Jan Cilliers, a South African-born visual effects artist skilled in Discreet Flame and many other software tools, has joined the team at Click 3x. Cilliers most recently taught digital compositing at Escape Studios' School of Visual Effects in London. Previously, he spent eight months with the New York visual effects house Guava, where he worked on SINATRA: HIS VOICE. HIS WORLD. HIS WAY, a unique theatrical presentation that appeared at Radio City Music Hall last year.
"Jan is an exceptional talent who has developed an amazing degree of technical aptitude in a very short time," said Click 3x exec producer Jason Mayo. "With the opportunity he has here to work on challenging projects in a variety of medium, his artistic skills will only improve and grow." In one of his first project for Click 3x, Cilliers is crafting effects for a new Incubus music video directed by Floria Sigismondi and a commercial for the premium pet food Wysong.
After graduating from the South African School of Film and Television in 2000, Cilliers moved to New York, where he landed an internship with Discreet. He very quickly developed an aptitude for several of the company's products, including the compositing software Flame and da Vinci's restoration tool Revival.
From there, he joined Guava to assist in the Sinatra project, a concert in which a live orchestra accompanies high definition video projections of archival images of the legendary performer projected onto 40-foot tall moveable screens. Using Flame, Revival, Apple Shake, Pinnacle Commotion and other tools, Cilliers played a key role in the restoration of more then 60,000 frames of archival footage drawn from film sources.
"In joining Click 3x, I look forward to becoming involved in visual effects intensive assignments that are artistically oriented and technically complex," Cilliers said. "I enjoy challenging myself in the work that I do."
New York-based Click 3x (www.click3x.com) provides visual effects, computer animation and broadcast design services to the advertising and television industries.
Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.
