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Miami startup shines – and glows – in new iPad Air promotions

Riley Kaminer
Riley Kaminer
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‘Our mission is to make animation approachable, fun, and uplifting’ – Marcos Meson, co-founder of Visual Blasters, maker of the FlipaClip app

Two months ago, Miami-born startup Visual Blasters, developer of 2D animation app FlipaClip received a once-in-a-lifetime call.

The area code? Silicon Valley. On the other end of the line? None other than a member of Apple’s communications team.

“They came to us with a very specific request,” recalled Adrian Ofman, Visual Blaster’s Brickell-based COO. The team at Apple had seen a video of an animation made in FlipaClip and commented that they like a glow effect from the video.

The only problem was that the glow effect feature wasn’t native to FlipaClip. Rather, the artist who made the video had used a different platform to create this effect. The Visual Blasters team’s response: challenge accepted.

Within the next couple of days, the team resolved to make this feature come alive. Jonathan Meson, Visual Blasters’ CEO and co-founder, called the next few days an internal ‘hackathon’ of sorts. Even Jonathan himself rolled up his sleeves to make it happen.

“We put it all together and presented it to them, and told them that we would launch the feature the following week,” Adrian told Refresh Miami. 

This hard work paid off. FlipaClip landed a front-and-center feature in the marketing materials to promote Apple’s latest, high-powered iPad. The app was also featured in the debut of the iPad during the tech giant’s Peek Performance event in March [pictured above]. 

“For us, there were two big wins,” explained Marcos Meson, Jonathan’s brother, who is a co-founder and VP of Marketing for Visual Blasters. The first: spreading the word about the app and benefitting from the associated validation. “Out of an ocean of thousands or millions of apps, we stood out to Apple,” he said. The second: making major improvements to the platform. On top of deploying the glow feature, the team was able to make the app run about 10 times faster.

Visual Blasters’ co-founders and brothers Marcos and Jonathan Meson.

This is not the first time that Apple has given the startup a moment in the limelight. In 2019, FlipaClip was selected as Apple’s trending app of the year.

FlipaClip empowers users of all experience levels with the tools necessary to bring their animations to life. Users design animations frame by frame. They can also add up to eight tracks of audio, allowing artists to share their creations with the world.

Currently, FlipaClip has around 5 million unique active users each month. Adrian joked that sometimes the team calls FlipaClip the biggest animation studio in the world.

Adrian Ofman, Visual Blasters COO

Looking forward, the FlipaClip team – made up of 10 employees including four in Miami – hope to continue adding new features to the platform. They also hope to continue building the community of users. And that’s not just an attempt to jump on the Web3 ‘community’ bandwagon. Since its launch in 2012, the team has been working to bring their creators together and promote one another. The effects of these efforts have been tangible: There are now TikTok animators who have amassed millions of followers by using the app to create clips.

“Our mission is to make animation approachable, fun, and uplifting,” shared Marcos. Using FlipaClip, you too might be able to find social media stardom. Or at least let your creativity run wild.

FlipaClip app, shown here, can bring out your inner animator. Photo at the top of the post is from an Apple event. The team recently deployed a glow feature and made the app run 10 times faster, All photos provided by Visual Blasters.

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Riley Kaminer
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