others. And we learn it the hard way: the easier the process, the more you spend.
One example is using connectors and MCPs inside Claude. They burn an absurd amount of credits, precisely because they make everything easy. It all happens in one interface: the connection is made for you, Claude calls one app, then another, links them together and hands you what you need in the same conversation. That's great because it speeds things up. You get more control, you can see everything that's happening, and you have a record of it all.
But behind all that, token consumption is extremely high, even if you switch models and drop down to the cheaper Sonnet, Haiku or anything else. What eats your budget is the calls, every single interaction you have with the AI.
Third-party connectors, like Higgsfield, consume way too much. They send a huge token payload, and Claude has to answer with an equally huge one. All that back and forth, all the time, adds up fast.
So what you'd normally spend over a 4-hour window, you burn through in one hour, depending on your workload. That happened to me.
On one side, MCPs and connectors really do make everything easier. On the other side, there's the cost.
What I did to soften this, once I noticed everything was draining way too fast, was to bridge things manually. Prepare all your prompts in there. You can even run a few image tests. But for video generation and final images, copy the prompt yourself, go to the web platform of the AI you're using for video and image, and paste it there.
And an even more important point: some plans are sold as unlimited, with unlimited models for 30 days or for 7 days. Through MCP it doesn't quite work that way.
Take Higgsfield. You get one of their plans with some unlimited models. First, it's only 7 days (you can get more, but you'll pay a lot for it). And the unlimited models included in your plan don't work through MCP. Through MCP they're charged, meaning they spend your credits.
So it's a trap. "Oh, I've got a plan with unlimited models." Sure, but through MCP that doesn't help. Keep an eye on it, so you don't think you're using the unlimited ones while you're burning everything through MCP. Want to use unlimited? Go to their web platform and work from there. That's where you actually get to generate with the unlimited models in your plan.
That's it. Project by project, we try to optimize as much as possible so we don't fall into these traps.
