Evolutions plans to spend £750,000 on a boutique commercials studio after tempting a Flame artist and two producers to join the company from Smoke and Mirrors.

Senior producer James Niklasson, executive producer Mike Capon and VFX supervisor Nico Cotta are all joining Earth, a new and separate company that will target the commercials, design, promos and visual effects market.

Evolutions’ Wells Street premises will be completely remodelled from December to make way for Earth.

It will eventually house three hero suites based around Flame, Smoke and Avid DS Nitris HD, plus 20 supporting workstations for CGI and VFX work.

Earth will absorb Evolutions’ design arm Sprout and employ a total of 14 full-time staff - six of whom are still to be recruited - plus freelancers.

Evolutions, which won Broadcast’s Post House of the Year in 2007, previously generated almost 100% of its income from television clients.

“We recognise that the future of post is not genre-specific,” said Evolutions managing director Simon Kanjee.
“The lines are blurring [between disciplines]. Post production is about providing services and creativity to our clients in order to assist them in producing compelling content, no matter for which genre or platform they’re
creating it.”

The studio’s official opening is slated for January next year.

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