About me — Alexander Kucera

Alexander Kucera

My name is Alexander Kucera and I am a German VFX producer and compositor. I'm passionate about digital film-making. I keep an eye on developments throughout all sectors of this ever-expanding realm, but specialize in the pipelines and approaches that enable visual effects to be integrated believably into live-action material with dramatic effect.

I have a deep-rooted technical knowledge of computers, networks, render farms and computing processes which I keep up-to-date. Likewise, I maintain a solid hands-on overview of image generation techniques in various off-the-shelf 3D applications as well as more theoretical research papers.

Most of all, I enjoy maintaining my hands-on knowledge of compositing software and techniques, as this is where it all comes together — at least in productions subject to real-world turn-over times. My passion for VFX is grounded in the doable.

Experience

Founder and Lead Artist

BabylonDreams — 2004–now

BabylonDreams started as a local company doing small commercials and logo animations, but grew into an independent post-production service provider from there. We are creating character animations, technical animations, architectural & product visualizations and visual effects.

Lead artist responsible for 3D shading, rendering and compositing of all projects
Delivered 100% of projects under time and budget
Manage all the workstations and render farm machines
Technical direction, setting up 3D scenes and compositing of about 50 shots for the television pilot of Andy’s Airplanes — a full CG show

Journalist

Professional Production Magazine, Landsberg am Lech — 09/2008–now

The international Professional Production magazine offers its readers timely facts, dates, and trends from the media industry since 1986.

Regularly reporting from Cartoon Forum, Cartoon Movie and FMX

Lighting TD and Compositor

Red Vision, Manchester, UK — 07/2009-02/2010

Red Vision is ranked among the most innovative and biggest CG houses in the UK. They produce VFX and Animations for TV and Feature Film productions

look development for dozens of assets, included reworking of mental ray shading networks to work with Pixar's Renderman
shading, lighting and rendering setup for dozens of scenes
scripting, animation and particle FX for scenes with up to 500 000 objects
compositing and look development for several sequences

Compositor

Elektrofilm, Stuttgart/Germany — 07/2009

Elektrofilm is a well regarded post-house in Stuttgart working on TV and Feature Film productions

Re-did one shot in the last week before the deadline from scratch, including newly recorded stock footage by myself

VFX Coordinator

Pixomondo Images, Ludwigsburg/Germany — 05/2008–10/2008

Pixomondo is one of the leading visual effects companies in Germany. With over 150 artists in 8 international offices, they create VFX for feature films, commercials and corporate movies.

Managed and coordinated all projects in Ludwigsburg being it film, TV or commercials
Helped to manage the available human resources of all departments for 3 months until a dedicated HR person was hired
Managed about 8–10 projects, of which 3–4 were in active production with an average shot count of 30 shots
Actively planned and coordinated the resources for roughly 50 people
Among the projects I coordinated are:
- Ninja Assassin
- 2012
- Kill Daddy Good Night
- Crashpoint: Berlin
- Vulkan
- Continental commercial
- Dr. Oetker commercial
- and several other productions
Delivered 100% of projects under time and budget

VFX Producer

cine+ vision, Ludwigsburg/Germany — 2007–2008

cine+ vision was a subsidiary of cine+, one of the leading media-service providers in Germany. It was founded to provide visual effects services for the feature film production “Prisoners of the Sun.”

Managed 20–25 employees and artists
Created the final production estimate for all 365 shots in collaboration with the department supervisors
Daily tasks included
Handling of the project plan
Supervising shot assignments
Managing external providers
Daily rounds with the artists as well as the producers and the director
Before the production was shut down (due to legal matters on the production companies end), 18 shots were completed and about 100 of all 365 shots were pre-visualized with elaborate animatics
The animatics helped the director to plan a re-shoot and to avoid extra expenses by reducing the amount of set construction necessary
Set up the color management pipeline together with the compositing supervisor

Technical Advisor

Postyr Postproduktion, Copenhagen/Denmark — 2007–2008

Postyr (formerly Fridthjof Film) is a post-production service provider. They produce their own feature films, which are among the biggest national successes in recent Danish cinema.

Left Postyr as VFX Supervisor, but stayed their technical advisor for another year
Consulted the VFX department on commercials and set supervision matters
Helped to plan several VFX shootings and continued to teach the trainees and artists

VFX Supervisor

Fridthjof Film, Copenhagen/Denmark — 2006–2007

Fridthjof Film is a post-production service provider. They produce their own feature films, which are among the biggest national successes in recent Danish cinema.

Handled everything that was not editing related
Set up pipelines for short movies
3D setup, rendering, keying and general compositing for commercials, feature films, DVD and TV productions
Guided the VFX team (3–5 people) on shots that needed more attention
Worked heavily with shake, but also did 3D in Maya, scripting in in MEL, shake and AppleScript to keep the fast paced environment running
Delivered 100% of projects under time and budget and achieved a 100% customers satisfaction rate

Technical Editor — Maya 7 Visual Quickstart Guide

Peachpit Press, Berkeley/California — 2005

Peachpit is part of Pearson, the international media company. Peachpit has been publishing books on the latest in graphic design, desktop publishing, multimedia, Web design and development, digital video, and general computing since 1986.

Proofread of all the written material, on average one 10–paged chapter per day
Helped the authors to make the complicated technical details better understandable to a broader audience
Searched for inconsistencies in the flow of the book and pointed these out to the editors

If you like, you can buy the book on Amazon: → Maya 7 VQS

Lead Compositor - Ambulancen (Motion Picture)

Fridthjof Film, Copenhagen/Denmark — 2005

Fridthjof Film is a post-production service provider. They produce their own feature films, which are among the biggest national successes in recent Danish cinema.

Keyed about 150 green-screen shots in two months
Built my own shake keyer, which was used by all other compositors for 99% of the shots (ca. 400 of 450)
Created the title sequence in close collaboration with the director, which required to upscale and clean-up smaller then PAL footage

Education

Diplom Digital Artist
The German Film School, Elstal/Berlin/Germany 2001-2004

Awards

Animago Award 1^st place (Musicvideo/Compositing) — my dog eats beats
Audience Award 14. Internationales Bochumer Filmfestival — my dog eats beats
Honorary mention by the Erdiözese Freiburg — my dog eats beats

Personal

I like to geek out writing LaTeX documents, reading Terry Prattchet or Scott Sigler, while playing with new rendering techniques or listening to podcasts. I used to practice karate and ride mountain bike, but haven’t found the time to do so lately.

When I am doing none of the above, I like to play with our two ferrets or cook delicious food for friends and family.

Skills

Shake — power user
Nuke — entry level user
Fusion — intermediate user
AfterEffects — intermediate user
SynthEyes 3D tracker — intermediate user
Maya — power user
MEL — intermediate user
mental ray — power user
Pixar Renderman — intermediate user
General scripting — intermediate user
FileMaker — intermediate user
MS Project — entry level user
Windows — power user
OS X — power user
Linux — intermediate user

Referrals

You can also download this CV for future reference: → CV Alexander Kucera