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Behind The Creative Mind Of Visual Effects Artist – Vitaly Verlov

Behind The Creative Mind Of Visual Effects Artist – Vitaly Verlov
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Behind the creative mind of visual effects artist – Vitaly Verlov

If you had to describe Vitaly Verlov in several words, perhaps enthusiasm would do just fine. Intelligence and drive also would fit him to a tee. What about driven and highly creative? Yes, we’re probably leaving some other key words out, but all of those words definitely fit this motion graphics designer, visual effects artist and filmmaker.

Vitaly Verlov has been interested in films, (is obsessed too strong of a word?) since he was a boy in Russia. He remembers several James Cameron movies that sold him on films as a viable art form and simply great entertainment: “Aliens” and “Terminator 2.” Terrific action films, both of them, and they both had rather straight forward linear stories with heart and convincing special (visual) effects. Who can disagree with his high opinion of these money making cinematic treasures? Not many of us, that’s for sure. And that was the point when he became obsessed (now it is a right word) with filmmaking techniques and the process behind special and visual effects used to enhance the narrative.

Computers and a natural attraction to the visual arts led Vitaly into the world of graphic design and cinema. He loved hardcore computer science but also appreciated the artistic potential of the machines. He switched from computer programming to graphic design, then motion graphics and visual effects and began working on commercials and TV shows. That led him into producing visual effects and motion and broadcast graphics for innumerable international brands such as Volkswagen, Samsung, Nokia and doing work for MTV, VH1 and a host of European productions such as Eurovision, Sensation and major Russian brands like Beeline. Some of his past projects are featured in the demoreel available on his website www.primevalues.net

And there is nothing odd in such a radical switch from low-level computer programming to the visual design field – he says – because there is a universal beauty and similarity pattern: no matter if it is the beauty of computer code, the beauty of a graphic image or a screenplay or a narrative film. Essentially it is the very same thing expressed in various forms but under the similar processes. You just pick different tools to express it. Also, experience in different fields has a positive value because you have an ability to adapt specific principles from different areas of expertise and sometimes it gives very pleasant and unexpected results.

His expertise and thoroughness brought him to the attention of an international visual effects company who hired him to be the lead VFX artist for the soon to be released Chinese science fiction movie, “Impossible,” directed by prominent Chinese film director Sun Zhou.

As a filmmaker, Vitaly wrote and directed two short films, one of which, “Forever After,” was selected to participate in the Cannes Film Festival. The other, “Redux,” starred the famous Hollywood actor Eric Roberts and caught the eye of The New York Film Academy, which will be using that film in its education program.

One of Vitaly’s feature-length science fiction screenplays, partly based on ideas from already produced “Redux,” got the attention of a literary agent who read it at a writing competition it was entered in. Vitaly continues to work as a VFX artist, art director and motion graphics designer, while writing and working on funding two more of his short film scripts.