Your Business: Image creators forge ahead at warp speed

Simon McCormack, Denny Monk, Geraldine Schnauer and Mat Blamires are excited by Lightfarm Studios' future. Photo / Steven McNicholl

New Zealand is building an international reputation for its high-tech creative industry - Weta Digital and game developer Sidhe among others.

Lightfarm Studios, an Auckland company specialising in creating computer-generated still images, is developing a name for itself among advertising agencies here and overseas.

It started last April and the Auckland company's turnover is where the founders forecast it would be in their third year of operation.

Lightfarm expects to double its studio team within the next six months.

The use of CGI in advertising has increased phenomenally because of the versatility it offers.

It is being used by ad agencies as a cost-effective alternative to model making and set building.

Company director Mat Blamires gives the example of an ad for Malaysian Tiger beer.

The initial idea was to shoot a barley field but by the time the company was ready for the shoot, all the barley fields in the Southern Hemisphere had been harvested.

Lightfarm built the whole barley field on CGI, photographing hills and sky for background.

The company's CGI imaging can be seen in jobs like DraftFCB's Man vs Wild print ad - a campaign of three images of a Zebra kebab, a pizza slice with pieces of metal and grubs on it, and a fries packet with huhu grubs.

A Coco Pops ad is another well known example, with the cereal diving board and cereal box computer-generated.

"What is special about us is we are doing photo real images. You don't know that it's not a photo," says marketing and client director Geraldine Schnauer.

The skills of the three top men - Mat Blamires, Simon McCormack, Denny Monk - are an excellent mix, says Schnauer, who has taken a number of innovative New Zealand products to the world when she worked with Independent Liquor, Emerald Foods, Tasti Products and Fonterra Brands.

Blamires is an experienced photographer with an international reputation, McCormack spent 20 years in the UK working in both retouching and CGI, and Monk, a Canadian, has worked with ad agencies like DDB in Australia in a similar field.

At the moment the bulk of their CGI expertise is going into print work.

"It is more demanding in terms of [the] detail and realism that you need to achieve," says Blamires.

Lightfarm's clients are mainly ad agencies including DDB, Colenso, Saatchi & Saatchi and DraftFCB.

On their behalf, Lightfarm has done work for globally recognised brands such as Smirnoff, Singapore Airlines, Cadbury, Sony, Volkswagen, Sky TV, Caltex, Tiger Beer, Panasonic and Dunhill.

The fast-growing company has just recruited two young talented Brazilians who were senior CGI artists at a world-class post production studio in Brazil and approached Lightfarm for work.

Lightfarm has appointed an agent in the US with offices in all the main American cities and a high profile.

With plenty of demand from the main ad agencies in Australia and through Asia, the founders expect to have offices in Sydney and Singapore or Hong Kong before long.

Consumer goods will not be the only area Lightfarm works with.

Architectural firms, wanting photo real pictures, are an obvious group to approach. A global events organiser has approached the company and interest has also come from the super yacht and the car industries.