Zelcs and Dale both join the company from MPC
Outpost VFX has appointed Dan Zelcs and Oliver Dale to its UK creature team.
The VFX house opened a London facility last year, and has since added a number of creatives to its team. It now has offices in London, Bournemouth, Montreal, Mumbai, and Los Angeles.
Zelcs joins as ceature supervisor after over 16 years at MPC, where he worked on the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s performance capture for Terminator: Genisys and the delivery of the ghost of Spengler in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. His other high-profile work includes animating the titular character in Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, working alongside Ridley Scott on creature sequences for Alien: Covenant and the rapid redesign and delivery of the hero characters in Sonic the Hedgehog.
Zelcs said: “I’m excited to be joining a seasoned team of VFX pros, many of whom I’ve had the pleasure to work with in the past. It’s a joy to reconnect with such a friendly, generous and experienced bunch. I’m looking forward to contributing to the tools and workflows that the team have been building and helping to deliver creature work to the highest possible standard.”
Meanwhile, Dale becomes animation supervisor after a similar stint at MPC of over 14 years. He animated Rocket Raccoon and Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy, and was part of the Academy Award winning team that delivered Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book. He also recently served as animation supervisor on the Favreau-produced dinosaur series Prehistoric Planet.
Dale said: “What excites me most about joining Outpost is both the people and the potential. It’s exciting to be working somewhere that is pushing into much more complex creature and character animation, and assembling a great team to build everything that requires. I see lots of skilled people with fresh ideas and enthusiasm all coming together to make something great.”
Rachel Matchett, UK managing director for Outpost, added: “It’s a pleasure to welcome Dan and Oliver to the Outpost team at a very exciting time. I’ve known them both for a while now and knew they’d bring vast amounts of expertise to the team as we continue to create ever more ambitious CG characters for film and episodic.
“It’s extremely important at Outpost that any senior hires are a good cultural fit, and Oliver and Dan completely meet that brief. Their knowledge of complex character work has already been felt across Outpost and added further Oscar-winning pedigree to our team.”
Outpost VFX is currently in production on The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Fast X, True Love and more, having recently completed VFX for Renfield, Silo and the third season of Star Trek: Picard.
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