The story of the Paraiba stone, one of the most expensive gemstones in the world to date, reads very much like the search for the treasure man’s chest on some remote mountain.

Wet Sand Animation was privileged enough to tell the story when it made a fine animation presentation for Paraiba Tourmaline Dealers for their jewelry and gemstone show. To create the presentation, we first worked on the storyboard before creating the actual 3-D film presentation.

From the hills of Paraiba, Brazil to the mines of Mozambique and Nigeria, we retraced the steps on how the Paraiba Tourmaline stones were discovered in each area and how they came to be the most prized tourmalines to date. See the compleate Paraiba Tourmaline Guide.

The Story

The Paraiba Tourmalines are a fairly new addition to the world’s suite of precious gemstones. The world came to know about the neon blue tourmaline through the digging efforts of Heitor Dimas Barbosa.

Digging for the precious Paraiba began in 1981, in the Brazilian state of Paraiba in 1981, and it wasn’t until 1989 that the first Paraiba stones were cut and sold commercially.

Similar discoveries were found in Nigeria and Mozambique, Africa not too long after.

In 2003, Moussa Konate, a gemstone supplier, inadvertently shipped the first Paraiba Tourmalines from Mozambique to the United States.  Repeat orders of the same material of tourmaline alerted Konate to dig deeper. He subsequently claimed 300 acres of land around the original mine that supplied his first serendipitous purchase of the Paraiba.

The Paraiba Tourmalines from Nigeria were first discovered in 2001 in Oyo, Nigeria.

Nigerian Paraiba Tourmalines became commercially available in 2005.

Although fans of the Brazilian Paraiba Tourmalines might be cautious about the “Paraiba-ness” of the gems from Africa, standard gemological testing and semi-quantitative chemical data analysis cannot distinguish the Paraibas from the three countries. Only a spectrometry test via LA-ICP-MS is able to reveal the slight chemical differences of the Paraiba Tourmaline stones from Brazil, Nigeria and Mozambique.

The Animation

Wet Sand Animation created the story of the Paraiba Stone by using 3-D animation techniques.

We worked with existing live footages and photos to create the presentation. We also employed these 3D animation techniques, which would not have been possible with other visual aids:

Changing viewpoints or changing perspectives from seeing, for example, a Paraiba Tourmaline from at eye’s level to seeing it from above and below.

• Creating Motion or presenting a chronology of events and condensing events that actually took years to happen into a matter of minutes.
• Detailing or directing the audience’s attention to a particular event, zooming in on details.
• Dissolving objects in the presentation
• Morphing or transforming one object into another right before the viewer’s eyes.

Due to our presintation Paraiba Tourmaline Dealers had an extreamly successful turnout at the trade show and were able to sell many paraiba rings and loose stones.