In the future Mr. Wonderful will move into its own office.
"Our focus is simple: offer the best creative and technical services that we possibly can to help our clients achieve their vision," says Littman. "We felt the time was right to expand and spin off a new entity," adds Gioiella. "We have the strategic insight, abilities and talent to do high caliber design work and we want clients, existing and new, to feel they can come to us for their specific project needs."
Beirne Lowry is creative director and Damien Henderson serves as producer for the new design studio. Lowry's background includes a 16-year tenure as creative director of Betelgeuse Productions and its design division, Betsy. Credits include graphics and promo packages for VH1's "My Coolest Years," ABC "Monday Night Football," CBS Sports, Comedy Central, Oxygen, and ESPN.
Henderson brings extensive experience in live-action production, post, design and visual effects. He was most recently at Betsy, where he served as co-executive producer. Henderson collaborated with Beirne Lowry on projects for VH1, Comedy Central and various sports packages. Prior to Betsy, Henderson spent time in live-action production at The Farm, and various freelance gigs as an editor and motion graphics artist.
Lowry and Henderson are joined by senior editor/designer Ross Shain, Flame/Smoke artist Christopher Harrison and Smoke artist Michael Palermo.
The studio opened with a number of projects on its plate, including creating the entire show open, packaging elements and end credits for MTV's "Super Sweet 16." For Outdoor Life Network and its coverage of AVP Volleyball, Mr. Wonderful produced a show open and branding elements in which video footage of players graphically evolves into 3D animation. Lowry and his team employed a "Matrix"-like bullet cam around the players and created a pop/mod look to the graphics using a color palette of bright yellows, browns, and earthy blues, as well as spiky vine patterns inspired by tribal tattoos. Poser was used for modeling the players. Alias Maya was used for modeling and match moves. Graphics were completed using After Effects, and both Smoke and Flame were used for compositing.