VANCOUVER, BC — As a part of its rapidly growing West Coast VFX team, Alkemy X (www.alkemy-x.com) has tapped Emmy-nominated VFX veteran Michael Porterfield to serve as the company’s head of 2D, based in Vancouver, British Columbia. With over 30 years of experience in visual effects, Porterfield will leverage his expertise in leading teams, with a keen eye toward cultivating creativity and maximizing efficiency.
His diverse VFX background spans feature films, episodics and commercial projects, with credits that include work on Apple TV's Lisey's Story; Netflix’s Don't Look Up; Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; DC’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice; Roland Emmerich's Midway; and HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Alkemy X continues to expand into crucial markets while embracing global talent. In addition to Vancouver, the studio expanded in Toronto and Singapore earlier this year. The move to Alkemy X marks a reunion for Porterfield and Alkemy X creative director/VFX supervisor Jep Hill, as the two previously collaborated during Porterfield’s nine-year tenure at ScanlineVFX.
“Jep and I immediately aligned on our obsession with constant optimization and I’m really excited to build upon the shorthand that we developed initially working together,” says Porterfield. “People are the core of the VFX team at Alkemy X, and our best results come from a human approach to digital collaboration, which is a driving force to my approach to leading teams.”
Porterfield, who was born in Green Bay, WI, started his career in commercials, learning the art and technique of visual effects hands-on while simultaneously refining an optimal matrix of creativity and efficiency. He transitioned into episodic and feature film work, landing in Vancouver as the VFX industry was beginning to flourish there in the early 2000s. He has worked across a wide cross-section of the industry, operating on the studio side with Sony Pictures Imageworks, with stints at ScanlineVFX, AsylumFX in Santa Monica and Rainmaker in Vancouver, among numerous others. He started as a Flame artist, but found his stride in compositing, eventually landing as a compositing supervisor, where he managed teams for more than seven years of non-stop production.