Fish Media, New York, a graphics, animation and title design company founded in October 1996, has added Niki Bern as a Flame artist.
A native of Sydney, Australia, Bern comes to Fish Media via Montreal-based Discreet, a division of San Francisco-headquartered Autodesk, where she has spent the past four months freelancing as a Flame and Inferno tester while waiting for her U.S. work visa to be processed.
It was her third stint at Discreet. Bern was a freelance tester for eight months, spanning ’97-’98, and she spent an additional two months with Discreet in ’99 while on a mid-year break from her master’s course at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, Sydney, where she specialized in digital media. Bern graduated in ’99.
Having gained experience in the Australian facility market, Bern decided to seek employment in New York because of its reputation as a design hub. During a trip to Manhattan late last year, she approached several companies for interviews, and developed a rapport with Fish Media.
Bern’s last staff position was at Iloura Post Productions, Melbourne, where she worked from September ’99 to February ’00, as a designer, compositor and Matte painter using Flame and Photoshop. Commercials credits through Iloura included a campaign for the Australian telecommunications carrier Telstra, and a pro-bono job for the awareness of teenage suicide organization Here For Life, both through Singleton Ogilvy & Mather, Melbourne.
From ’96-’97, she worked at Sydney-based postproduction house, Omnicom, as a Flint, Photoshop, AfterEffects designer and compositor on television commercials and Web design.
Graduating in ’94 from the Sydney College of the Arts with a bachelor’s degree in visual arts, majoring in video, electronic arts and photography, Bern completed her final year stateside as an exchange student at the University of California, San Diego. Initially she pursued photography, moving into Web design and then compositing. She worked at AUSNet Services, Sydney, as a Web designer, and before that she worked at Camberdown Children’s Hospital, Sydney, from ’92-’93, as a photography teacher to hospitalized adolescents. In ’95 she started her own Web design company, Geek Productions, a company she still does her freelance projects through.
Bern has also worked on several short films including her graduate project, Midas, which she directed, composited, modeled and designed. A retelling of the story of King Midas, the 35mm film shows live-action characters in a 3-D environment to create a surreal fairy tale world. Screened at various international film festivals, it picked up second place for animation at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and a ’99 SMPTE Award for creative technology.
Fish Media owner/creative director Ralph Belfiglio said of Bern: "She has a great reel and had been working as a Flame artist in Australia but what really attracted us to her was Midas—it showed amazing animation and great storytelling. After several interviews we finally got her to come aboard. The fact that she was working at Discreet was another big draw for us because Flame had just come out with updated software and we really wanted an operator who knew it inside out."
Other artisans at Fish Media are 3-D artist Sarah Clark, and Belfiglio who works in 2-D/3-D animation. Executive producer is Wendy Brovetto.
