The Foundry is a pioneer in the visual effects software space and has been instrumental in bringing alive many a film on the big screen. Its tool, Nuke, is used in every blockbuster, from period dramas to big-ticket computer-generated imagery (CGI) efforts such as the recent Marvel blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy.
The technology company, which has its headquarters in London’s Golden Square, very close from Soho’s rich seam of post-production houses, is relatively indefinite to the man on the street but it is a household name for every visual effects (VFX) artist in the business.
The company’s CEO Bill Collis in a recent interaction with The Telegraph UK revealed that The Foundry has over 20,000 clients with the likes of Disney, Pixar and Double Negative being among their most revered partners.
But now the company is planning to break the shackles and start applying its visual smarts to a brand new industry, Collis further revealed in the interaction. The Foundry will now put its VFX tools and its 3D knowledge to the test by creating softwares for product designers by venturing into the concept design world.
The idea behind this radical thought being, giving the designers the opportunity to freely use the 3D environment to develop better concepts and also see them translate into reality, rather than using the 2D environment for trial and error, which according to Collis is a flawed model.
The Foundry is currently working out deals with some of the biggest sportswear companies and car manufacturers in the world as Collis informs that design makes up a quarter of their business now and it’s growing at double the rate of visual effects.
The launch of concept design software Modo is the latest stage of The Foundry’s diversification strategy. The company has already built an army of tools for the film industry, taking much of the risk out of its business model.
The company, which is backed by private equity house Carlyle, has grown between 20 per cent and 30 per cent year on year, since inception and is on track for a turnover of Ł20 million. It employs 270 people across its London, Manchester, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and Shanghai offices.
Founded in 1996, The Foundry was first only writing plug-ins to prop up existing software packages made by US giants such as Autodesk. In 2006, Collis decided it was time to take the bulls by its horns and take on competitors like Adobe by developing Nuke, a complete ‘compositor’, which stitches different layers of a shot together seamlessly.
In VFX, Collis’s claim to fame is that he wrote the algorithms for the famous “bullet time” scene in the 1999 blockbuster The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves. And seeing that his flair for figures was even more useful to the running of the business, he was soon promoted to the rank of CEO from being an algorithm man.
With a great extent of VFX now being used in movies, TV series, advertising and where not, the guys at The Foundry are also working on VFX solutions for the Oculus Rift headset.
And that’s not all; the big boss from The Foundry is on his way to India for the launch of the new version of Nuke Studio, beginning a three city tour from Mumbai on 10 November at St. Andrews Auditorium, St Domnic Road, Bandra (West), Mumbai – 400050; followed by Hyderabad and Chennai on 12 and 13 November respectively.
One of the star attractions for the event would be Framestore’s head of compositing Theodor Groeneboom showcasing the use of Nuke for movies like Gravity and Guardians of the Galaxy. He has spent the past 13 years creating visual effects for commercials, broadcast television and feature films.
For the last five years he has been with Framestore London working on blockbuster films such as Avatar, Gravity and Guardians of the Galaxy. His post production work on Gravity earned him a Visual Effects Society award for “Outstanding Compositing in a Motion Picture Feature” at the 12th Annual VES awards in Los Angeles. As well as an Oscar for Best Visual Effects given to the Framestore Gravity team.
So if you are keen on really understanding what went behind the making of one of the best visual spectacle on the silver screen come and see his amazing talk on how he utilised Nuke on Gravity and Guardians of the Galaxy.
And apart from the foreign delegate, ARK Infosolutions – the official distributor for The Foundry in India – there would be folks from Red Chillies who will be presenting a few case studies in Mumbai, and Firefly Creative Studio in Chennai and Hyderabad, so some great local talent will be on showcase as well. It’s a great time to come together for the VFX community and chat with The Foundry team, Theo and The Foundry CEO Bill Collis.
