Two and a half years ago, John Poisson created Ice Storm Digital Studio in Montreal to handle a job he acquired doing the photo-realistic effects for the Filmline International series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne. The series, which required more than 3,000 effects and took about a year to produce, resulted in the assembly of an outstanding team of animators.

‘We ended up with a team that was really well equipped to do lots of other projects,’ Poisson says. Now the organization is ‘one of the largest visual effects companies in Canada.’

Ice Storm produces visual effects for film and television and also does ‘a fair amount of commercial work.’ Apparently, it was the rich, photo-realistic stylings of the Jules Verne project that attracted commercial clients seeking to parlay the hot style the shop had mastered into some sexy spots.

Poisson explains: ‘We had a number of people coming to us looking for something in a similar vein. But now that we’ve expanded the work we’ve done into lots of other styles, people start to see there is a range of things we can do.’

Ice Storm loves bringing spots into the shop. ‘It keeps everyone sharp to be working on a project for a year and several times in the middle of the project, jump into a commercial job. Absolutely, it’s the same team [on spots and long form]. They enjoy doing both – too much of anything is not good,’ says Poisson.

‘Even though the skill sets tend to be the same, it is quite a different process for us. We like to bring commercial work in because it’s a really quick turnaround. It’s a creative challenge for our artists to work directly with a client like that.’

In this way, spots play a vital role in the Ice Storm workflow. ‘It [spot work] is definitely part of the plan. It spices up the place creatively,’ Poisson reports.

The company does not keep commercial directors on staff, but has relationships with a few local directors with whom it enjoys working.

Most recently, Ice Storm completed two :30s for Adidas International, headquartered in Portland, Oregon. According to Poisson, it was not the content of their reel that won them the Adidas campaign, but rather the way it was put together.

‘We did a ‘making of’ some of the effects shots from the Jules Verne series. The way we put that together, they found particularly interesting, and that was a big part of what got us that work.’

The Adidas campaign, produced by Bruce Dawson, was art directed for Ice Storm by Yanick Dusseault. Keith Kolder was the cgi supervisor while Jacques Levesque and Sebastien Moreau were supervising and senior compositors, respectively. The Hung Quach did the 3D equalizer tracking, while Mathieu Rainault was the cgi artist and matte painter. The two directors on the spots were Andrews Jenkin and Devin Moore.

Poisson describes the spots, which were completed in February of this year. ‘[They were] sort of modern-looking pieces with lots of mixed imagery. There were young athletes contrasted against famous athletes, performing famous things that they had done.’

The Montreal studio, located in the city’s east end, just west of the Olympic Stadium, houses a team of ‘about 45 people.’ However, Poisson says that with ‘some major new long-form projects coming in’ they are ‘about to grow significantly.’

Despite the heavy flow of long form, Poisson confirms he is still able to tackle any spot work that may come his way. ‘We can certainly handle those kind of projects within the schedule of these longer projects,’ he says. *

-www.icestormfx.com