Sriven Multi-Tech Ltd., a publicly traded multimedia/animation company headquartered in Hyderabad, India, has acquired Santa Monica-based visual effects house Station X Studios from a private ownership group that included resident visual effects supervisors and artists. The multimillion dollar deal involved cash and stock, the details of which were undisclosed.
Sriven has renamed the shop Station X Entertainment. Kumar Chadalavada, director and board member of Sriven, has become Station X’s CEO.
Best known for its computer animation and digital effects work in commercials, TV and features, Station X was launched some two-and-a-half years ago under the aegis of CEO Grant Boucher and VP, new production development and corporate affairs Allen Crawford, both of whom have since left the company. However, a dozen founding artisans remain and were part of the aforementioned group who sold their interest in Station X to Sriven. They are: visual effects supervisors Alan Chan, AristoMenis Tsirbas, Karl Denham, Danny Braet, Dickie Payne and Greg Teegarden; digital artists Peter Nye, Grant Viklund and Kent Lidke; lead compositor Alan Precourt; and software developer Mitch Middler.
Station X’s expertise in 3-D animation will complement Sriven’s other Southern California holding, Webtoons Media, a 2-D animation studio based in Burbank. Combining both 2-D and 3-D capabilities will enable Sriven to offer a more complete multimedia solution and capture a larger share of the animation market. Station X will now have the opportunity to add a visual dimension to Sriven’s global Web-based information technology projects, and to participate in the developing media convergence market. Sriven was also attracted to Station X’s proprietary rendering management and optimization software program, Spider, which Middler helped to create.
Sriven also maintains offices in Canada, Australia and the United Arab Emirates. Its other holdings include Sydney-based Indsoft Technologies, a provider of multimedia-based touch screen solutions that will provide visitors to Australia with kiosk-centered local information and sports-related content during the 2000 Olympics. "Acquiring Station X not only complements our existing 2-D animation capabilities in the U.S. with high-end 3-D CGI, [but] it also opens up exciting new markets and opportunities for us in India, Australia and Japan," related Chadalavada.
Station X’s commercial and entertainment clients have included BBDO Detroit, Southfield, Mich. (spots for Dodge), Illuminations/Tokyo (Chevy Blazer) and ABC-TV (Tom Clancy’s Netforce).
