Top VFX Specialist Richard Kidd Joins Artemple-Hollywood Along With Scott McCullough

Veteran visual-effects specialist Richard Kidd – who has worked on films such as Titanic, Twilight, The Matrix, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Hancock and What Lies Beneath – has joined Artemple-Hollywood as creative director and senior VFX supervisor, company principal Wei Zheng announced. The company also has hired award-winning commercial director Scott McCullough as in-house director and director of photography.

“This is an exciting time,” said Zheng. “We’re thrilled to bring two seasoned pros to our core creative team.  Richard possesses a high level of expertise that is rare to find, especially with respect to visual-effects supervision.  Scott is a wonderful collaborator and we couldn’t be happier having him on board.  As a Director and DP, he brings a great deal of experience and talent to our company.”

Kidd, a former member of the board for the Visual Effects Society and board of advisors for the Gnomon School, has been part of numerous visual-effects projects and films over the past two decades. Most recently, he was on-set VFX supervisor and producer for the just-released George Tillman Jr. film The Longest Ride. He was involved in the development of such VFX technology staples as motion-capture, digital water (which he oversaw for Titanic), realistic computer generation of human crowds and virtual sets. He has worked at Digital Domain, Manex VFX, Sony Pictures ImageWorks, i.Solve and his own Catalyst Media Group.

At Culver City-based Artemple, Kidd will work on films, TV, commercials, theme-park content, special venues, digital content and experiential marketing.

McCullough, an award-winning commercial director for more than two decades, will specialize in live-action production of commercials, long-form and digital content.  His clients have included Pepsi, Ford, NASCAR, GM, Polaris, Jeep, Coors, Home Depot, Target, Lowe’s and Budweiser, and his projects have received 22 Telly Awards, a 2014 Addy and many more awards.

Artemple launched at the beginning of 2014 and handled effects on Gone Girl and the upcoming Entourage movie.