Being in the news business, I have seen the discussions between producers and animators when creating animations for a story.  Whether the wing of an airplane should tilt down or up, is that the correct style of automobile, is the prescription medicine the correct color etc. Do they want creativity in the animation? Yes. But, there's also the need to get an object correct.

Well, not so much anymore, if recent animation enhanced news stories catch on. The latest art form in the genre is from Next Media, a Hong Kong company. You may have seen the report about Tiger Woods, his wife chasing him with a golf club until he drove his truck into a fire hydrant, about 2.5 million have so far. Or how about the Leno / O'brien saga on NBC. If not take a look below. 

Next Media, a conglomerate of several tabloid style magazines, started the animations division a couple of years ago. They have a total staff of 160 animators, software developers, and actors who after an event is described to them, animate it. The final product is not the actual event, but a vision of how they thought it may have happened. It's safe to say, a lot of creative liberty is taken with an event.

Next media mostly creates local stories, but more and more are doing stories that have a US connection. 

It takes about 90 minutes to create a completed piece. The company puts out about 20 animated pieces a day. Although they have a "video game" look, Jimmy Lai, the owner of Next Media, hopes to improve on the technology and eventually sell the concept and technology to other news organizations. 

So much for journalistic accuracy. Here comes the next wave of news.