Program Advisory Commitee
Every year Lost Boys | School of Visual Effects seeks out the top advisory to ensure we are meeting industry needs and stay current with our program development. We are privileged to have them share their knowledge and insight with us.
Dennis Hoffman
Dennis was recently the Vice President, General Manager of Method / CIS. Prior to CIS Vancouver, Hoffman, a 20-year production veteran, served as Vice President/Head of Production at Digital Domain where he was responsible for the management of the visual effects feature division including oversight of all visual effects projects. During his tenure there, Digital Domain’s credits included Flags of Our Fathers (winner of the 2006 VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Motion Picture), Letters from Iwo Jima and My Super Ex-Girl Friend, as well as the strategic planning, budgeting, client relations and management of all feature film related departments.
Hoffman began his career in 1988 in the commercial world at Image G, where as Executive Producer he was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the full service commercial company.
In 1990, Hoffman joined Dream Quest Images as a Visual Effects Producer and over a tenure of nine years moved up the ranks to become Vice President/Executive Producer overseeing such films as visual effects Oscar® nominees Mighty Joe Young and Armageddon.
Television projects included Earth 2 which won the Emmy for Best Visual Effects, and theme park based projects included Space Shuttle America for Six Flags, StarQuest for Landmark Entertainment/Taejon Expo, Korea and Asteroid Adventure for IMAX/Phantasialand, Bruhl, Germany.
From 1998-2002, Hoffman served as Vice President/Head of Production at Cinesite, a Kodak company, where he was responsible for the management of the visual effects division including oversight of all visual effects projects and strategic planning. Hoffman was responsible for the management and oversight of the art department, pre-visualization, 3-D, character animation, paint, digital compositing, rotoscope, 3-D and 2-D tracking and data management departments.
Subsequent to that, Hoffman was General Manager/Producer at BWFX where projects included Bulletproof Monk, Out of Time, Legally Blonde 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean. Hoffman was then recruited by Electronic Arts to join their Vancouver facility as Senior Development Director, where he was responsible for the centralized artist groups and production of the visual content for 16 of the 25 game titles of EA Canada.
In 2008, Hoffman received a VES Award for Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Motion Picture for Changeling. He is a current VES Board Member in LA and Vancouver
Nancy Mott
Nancy is currently the Creative Industry Business Development at Vancouver Economic Development Commission and is on the Visual Effects Society (VES) board of Vancouver. Nancy acted as the Chair for the local VES for several years and over and facilitated the creation of the VES Job Fair and many of the C.A.V.E.(Celebration of Animation and Visual effects) events . She has many years of experience in the VFX Industry as a Executive Producer and Producer. Nancy is has connections to every studio in Vancouver and is often one of their first points of contact when they are first establishing their studios here in Vancouver.
Sean Lewkiw
manages large teams of visual effects artists, design pipeline and workflows, create visual effects templates.
His experience also includes Senior Technical Director at Monster by Mistake in Toronto, and then to Weta in New Zealand as Senior FX Artist on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He has also worked at Jim Henson Creature Shop as Senior FX Artist, CG Supervisor and VFX Supervisor and Technical Head of 3D at CIS London, (now Method, then Rainmaker UK), where he designed the shot pipeline and wrote many core tools.
Having been a very large part of three pipeline projects in the past. He very proficient in all aspects of visual effects and visual effects management, and has a strong knowledge of SideEffect’s Houdini.
Anuj Patil
Anuj has over a decade of VFX production experience with a ‘Gemini Award Nomination’ for Episodic Television, ‘Seagate Technical Award Nomination’ Best Visual Effects on Commercials and Feature Film. His varied experience includes working as a Digital Artist, Senior Digital Artist/Supervisor and is currently as a Senior Technical Director/Compositor/ Supervisor VFX for Digital Domain.
As a Senior Technical Director/Compositor/ Supervisor VFX his responsibilities include:
*Quality and artistic supervision of lighting and compositing with input from key creatives.
* Design implements, critiques generic lighting and compositing to help facilitate the creative “look”
* To Determine the need and extent of mattes, paintings, effects and shaders for digitally composited shots.
* To Participate as a supervising team member in determining various design solutions, efficiency improvements and provide artistic feedback on a shot or sequence level to other team members in a large feature-film VFX production environment.
Sigurjon Fridrik Gardarsson
Sigurjon is currently working as a Senior Compositor at Scanline and his specialties are color grading, keying and compositing.. His work includes stereoscopic compositing on Transformers – Dark of The Moon and Tron Legacy, compositing on Safe House, Sherlock Holmes – A Game Of Shadows, The A Team, Twilight – New Moon, Toothfairy, as well as slightly stepping in to help on Twilight – Eclipse and Avatar.
Some of his past work includes color pipeline consulting on a feature film in Iceland (where he is from) and compositing and look development on the stereoscopic feature film Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D for Frantic Films. Siggy has worked at several studios as a Senior Compositor, these include Image Engine, Digital Domain and Prime Focus.
Alan Chuck
Alan is currently the VFX Recruiter at Method Studios. His past experience also includes VFX Recruiter/ Producer for CIS and Rainmaker. He began his VFX Career as an Animator at Electronic Arts for 5 years and then evolved into a Development Manager position at Electronic Arts Canada. This experience gives him a unique perspective as a Recruiter.
