CHATSWORTH, CA - Independent animation production company GigaPix Studios has expanded its staff with the addition of a new modeling supervisor, character-modeling lead and pipeline supervisor.
Paul Ghezzo comes to the studio as modeling supervisor, having spent time at Netter Digital Entertainment, Foundation Imaging, Ring of Fire, Zoic Studios and Digital Domain. Ghezzo's early background includes the creation of historical and science fiction practical effects, props and set pieces. For the past six years he has been working in digital effects, creating and managing content creation for episodic TV and commercials, film, video games, and stereoscopic IMAX. His credits include several high-profile commercials for Nextel, Lexus, Goodyear, Accenture, Disneyland, and Hewlett-Packard. He has also worked on "Battle Star Galactica," "Firefly," "Without a Trace," "American Dreams," "The Last Samurai" and "Spiderman 2."
Character-modeling lead Ken Brilliant worked on movies and commercials on the East Coast before moving to Los Angeles. There, he worked on numerous big budget movies such as "Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World," "X-Files: The Movie," "Interview with a Vampire," and "Congo." He's worked with companies Rhythm & Hues, Digital Domain and Foundation Imaging.
An expert in the production and assembly of 3D character pipelines, Raffaele Scaduto-Mendola has been appointed pipeline supervisor. Scaduto-Mendola has worked at various production facilities including DreamWorks Animation where he built the framework for a character assembly pipeline development to create and manage a large number of characters, including those on "Sinbad" and "Shark Tale." He also spent time at Rhythm & Hues, Curious Pictures and Bell-Labs/Face2Face. Most recently, Scaduto-Mendola was character setup supervisor at Steve Oderkerk's Omation (O Entertainment), where he built and oversaw the character setup and animation pipeline to manage over 170 characters in production including those for "Barnyard."