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WHAT'S THEIR GIG?
"We're a boutique within a facility," says Greg Shultz, founder of Gasket, which (along with its sibling BWN) sprung from the side of and remains integrated with its successful parent company, Hi-Wire. Occupying three suites of the 5,000-square-foot shared facility, and open for business only since June 2005, Gasket is putting its high-energy creative seal on projects for the commercial, music video and feature markets. Though still squeaky-new, its clients include Coleman (the camping equipment manufacturer, not the former child actor) and the AICP (Association of Independent Commercial Producers) for its Minneapolis Sponsor show open. Shultz proffers the latter project, a stop-motion and digital animation piece, as a good example of what the company can turn around for clients, while practically still unpacking the workstations.
"The AICP thing happened to be an internal project that we just pounded out and got HUGE reviews. People thought it was a fun piece and kept asking us to send that reel to them, so it worked."
Currently up to their designing eyeballs with concept work, Shultz is a bit surprised at just how busy they are. "Starting a business, it usually takes you two months to get your letterhead in," he laughs. But humble exaggerations aside, he knows of what he speaks. Prior to Gasket, Shultz co-founded Make, a Minneapolis design/effects firm. Prior to that, he sharpened his tech skills at Crash & Sue's, rapidly rising to (Discreet) Flame guru status. Clients in his portfolio include Best Buy, Target, K-mart and Cost Cutters.
THE COOL FACTOR
"Untainted" is one word Shultz uses to describe the artists he's staffed his company with. "I don't want my team to be just computer-heads, so I've also looked for people who could draw and concept." he explains. "You can't teach an eye, you can teach a program. The artists I've hired add a really cool, fun dynamic to my work. I'll do the commercial aspect, I want to keep them fresh." In his eight years in the industry, Shultz has "learned this box [Flame] inside and out," as well as many other tools. His educational background, however, is in traditional fine arts, where he also mines his staff, two of whom came out of his alma mater, Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Gasket already has tight relationships with ad agencies and Schultz says this sets them apart from the local competition. "We try to bring the ad agencies with us and build a team together instead of keeping it separate, he says. "We really 'plus-up' their stuff and make them look like heroes. That's one of our goals, because if we make them look good, we look good."
THE GEEK FACTOR
Part of the beauty of being so young is having such shiny new toys. Everything is brand-new, says Shultz. "We all have top-of-the-line Dell stations [plus Macintosh G5's] and we've loaded them with 4 gigs of RAM." With a huge list of tools, ranging from Discreet Flame and Smoke, Alias Maya Unlimited, Adobe After Effects, Apple Motion and Final Cut Pro to Panasonic HD D5 (24p & 60i) and Sony HDCAM (24p, 30p and 60i) cameras, Digital BetaCam, BetaSP and Pioneer Pro DVD burner, Gasket can whip up its magic in SD or HD, in 2K or 4K data.
At Gasket, though, "it's always about combining two or three things together," Explains Shultz. As he says, you'll never just press one button and have a project come out really cool. You have to blend tools such as After Effects with Flame and then Maya, and then "your recipe is all your own. It's all about the spices."
WHAT THEY DO
Gasket offers design, previsualization, visual effects, effects editing, 2D/3D animation and DVD design and authoring. The staff's abilities range from cel animation and painting to video game design.
WHO THEY ARE
Greg Shultz, designer/VFX director; Ke "Jacky" Jiang, designer/animator; Justin Greiner, designer/animator; Tammy Kimbler Weber, managing producer
TECHNOLOGY
Discreet Flame/Smoke
Maya Unlimited
Adobe After Effects
Apple Motion
Apple Final Cut Pro
Apple DVD Studio Pro
Gasket
www.gasket.tv
555 Nicollet Mall, Suite 391
Minneapolis, MN 55402
Ph. 612.252.3930
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