New division's first hire is Academy Award-nominated animation supervisor James Straus
A graduate of the classical animation program at renowned Sheridan College in Ontario, Canada, Straus has also created a procedural Maya-based forest generating software tool and has produced an independent sci-fi short film.
Straus’ first project at CafeFX will be character creation for THE MIST, an adaptation of the Stephen King science fiction novella in which numerous species of horrific creatures emerge in a small town in Maine after a massive thunderstorm. The film’s director, Frank Darabont, brought the project to CafeFX after seeing the company’s past animation work.
Of his new animation home Straus said “I’m very happy to be here. CafeFX has a dynamic combination of talent and advanced technical resources. There’s an eager, exciting energy here because everyone knows that they are contributing to the work in a very personal way. CafeFX is on a meteoric arc and I feel privileged to be a part of that momentum.”
Jeff Barnes, CEO of CafeFX, said “James brings a wealth of experience in CG animation, but importantly, he has built and managed large animation teams for very significant live action and animated films and developed the requisite pipelines and proprietary software. There are great things on the horizon for CafeFX and we intend to bring the utmost in creativity and technical sophistication to those projects.”
The character animation pipeline will have Autodesk Maya at its core for animation and modeling, Softimage XSI for texturing and lighting, and Autodesk Mental Ray for rendering. The company’s production pipeline is also configured with cebas Thinking Particles, Sitrisati Fume FX, eyeon Digital Fusion, Autodesk Combustion, Massive, cebas finalRender Stage-2, 2d3 Boujou, Adobe After Effects and Apple Shake.
CafeFX is currently in production on visual effects for THE KITE RUNNER, THE MIST, JOHN ADAMS and NIM’S ISLAND and recently completed EVAN ALMIGHTY, FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER, SPIDER-MAN 3, GHOST RIDER, and PAN’S LABYRINTH.
“A VFX JOURNEY THROUGH PAN'S LABYRINTH WITH CAFEFX” was chosen for the prestigious Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH 2007. A record 905 submissions were made this year to the competition, an international showcase of computer-generated imagery, animation and compelling storytelling.
CafeFX will be recruiting for visual effects artists and animators at SIGGRAPH in San Diego, August 5-9, 2007.
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Topics: Press Release City
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