Published on: 2026-08-27
Source: Moscow Government – Правительства Москвы –
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Digital avatars, virtual hosts, new solutions in animation, historical characters coming to life, and artistic canvases — these and other innovative projects are created and developed in the capital. With the support of the city, creators of creative ideas have the opportunity to test and implement their solutions in business, media, education, and culture.
In the Moscow Mayor’s Award “Moscow Innovator” This year, applications were accepted for the “Creative Industries” direction for the first time, and in the “Academy of Innovators,” some of the most promising graduate projects belong to this field. We tell about the most interesting developments.
Creative industries
Creative industries are becoming one of the prominent directions in city programs supporting technological entrepreneurship. Innovative projects help tell new stories about the city, create modern educational formats, and launch high-tech services for business. The authors of promising solutions are assisted in refining their products, finding partners, entering the market, and testing technologies in real conditions.
Moscow is actively developing as a center of creative industries. City support programs help such projects move more quickly from idea to practical application. Already, some of the most promising projects by graduates of the “Academy of Innovators” belong to this field. Their solutions are used in education, media, marketing, and cultural sectors, and the teams themselves show good growth dynamics: some multiply their revenue several times, others attract investments and launch pilots with major partners. That is why this year the Moscow Mayor’s Award “Innovator of Moscow” introduced a separate category for “Creative Industries.” Maria Bogomolova Deputy Head of the Moscow Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovative Development
The new category of the award covers a wide range of solutions—from software for the media industry to digital twins, avatars, 3D modeling, gaming, and animation services. Finalists and winners will be able to receive up to 1.5 million rubles to develop their projects, as well as opportunities to implement them in the capital.
A digital avatar can become a guide or consultant
One of the nominees for the “Moscow Innovator” award was the “Imitant” project. This high-tech solution enables the creation of interactive installations with a hyper-realistic digital avatar. Combining the capabilities of artificial intelligence and cinematic graphics, the creative development creates the effect of live communication. Presented in the image of a historical figure or another character, the avatar conducts a dialogue based on a verified knowledge base. The technology for developing digital characters has already been used at city festivals, in the TV show “Avatar,” and for the development of digital characters for the international tournament “Games of the Future.”
“Since 2021, our team has been developing artificial intelligence technology that operates autonomously, without internet connection. It is possible to create an avatar of any person and upload it into a digital environment. The virtual character constantly learns, remembers new information, and can provide detailed information about an exhibition or products in a showroom, answering visitors’ questions. And thanks to digital vision technology, it recognizes the interlocutor and maintains eye contact with them,” says Sergey Kalinnikov, CEO of the company “Lympro.”
The project of residents from the fourth cohort of the “Academy of Innovators” — the company “Arigami” — is successfully applied in business and the educational environment. The eponymous platform allows for the development of three-dimensional content with interactive functions in augmented reality. After completing the acceleration program, the team implemented the solution in school No. 1306, where it was used to visualize heroes of the Patriotic War of 1812, and the startup’s revenue increased more than sixfold.
“Our platform creates digital copies of any product, object, historical figures, and can visualize an event or process. To see this, it is enough to point a smartphone camera at a QR code. The development can be applied in various fields: education, sales, landscape design, and others. Interactive three-dimensional models can be embedded into any website or application, allowing the user to examine the object from all sides, study details, change color, size, and scale,” explains the company’s CEO, Maria Antonova.
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Virtual Hosts and Full-Cycle Animation
The neural network solution from Anix, a company founded by graduates of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and residents of the second cohort of the Innovators Academy, generates in-between frames in 2D animation. This significantly speeds up production and reduces costs. The project attracted investments totaling 10 million rubles, and in 2024 it won the Moscow Innovator award, receiving a prize of one million rubles. Over the past year, the team increased revenue 16-fold by creating animated videos for various companies and startups.
