Michael Shelton comes on board as Head of 3D after several years at Asylum Visual Effects where he worked as a CG Supervisor and Animation Supervisor.
Press Release from public VFX
Michael Shelton comes on board as Head of 3D after several years at Asylum Visual Effects where he worked as a CG Supervisor and Animation Supervisor. Prior to that, Michael worked at Digital Domain, Captive Audience and Method, among others.
Michael got his start working as a practical FX artist in high school. He loved the tangible, art-driven work, but hated the highly toxic materials. He remembers the day the computer graphics department visited their shop during the making of Godzilla: "They had clean clothes and an air conditioned office. Meanwhile we were out in a tent with 20 other people spraying thinned out toxic glue all day long." Michael's experience with practical FX gives him a unique perspective on CG animation today.
Citing John Carpenter's remake of The Thing as his holy grail of inspiration, Michael says: "To this day I'm still being influenced by ideas born in that movie. When I'm coming up with creature design, their approach always factors into my thinking."
Recent feature work includes Terminator Salvation through Asylum, the only other FX vendor outside of ILM. And, Tony Scott's Unstoppable.
Other film work includes Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Species: Awakening and The Passion of the Christ.
Notable commercial work includes the launch of Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, directed by Rupert Sanders. The launch of Verizon 'Droid', also directed by Sanders and GMC's 'Build', an entirely digital spot showcasing the construction of the new GMC Sierra pickup truck.
When asked about the benefits of a boutique shop, Michael says: "You have much more ownership over the process. A boutique is naturally more intimate, but as a result of that, it's much faster to shape a project. Curating talent becomes important. Everyone's at the top of their game at public, and a lot of us have worked together for years, so it's easy to hit the ground running."
Flame artist, Max Harris, joins Venice boutique public VFX after a four year stint at Asylum Visual Effects. In addition to Asylum, Max has worked at Animal Logic, Sony ImageWorks, Blackbox Digital and Editel to name a few.
Max got his start in the visual effects world as a graphics technical asst. and motion control stand operator. He quickly transitioned to running Henry and Flame for features, commercials, episodic, and music videos, before entering the freelance market running both platforms in 1999.
His first major project as a freelance flame artist was Tarsem's The Cell. Since then Max has gone on to work on many studio features including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Terminator: Salvation, Unstoppable, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Transformers, Mr & Mrs. Smith, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and The Incredible Hulk, among others.
Television work includes HBO's Boardwalk Empire, Glee, Nip/ Tuck, The United States of Tara and The Good Wife.
Commercial work includes spots for Nike, AT&T, T-Mobile, Corona, Kia and Ford.
Max lives with his wife and two children in Los Angeles, CA.
ABOUT public VFX
public VFX is a boutique visual effects company located in Venice Beach, California. Choosing intimacy, flexibility and creative freedom over the pipeline driven structure of larger effects facilities, public VFX brings a modern, focused approach to the art of creating images with computers.
public collaborates regularly with directors, lance accord, stacy wall, noam murro, tim godsall, dayton/ faris and todd cole, to name a few.
public VFX is a partner of award-winning editorial house, Spotwelders.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
