Verdi Sevenhuysen

Verdi Sevenhuysen began his career as an animator in his native Holland during his study of IMT (Image Media and Technology) at the Utrecht School of Arts. IMT was a newly formed department that was investigating the rise of digital art and had formed relationships with Dutch media giant NOB who exposed the students to professional video editing and animation equipment. Among the early equipment were ACE editors, Apollo Intelligent Light and Cubicomp Picturemaker animation stations and later Wavefront on SGI's Personal Iris would be added. This and other equipment formed the basis of what would feed Verdi's main interest, animation. This led to a collaboration with Dutch television station VARA who commissioned Verdi and other students to create animation shorts for one of their game shows "Two to Twelve".

During his study he was given the opportunity to a placement in London. He used this time there to teach himself Alias 3D software at the Royal Academy of Arts and help with an animation project that the Academy had started. This brought him in contact with post house Rushes, who shortly after offered him to work with their affiliated 3D department. To facilitate this and to further explore his possibilities he decided to emigrate to the UK and started his own animation company, Verdigo Ltd.

A few years with Rushes and some freelance work around Europe later, Rushes decided to give Verdi the chance of starting their own in-house 3D department which he accepted. His six years there proved to be an incredibly creative period as he continued his work in 3D and became one of the first artists worldwide to master 2D compositing and visual effects on Discreet's Flame. Verdi also started to include set supervision as part of his skill-set. He won several commercial awards incuding an International Monitor Award for his special effects work on a spot for the U.S. Marine Corps and his contribution to Sinead 'O Connor's "Thank You For Hearing Me" helped it win a Music Promo Prize at the Imagina Prix Pixel Award Ceremony in Monte Carlo.

Six years later Verdi's eyes turned to the USA to look for a new challenge and in 1997 joined then Encore Santa Monica to start their Special Effects department. This would eventually grow into what is now R!OT Pictures.

Since moving to Los Angeles, Verdi has continued to expand his skills and develop his artistry. His best work is intensely collaborative in nature, such as projects for Spree, Bugle Boy and ATT. In these three cases, he teamed up with New York based director Simon Blake, who described the experience this way: "Verdi is a fantastic artist with a brilliant eye. He acted as my 'pen'. The spirit of collaboration was wonderful."

Verdi continues to seek out new technologies and opportunities to consider as the digital film industry is evolving. He does software beta testing for a range of Discreet products and keeps looking for ways to improve the business model for post production.