“We have invented and patented a technology that creates intermediate frames in animation, thereby saving more than 60 percent of artists’ time and 70 percent of the project’s budget. Today, we have our own neuroanimation studio with full-cycle production. The ‘Academy of Innovators’ has helped us a lot at every stage — from creating the business plan to its implementation and PR. In the future, we want to master feature-length animation,” shares the studio’s CEO, Alexandra Sevostyanova.
The “Avacapo” platform, which accelerates animation creation and simplifies work with digital characters, entered the top 15 of the fifth cohort of the “Innovators Academy.” It allows transferring human movements from video onto an avatar, creating animation based on text descriptions, and developing interactive virtual hosts. The developer — Creative Intelligence company — received a five-million-ruble grant from the Innovation Promotion Fund, and its technologies have been used in animation, gaming, marketing, and creative industries. The project was also among the nominees for this year’s “Moscow Innovator” award.
“Our project is designed to help animator artists quickly create three-dimensional intermediate frames using neural networks. In addition, this technology can transfer human movements to a virtual character, including via voice or text commands. And a virtual host can be connected to different language models. We plan to launch this development on the international market soon,” says the company’s head, Anton Bozhedarov.
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Renaissance artists coming to life
The “Neuroartist” service, created by graduates of the second cohort of the “Academy of Innovators,” offers a different approach to image generation: the user works through a visual editor without complex text prompts. This makes the tool convenient for designers, illustrators, and marketers. After acceleration, a team of four university classmates from Innopolis University in the Republic of Tatarstan raised 10 million rubles in investments, conducted pilots with large companies, and the project itself became a participant in a program on Channel One and was included in a selection of services shaping the new technology market in Russia.
“We combined many neural networks on one platform and developed an algorithm for using them. It’s enough to input a text request, and the neural network will execute it. On this same platform, you can receive feedback from clients and, if necessary, make corrections. This saves a lot of time and resources when creating advertising content,” assures the service head Sergey Polin.
The multimedia exhibition by Emil Aliev, a participant of the ninth cohort of the “Academy of Innovators,” titled “Beyond Any Frames,” offers a new format for experiencing art. The works and their authors are presented as participants in a living dialogue—with emotions, experiences, and a unique inner world. The original exhibition is open at the Mars Center for Contemporary Art.
“My first multimedia project is dedicated to the great artists of the Renaissance era. They come to life on screens, talk in modern language, joke, discuss life and creativity, and argue with each other. Such a lively interactive format is especially interesting to schoolchildren and students. The ‘Academy of Innovators’ helped me build a clear structure and promotional campaign. In the fall, I want to present a similar exhibition featuring heroes of Russian history on my own platform,” shares Emil Aliev.
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Manage lights and databases
Another nominee in the creative industries field was the team of media artists Interlnkd. One of their products — the online addressable LED controller “Photon” — allows controlling light installations in real time. After acceleration in the eighth cohort of the “Innovators Academy,” the team organized the first sales and also developed and launched the second version of the device into serial production, which allowed increasing the number of connected LEDs fourfold.
“An online controller is a small unit to which addressable LED lines are connected. Using this development, an interactive light art installation was created at the capital’s design factory, a three-dimensional map for the International Exhibition ‘Russia’ at VDNH, installations for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the ‘Summer in Moscow’ festival, and other projects,” says the company’s founder Andrey Kurilyuk.
The “Eagle Eye” software, nominated for this year’s “Moscow Innovator” award, helps work with large video archives. The system automatically recognizes people, emotions, actions, and spaces in the frame. The development is especially relevant for companies with large media databases, where terabytes of data accumulate daily. After acceleration at the “Innovators Academy,” the solution underwent pilot testing at the L.B. Krasin Moscow College of Creative Industries, the Russian State Film Fund, and the Open World Foundation.
“We have developed a search engine for video archives that operates based on artificial intelligence and computer vision. Various video fragments can be quickly found through a text query, including those with specific objects, actions, or locations. The ‘Academy of Innovators’ helped us build marketing and financial strategies, and today we are negotiating the implementation of our development in a large industrial company,” says Anna Nikolaeva, director of Digital Expo.
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