Animation house Curious Pictures has brought seven computer graphics/visual effects specialists on board its effects department to take on commercials and longer form fare, including branded entertainment projects. Headlining the influx of talent into the New York studio are feature artisans Seth Lippman and Dr. John Alex. The latter is a former software engineer and technical director for Pixar where he led animation teams on Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo, and wrote software applications for The Incredibles.
Lippman has worked at such houses as PDI/DreamWorks, Weta Digital and Sony Pictures Imageworks, serving as an animator on Shrek2, The Lord of the Rings and Antz. Also joining the Curious coterie of talent are Chi-min Yang, who will lead CG art direction on various jobs, animation performance supervisor Joao Amorim, designer Dustin Linblad, CG artist Julio Soto and pipeline technical director Ray Forziati.
Yang has been a lead animator on projects for such New York houses as Psyop, Charlex, Brand New School, Nick Digital and Rhinofx. At Curious, Yang will work on photo-real animation projects.
Amorim has worked in 3-D for 11-plus years in a variety of studios around the world, including Alias, Liquid TV, Mega Studios, BNS and Curious. His experience spans spots, music videos and films. Now on staff at Curious, he is a motion capture/animation supervisor, as well as an animation professor for the MFA program at Parsons and NYU.
Linblad is known for a couple of films: Tao, created for Vancouver, B.C.-based choreographer Wen Wei Wang and which has been screened internationally; and the animated short Celesais, which gained recognition at the 2004 Siggraph confab.
Soto’s experience spans commercials, music videos and films, with the latter hitting the festival circuit, including the Brooklyn International Film Fest, Meda Arts Festival Japan and the Toronto Latino Film Festival.
And Forziati is a Curious recruit who graduated the digital media design program at the University of Pennsylvania. He also studied in the computer animation MFA program at the USC School of Cinema-Television. At Penn, Forziati was chair of the student chapter of the worldwide Siggraph organization.
The infusion of talent comes on the heels of Curious becoming the only Manhattan-based commercial animation studio to have a motion capture stage. Curious now has a team of 120 digital artists under the aegis of Lewis Kofsky, the company’s director of computer graphics and visual effects.
Curious has recently created branded entertainment fare for Mattel and AOL, and spots for a mix of clients including American Express, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Target and Burger King. Curious also has a TV series track record with such shows as Codename: Kids Next Door and Sheep in the Big City for Cartoon Network; A Little Curious for HBO; and Avenue Amy for the Oxygen network.
Curious maintains a roster of live-action and animation directors that includes Eric Fogel, Stefan Nadelman, Steve Oakes, Joan Raspo, Saul and Elliot, Tom Warburton and Mo Willems.
