Ross Wilkinson Joins Framestore
Framestore has brought Ross Wilkinson on board as VFX supervisor. Based in London, he is tasked with driving forward the design and execution of VFX on a range of advertising and episodic projects across the studio’s Interactive Advertising division.
Ross joins from Lola Post Production where he was head of 3D and VFX supervisor, having previously risen through the ranks at DNEG. With over 13 years industry experience, he has turned out work including Inception which was awarded an Oscar for VFX, the Harry Potter, Avengers and Mission Impossible franchises, plus Netflix’s Black Mirror (season 5), Riviera for Sky Atlantic and BBC’s Les Miserables.
Animation Collective BRUT Sign Bounty/Banana
Animation collective BRUT, which is on the roster of international production company 1stAveMachine, has signed the directing duo Bounty/Banana consisting of Steven Briand and Julien Jourdain De Muizon.
A promo short titled InTENsity was created to celebrate Bounty/Banana’s 10-year anniversary of working together, The animation/live-action InTENsity is about two dynamic creatives in search of a trailblazing logo which reflects their vision of creative intensity. We are then taken on a rollercoaster ride on an unconventional journey through Paris to find the logo which finally embodies their creative ethos.
InTENsity was co-produced by BRUT, a collective signed to 1stAveMachine globally. In addition to creating commercial projects as a multidisciplinary collective, BRUT channels a percentage of profits to invest in their talent’s personal projects by providing the resources needed to create the project such as designers, directors, producers, animators, post, editing and sound.
The Bounty/Banana duo has turned out projects for clients such as Hermès, Veuve Clicquot, PlayStation, Post-it, Air Berlin and more. The duo has also worked on TV series for France Télévisions and Canal +, notably with their show Supa Supa that gathered more than 1.8 million views worldwide, as well as for Viceland’s Party Legends, reaching over 10 million.
VFX Legion Takes "Quantum Leap"
The international team at VFX Legion, the L.A. and Vancouver, B.C.-based visual effects company, delivered two dozen key shots for the first episode of NBC’s new series, Quantum Leap, creator Donald P. Bellisario’s revival of the ‘90s sci-fi cult classic.
The show picks up 30 years after time-traveler Dr. Beckett (Scott Bakula) stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and disappeared as a new team restarts the project. The story follows lead physicist Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee) on an unsanctioned leap through time and space to a succession of locations–navigating new challenges while trying to find his way back to the present.
Legion was brought on board to create complex digital environments integrating 2D and 3D assets across several episodes. Studio co-founders, VFX supervisor James David Hattin and VFX producer Nate Smalley, led the effort, assembling a team drawn from Legion’s local and international collective of artists. Smalley and Hattin provided creative direction, guiding artists through every phase of the production process.
The initial CG work for the first episode, “July 13th, 1985,” called for sets built on a backlot at Universal Studios to be digitally extended, creating expansive cityscapes replicating bustling downtown Philadelphia–circa 1985. To achieve the final shots large green screens strategically positioned at the end of short stretches of fabricated streets were replaced with renderings of historically accurate buildings and signage. Animated pedestrians and vehicles move in sync with the pace of the city.
