Vancouver, BC -- Bron Animation, a new division of Bron Studios that is producing CG animated motion pictures, holiday specials and series television, has made several appointments under newly named Creative Directors Gil Rimmer and Ben Burden Smith, it was announced by Bron Managing Director Aaron L. Gilbert. Joining the company is veteran animation Producer Barbara Zelinski, who recently produced the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series for Lucasfilm Animation in Singapore. Zelinski will spearhead, with Gilbert, Bron Animation’s two Mighty Mighty Monster specials “Halloween Havoc” and “New Fears Eve.”
In the directing chair on the specials is animator cum Director Adam Wood, who most recently completed animation directing for the Weinstein Company’s feature Escape from Planet Earth. Previously, Wood spent six years at Pixar as an animator on titles such as Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc., as well as animation directing the John H. Williams produced Space Chimps feature film.
Leading the technical vision for Bron’s CG pipeline is Teunis de Raat who joins the team as Visual Effects Supervisor. de Raat was most recently at Pixar Canada where he worked on such high profile productions as Toy Story. Previously de Raat worked on Meet the Robinsons at Disney Animation Studios. His extensive experience at other groundbreaking animation studios includes ImageMovers Digital and Rainmaker Entertainment. The pipeline team also includes Kirk Chantraine as the Senior Pipeline Technical Director. He previously worked at MPC, ImageMovers Digital and Electronic Arts on titles such as A Christmas Carol, Man of Steel, and Happy Feet Two.
Rounding out the systems side of Bron is the appointment of Terry Bates as Chief Technical Officer who joins from Image Engine, and the addition of Larry Bodnar as AV Systems Manager, who comes from Rainmaker (formerly Mainframe Entertainment) where he served for the past 16 years.
Bron has also brought on Tarek Elaydi as Lighting Technical Director and Dimitry Kachkovski as their Technical Animator. Tarek has over eight years experience in production lighting for VFX and animated feature films. He was a lighting TD on Over the Hedge and Shrek the Third at DreamWorks Animation before becoming senior lighting TD on Fast Five and the upcoming Life of Pi at MPC. Apart from several exciting video games like Crysis 2, Kachkovski has also worked on major feature films like Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, Life of Pi and Jack the Giant Killer.
Source: Bron Studios