R!OT has brought on board a pair of visual effects supervisors who have extensive TV spot experience. Cris Blyth, a former effects supervisor at Digital Domain, Venice, Calif., assumes the role of creative director at R!OT, working out of the company’s Santa Monica facility. He will be available for work as an effects supervisor.
Meanwhile, Toby Brockhurst, who has held senior effects posts with Moving Picture Company in London, A52 in West Hollywood and Sight Effects in Venice, becomes visual effects supervisor/senior artist at R!OT Manhattan. He had most recently been working as a freelancer for effects houses in the U.S. and in Europe.
The hires are in line with R!OT’s initiative to diversify beyond its core traditional post business and serve as a more active player in the conceptualization, design and production of effects-driven media, particularly commercials. R!OT has also been looking to encourage increased collaboration between and among its studios in Santa Monica, New York and Atlanta in order to better leverage its combined talent and resources.
On the latter score, R!OT’s Manhattan and Santa Monica shops recently teamed on a three-spot package for Cotton out of DDB New York (via bicoastal editorial house Cosmo Street).
Blyth joined Digital Domain in ’99 as a digital artist and later moved up to CG supervisor and then to visual effects supervisor. His credits include campaigns for American Express, Gatorade, Autotrader and Disney. He also worked on several feature films such as Daredevil, Adaptation, We Were Soldiers and Stormrider.
Brockhurst has been freelancing for the past four years, drawing ad assignments from visual effects studios stateside and abroad, including The Mill, Play and Glassworks in London, Digital Domain and Asylum in Southern California, and Das Werk in Germany. Among his credits is Land Rover’s “Gourd,” a Bronze Lion winner at Cannes.
Brockhurst began his career with VTR, London. He then relocated to the U.S. in ’96, joining Sight Effects, and then CFC, Culver City. Brockhurst returned to London in ’98, joining Moving Picture Company as senior Inferno artist. Beyond the spot arena, he worked on director Nick Park’s animated short Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave, which went on to win an Oscar in ’96.
