Foundation Imaging was a CGI visual effects studio, computer animation studio, and post-production editing facility that pioneered digital imaging for television programming using Newtek's LightWave 3D on Commodore Amiga based Video Toaster workstations. Founded by Paul Beigle-Bryant and Ron Thornton, they are best known for their work on the science fiction series Babylon 5. Their Emmy Award winning work on the pilot episode of Babylon 5 popularised the usage of Lightwave 3D on US TV shows for CGI visual effects, leading to it becoming an industry standard. After Babylon 5's third season, when they were not renewed by the Babylon 5 producers, they worked on Paramount's Star Trek Voyager and Deep Space Nine (winning two more Emmys for their work on Voyager), as well as providing CG visuals for the Warner Brothers direct-to-video animated movies based on Batman:The Animated Series.
The company was dissolved after work on season one of Star Trek: Enterprise had been completed and the company assets were sold off in a public auction on December 17, 2002 by Brian Testo Associates, LLC. Key animators from the company, Adam "Mojo" Lebowitz and John Teska remain major figures in the visual effects field for their work on shows such as the rebooted Battlestar Galactica and Lost.
Famous quotes containing the word foundation:
“Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)