BAFTA and multi-award winning VFX and animation studio, Jellyfish pictures, announced the opening of a new virtual animation facility in Sheffield. The move continues Jellyfish Pictures’ pioneering efforts, after creating Europe’s first virtual VFX studios back in 2017. The new site is the company’s fifth studio in the UK and is in addition to Jellyfish Pictures’ established studios in Fitzrovia, Central London, Brixton, South London and Oval, South London.
With no hardware housed onsite, Jellyfish Pictures’ Sheffield studio, situated in the city centre within the state-of-the-art Cooper Project Complex, will operate in a completely PC over IP environment. With all technology and pipeline housed in a centrally based co-location, the studio is able to virtualise its distributed workstations through Teradici’s remote visualisation solution; allowing for total flexibility and scalability.
The Sheffield site will sit on the same logical LAN as the other four studios, providing access to the company’s PixStor Software Defined Storage (SDS) from Pixit Media, enabling remote collaboration and support for flexible working practices. With the rest of Jellyfish Pictures’ studios all TPN (Trusted Partner Network) accredited, the Sheffield studio will follow in their footsteps, utilising PixStor’s multi-tenancy container services for audit-compliant secure data separation and isolation.
The innovative studio will be headed up by Jellyfish Pictures’ newest appointment, Animation Director, Kevin Spruce. With an impressive career spanning over 30 years, Spruce joins Jellyfish Pictures from Framestore, where he oversaw a team of 120 as the company’s Head of Animation. During his time at Framestore, Spruce worked as Animation Supervisor on a roster of blockbuster feature films includingFantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Legend of Tarzan and Guardians of the Galaxy. Prior to his 17 year stint at Framestore,
Spruce held positions at Canadian animation company, Bardel and Spielberg helmed feature animation studio, Amblimation.
Jellyfish Pictures’ northern presence will start off with a small team of animators working on the company’s original animation projects, with a view to expand its team and set up with a large feature animation project by the end of the year.
