Giant Studios, the fast track animation and motion capture studio, continues to add experienced people to its ever growing staff. Technical Innovator, William O. Shultz was signed as the company’s Chief Technical Officer (CTO); Kathleen Fitch was named Senior Producer, and Rudy Poat has joined Giant as Visual Effects Supervisor.

As part of Giant’s planned expansion, Los Angeles will be home base for Schultz. His responsibilities include strategic planning and R&D efforts involving Giant’s proprietary technology and its interface with practical photography, as well as the animation production pipeline. Schultz will also continue to develop proprietary software and hardware solutions in the areas of practical photography, 3D, and film effects. Schultz comes to Giant Studios from Mill Film in London, where he was Director of Technology at the prestigious film production and effects studio owned by Directors Tony and Ridley Scott. His latest work at Mill Film involved developing a scanning and film recording pipeline for the feature film Gladiator, and initial deployment of fiber channel and storage area network infrastructure.

Prior to Mill, Schultz was with Sony Pictures Imageworks, beginning his tenure with Sony as a charter member of the Imageworks team. As Senior Vice President of Technology and Digital Production, he was the architect of the technical production infrastructure, a 100,000 square foot facility, and he recruited many of the technical and digital production staff of Imageworks. In addition, he was responsible for daily operations of Digital Production, including supervision of Scanning/Film Recording, Software, Hardware, Systems Engineering, and Digital Production departments. Schultz also managed the design and implementation of the software development pipeline, including in-house version control, 2D and 3D API1s, as well as production support software. He was project manager for R&D of several new technologies. In 1999, Schultz won an Academy Award for his part in developing the Stealth Dolly (a light, quiet motion control dolly system).

Kathleen Fitch will oversee projects as they move through the studio, organizing and coordinating jobs to ensure a streamlined production process. Fitch has already taken the reins, managing several jobs. Previously, Fitch worked as an Executive Producer for ten years with Leslie Advertising, one of South Carolina’s leading agencies. Her interest in new and evolving media technologies led to a decision to become part of the postproduction industry and she became Senior Producer at Crawford Communications (Atlanta, GA). As Senior Producer, she supervised ad agency and production company projects through the facility. In addition, she worked with the High Definition production team producing long format and commercial content for the digital pipeline.

Rudy Poat, an industry leader in 3D photorealism and special effects, joins Giant as its Visual Effects Supervisor. Poat’s work has been seen in blockbuster feature films such as Starship Troopers, What Dreams May Come , and Matrix. Poat comes to Giant Studios from Pacific Data Images (Palo Alto, Calif.) where he held the title of Visual Effects Developer in their Commercial and Feature Effects Department. Prior to PDI, he was with Manex Entertainment (Alameda, Calif.) as part of the R&D team for What Dreams May Come. Partway through that film, he was pulled away to help design the imagery for Matrix. He was designated lead color and lighting supervisor on the film. Prior to Manex, he worked at Mass Illusion, (Lenox, Mass.) as Senior Technical Director on Starship Troopers. There he was given the task of creating software for the project, writing shaders, and designing all of the main lighting. Poat’s CG effects career started at Reflex, a company he launched to produce high-end 3D animation for film, and where he began to write his own tools.