My name is Alexander Kucera and I am a German lighting TD, compositor and VFX producer. 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. We are also among the world's first certified Nuke Training facilities.

• Lead artist responsible for 3D shading, rendering and compositing of all projects
• Delivered 100% of projects on time and budget
• Manage all the workstations and render farm machines
• Technical direction, setting up of 3D scenes, compositing scenes and all other technical workflows
• World's 1^st certified Nuke trainer

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, this included reworking of mental ray shading networks to work with Pixar's Renderman and the internal pipeline
• 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 on 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.”

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.

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.

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.

Education

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

fxphd — 2009-now
(You may check the courses I took by going to https://www.fxphd.com/verify and pasting in this code: FUD2BV6VHREUDUC2 )

Certified The Foundry Nuke trainer — 2011-now

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 — power user
• Fusion — power user
• AfterEffects — intermediate user
• Stereoscopic compositing — 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

• Sacha Bertram — vfx supervisor/vfx producer | sacha.bertram@idagrove.de
• Andreas Frickinger — compositing supervisor | andreas.frickinger@idagrove.de
• Udo Smutny — vfx supervisor/senior compositor | udo.smutny@vfx4you.de
• David Maas — freelance artist | david@stickman.de
• Stephen Coren – vfx supervisor | stephen.coren@kinkajou.org

You can also download this CV for future reference:
→

CV Alexander Kucera