Visual effects/ animation house Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company (KWCC), bicoastal and North Adams, Mass., has added a team of award-winning animators and effects artists who formerly worked at now defunct R/GA Digital Studios, New York.
Joining the New York-based KWCC office are visual effects supervisor Arman Matin, CG artist Natasha Saenko, animators Jeff Guerrero and Patrick Porter and producer Bennett Lieber, who will work in the commercial production unit headed by executive producer Alison Brown.
R/GA’s commercial division was a pioneer in the integration of visual effects and live action. The company recently shuttered its longstanding spot division (SHOOT, 11/26/99, p.1) in the wake of company founder/chairman Robert Greenberg’s decision to focus on interactive projects.
KWCC president/director Jeff Kleiser, who heads his 13-year-old company with co-founder/director Diana Walczak, said that the new hires were meant to fortify the shop’s commercial division, a process that began a year ago with the addition of Brown (SHOOT, 2/12/99, p.8). Kleiser estimated that on average, KWCC’s workload has been divided among feature films (40 percent) and theme park attractions (40 percent), with spots comprising the remaining 20 percent.
"With this new staff, I think our percentage of work from the commercial department will increase," said Kleiser.
Kleiser related that KWCC wanted to ramp up its commercial presence in New York. In anticipation of this growth, the office moved into a larger Manhattan space in October. After hearing that R/GA was closing its spot division, Kleiser called friends at R/GA to inquire about its best talent; Matin, Saenko, Guerrero and Porter were cited.
"I was thinking that if I could corral this team and bring them over en masse, we’d avoid all that time and expense to get a team set up," Kleiser explained. "We’d have top-quality people that have already worked together and have a rapport with each other. And the four artists fit remarkably well into the type we always look for: exceedingly talented, dedicated to making the most out of computer animation, and without ego problems. They really had a team mentality to understand that big projects—the important ones—are the result of efforts by a lot of people."
Matin spent three and a half years at R/GA, starting as CG artist, then lead CG artist, senior effects artist and CG director. He joined R/GA after graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design in ’95 with a degree in fine arts. Similarly, Saenko was on staff at R/GA for nearly three years, serving as CG artist and lead CG artist on projects. She also graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in ’95, where she earned a B.A. in computer art.
Guerrero joined the staff of R/GA’s CG department in Aug. ’99; before that, he freelanced for the company, as well as for the New York office of bicoastal Curious Pictures and New York-based Alter Image, for two and a half years. He is a ’97 graduate of the School of Visual Arts, New York, where he earned a degree in fine arts.
Porter was hired on staff at R/GA in Sept. ’99. Prior to this, he spent two and a half years freelancing for R/GA, as well as for Boston-based NearLife and the aforementioned Curious Pictures. Porter graduated in ’96 with a degree in fine arts from Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.
Lieber had been a "permalance" visual effects/animation producer at R/GA for the last year and a half; before that, he freelanced at New York-based Cyclotron, and at New York-based Blink.fx and its predecessor shop, Image Design. Prior to this, he spent seven years on staff at New York-based N.W. Ayer, where he worked his way up the ranks to assistant producer and then to producer, a position he held for four years before leaving in ’94.
Among the group’s credits at R/GA were two Kool-Aid spots—"Beach Party" and "Snow & Skate"—out of Ogilvy & Mather, New York, for which Matin served as lead CG artist, Saenko as CG artist, and Porter as animator. The spots were produced by Lieber. The team also worked on the Orkin spots "Spy Guy" and "Stampede" via J. Walter Thompson, Atlanta. Matin was CG artist on both spots; Saenko was lead CG artist on "Spy Guy" and CG artist on "Stampede"; Guerrero was animator/modeler; Porter was animator; Lieber produced.
At press time, Guerrero and Porter had recently arrived at KWCC’s North Adams facility for training; Matin and Saenko were slated to arrive shortly thereafter. All are scheduled to start work at the New York office in late February or early March.
"They’ll be up here for a couple weeks of ‘boot camp,’ where we give them intensive training on how we produce work and who we are," said Kleiser. "We’ll also take them out on the town and get to know them socially. We’re always dividing work among our different facilities, so it’s important for people to know who they’re working with. We try to not have New York be only for commercials and Hollywood only for features; we assign people to job responsibilities according to their talents."
KWCC’s commercial unit recently completed "Kobe: Indoor/Outdoor," a Spalding spot for Winstanley Associates, Lennox, Mass., directed by Kleiser and Walczak, featuring Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant.
