LONDON – Mocap and performace capture facility The Imaginarium Studios (imaginariumstudios.co.uk) recently made three key hires. Alex Hill comes on board as business development manager for gaming, while Dan Baybutt joins the studio as post production supervisor Dan Baybutt, and Lucy Pennington takes on the role of operations manager.
“We are delighted to add such qualified and talented new members to our team,” notes CEO, Matt Brown. “Alex has great connections within the video games sector and he’s a proven commercial leader. his arrival consolidates our strategy, which aims to keep on developing services for gaming projects, but also to expand our content to target other creative sectors. Lucy, having worked at Pinewood previously, will be such an asset to our clients, and I’m thrilled to have Dan return to us after years of him honing his craft on a range of impressive film, video games and music projects.“
Photo (L-R): Hill, Pennington and Baybutt
The Imaginarium Studios was formed in 2012 by actor/director Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, Planet of the Apes and Star Wars franchises) as a stand-alone facility focused on performance-led capture and virtual production services.
Hill will work out of both company facilities at Pinewood Studios and Ealing. His immediate focus will be to strategically strengthen and further position the studio to service existing and new gaming clients. He will also partner with existing film & TV clients to provide them with top quality services while procuring new clients and identifying fresh business ventures and opportunities.
Prior to joining The Imaginarium Studios, Hill was a lead producer in the central Zynga creative marketing team, managing asset creation for games suchas Star Wars Hunters, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and Words with Friends. Before that, he was the senior manager of creative services at Activision Blizzard.
Dan Baybutt originally started his career with the company back in 2015. In between he worked at Weta FX, where he was a motion editor. Prior to that, he worked at ILM as a mocap TD.
In her operations role, Lucy Pennington will be based at Pinewood and the company’s offices in Ealing. She’ll be responsible for all aspects of logistics and planning support to the production clients before, during and after their residency at the studio. She joins the company from Pinewood Studios, where she worked as a receptionist, providing excellent customer service as the first point of contact.