Announcement from Gnomon:
The Gnomon School of Visual Effects, a world-class entertainment art school nestled in the heart of Hollywood, has revealed the reels for two of its 2011 top graduates, Joao Rosa and Daniele Volpe.
Daniele Volpe
Daniele Volpe is from Marsala, Italy. After over a decade of experience in network administration and web development in Milan, he moved to Los Angeles to join the web team at The Gnomon Workshop.
Daniele’s background is very technical but he has always had a passion for photography, design, music and the arts. A few years later he decided to enroll at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in their two-year, full-time Digital Production for Entertainment program. He soon realized that he had just opened Pandora's box.
These became the most creative years of Daniele’s life as he was surrounded by talented students and amazing teachers, many of them he sees as “rock stars” in the entertainment industry. After a year in the program he won the BoT (Best of Term) Spring 2011 award for Animation and Visual Effects with a 3D animated scene called "Techs Mechs.” During that period he had the opportunity to assist Alex Alvarez and Neville Page with creature animation for major motion pictures. A few months later he was selected alongside other students by Benjamin Grayson (assistant director of “Thor”) to work on visual effects shots for his sci-fi short "Prodigal" at the Gnomon Studios. Here he had the amazing opportunity to work with Rob Nederhorst, visual effects supervisor of “Thor” and “Captain America.” His latest project is “Room 237,” a documentary by Rodney Ascher about Stanley Kubrick's film "The Shining," which was presented this year at the Sundance Film Festival.
Joao Rosa
Joao Rosa was born in Brazil in a very artist friendly family and where he has always been encouraged to develop his biggest interests: photography, film and animation. After receiving his bachelor's degree in photography, Joao moved to Los Angeles to study animation at Gnomon School in 2010.
During Joao’s education at Gnomon, he was picked up very early to participate in the effects side of Gnomon Studios projects. That gave him the opportunity to be part of projects like "Plus Minus," directed by Shane Acker and Meni Tsirbas, and "Prodigal," directed by Ben Grayson and featuring Kenneth Branagh. At Gnomon School, Joao was awarded twice with the BoT (Best of Term) award in the Hardsurface Modeling and Visual Effects Animation categories.
Joao finished his Gnomon training just a few weeks ago and has been working in a commercial production company called Wolf & Crow (wolfandcrow.tv), as well as finishing post production on a short film that he directed during his last term at Gnomon and supervising the visual effects of a thesis short film based on Peter Pan called "East of Kensington," directed by Kellen Moore.
The projects in Joao’s reel are an attempt to dedicate his self mostly to group projects because it is where he believes the best results can be achieved. His main focus has always been to do effects because his interest is working with live action films, and he sees visual effects as the area of CGI closest to that.