Roy Skillicorn is back leading Backyard Productions, the company he founded and guided for 20+ years. He recently partnered with Kevin Allodi, president and CEO of Philo Media, which acquired Backyard in 2017. Allodi reached out to Skillicorn knowing that he ran Backyard during its most successful years, and also realized success as founder of Seed Media Arts. Skillicorn will serve as CMO/managing director at Backyard. Seed and Backyard will coexist independently but will share a new model of minimum overhead, focused and strategic individual director promotion while integrating Skillicorn’s unique marketing know-how. Skillicorn founded Backyard with Chicago photographer Tony D’Orio in 1988 while still a pioneering indie rep for PIXAR, Colossal Pictures and HKM Productions–all start-ups he recognized as future superstar companies. He found, promoted and secured for each of them their very first commercials, representing each company for over a decade. After leaving Backyard in 2011, Skillicorn maintained the same progressive culture at Seed….
MPC’s LA studio has promoted Morten Vinther to creative director and Jim Spratling to head of 2D, with Daniel Seddon joining as VFX supervisor. Vinther, previously head of 2D in the LA studio, joins Michael Gregory, Rob Hodgson, Claus Hansen and Mark Gethin as a creative director. Spratling formerly served as VFX supervisor at MPC’s LA studio while Seddon brings over 20 years of experience in both feature films and commercials to his VFX supervisor role. Seddon joins MPC from ILM in Vancouver, where he supervised major films such as Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Prior roles include creative director, head of 3D and technical director, and his strong technical background has seen him write award-winning software and tools. His commercial background has earned him a number of accolades throughout his career, with 17 awards in craft categories for projects including Smirnoff’s “Sea” and Monster.com’s “Stork”….
