Pixomondo
Pixomondo LLC, also known as Pixomondo Visual Effects, is an international digital visual effects (VFX) company that has produced digital art for a number of Star Trek projects with headquarters in Los Angeles, California, USA. 

The company was founded in 2001 by its CEO, Thilo Kuther, in Pfungstadt, Germany. Pixomondo produces VFX work for film, television and commercial uses. It currently operates studios in Beijing, Frankfurt, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Stuttgart, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Among many other industry awards, the company has won an Academy Award for the film  and several Emmy Awards for the  series. Former Star Trek alumnus Joe Bauer served as the most senior VFX staffer for the latter series. For its work on the  series, the company was nominated for two VES Awards in February 2018. It also provided the animation for the  episodes  and .

Star Trek association

Star Trek Into Darkness 
The LA, Berlin and Frankfurt branches of the company provided CGI effects for , the company's first official involvement with the Star Trek franchise. They were brought in to alongside Atomic Fiction, Digital Caliber, Giant Studios,  Stereo D, Halon Entertainment and Kelvin Optical, Inc. to help out lead VFX company ILM with the digital visual effects for the film, as much of that company's capacity was taken up by the various Marvel Comics and Star Wars installments of the 2010s. Ben Grossmann served as the company's senior VFX supervisor on that film. 

Pixomondo became the second VFX company for the film after lead company ILM, becoming responsible for 343 digital effects shots split across 15 sequences of which 's attack on Starfleet Headquarters and his extraction from Qo'noS were the most memorable. (Cinefex, issue 134, pp. 72, 82 & 84)

The strength of their work on Into Darkness eventually led Pixomondo to become the lead VFX vendor on Kurtzman-era Star Trek. Grossman credited ILM for providing his company with a steep learning curve, "It was humbling to work next to one of the industry giants. We were always aware that ILM had more horsepower than our entire company combined, but we found ways to turn around the same quality of work and give J.J. the same level of creative freedom that he expected. It was definitively two different companies and two different approaches. The great thing was it was extremely collaborative. There weren't any egos between the two companies. We were working towards the same goal." (Cinefex, issue 134, p. 91)
Star Trek Into Darkness crew
Visual Effects Supervisor
Ben Grossmann
Visual Effects Producer
Richard Ivan Mann
On-Set Visual Effects Supervisor
Alex Henning
Digital Effects Supervisor
Adam Watkins
Compositing Supervisor
Dan Cobbett
Division Visual Effects Supervisors

Simon Carr
Urs Franzen
Jörn Großhans
Thomas Lautenbach
Sven Martin
Saku Partamies
Michael Wortmann
Division Visual Effects Producers
Oliver Arnold
Laura Fitzpatrick
Sabrina Gerhardt
Pam Hammarlund
Annika Hirsch
Jing Li
Christopher Malessa
Franzisca Puppe
Christoph Zollinger
Global VFX Coordinators
Tommy Furukawa
Perry Kain
Visual Effects Editor

Visual Effects Stereoscopic Supervisor
Del Depierro
Compositing TD
Tzuen Wu
Division Compositing Supervisor
Jan Adamczyk
Division Compositing Leads
Micah Gallagher
Mathew Giampa
Noll Linsangan
Igor Majdandzic
Stephan Schäfholz
Compositors
Xuzhen An
Zheng Bad
John Bowers
John Brubaker
Marco Castellani
Michael Dohne
Denny Ertanto
Kelly Fischer
Larkin Flynn
Florian Franke
Feng Gao
Tobias Gerdts
Ebru Gönül
Falk Hofmann
Dartayous Hunter
Chao Jiang
Niko Junge
Markus Kircher
Ivan Kokov
Patrick Kreuser
Wing Kwok
Yu Li
Qian Li
Anthony Lyons
Dirk Matzkuhn
Christophe Metz
Gonzalo Fernandez Moyano
Aymeric Perceval
Christian Pundschus
Thomas Martin Tallósy
Jonas Thorbrügge
Daniel Trezise
David Vivaldini
Sören Volz
Yanlin Wang
Lonni Wong
David Zaretti
Anton Zheltyakov
CG Supervisor
Enrico Damm
Division Lighting Leads
Rens Heeren
Benny Herudek
Hansoo Im
Jonas Nöll
Jiabin Tan
Tong Tran
Lighters
Ilya Astrakhan
Christian Bahr
Jürgen Billstein
Sergej C. Eichmann
David R. Espinoza
Daniel Fazel
Erik Fernando
Kevin George
Johannes Groß
Christof Müller
Manuel Rico-Freire
Tilo Spalke
Fikret Yildirim
CG Artists
Gareth Stevenson
Emerick Tackett
Vit Zelich
Modelers
Darrell Abney
Simon Brenner
Alexander Chiles
Marcos De Barros
Animation Supervisor
Sebastian Butenberg
Animators
Florian Friedmann
Berter Orpak
Bastian Wartenberg
Effects Supervisors
Pieter Mentz
Patrick Schuler
Effects Artists
Uli Baier
Andreas Bundenthal
Andy Byrne
Kevin Kim
Johanes Kurnia
Leon Loukeris
Dino Muhic
Danielle Romero
Look Development Artists
Max Riess
Guo-Feng Tang
Matte Painters
Damien Mace
Knuth Möde
Greg Szafranski
Bruno Werneck
Matchmove Supervisor
Steven Hansen
Division Matchmove Supervisors
Lianne Forbes
Martin Jurado
Matchmovers
Wenyi He
Dominik Müller
Ian Northrop
Johannes Weiß
Edward Yu
Wei Zhang
Peng Zhang
Roto/Paint Artist Supervisor
Lance Ranzer
Roto/Paint Artists
Annalyn Betinol
Jason Bond
Wally Chin
Trea Cotton
Bradley Gaines
Duff Chung-Pu Hsiao
Justin Pascal
Crystle D. Schrecengost
Dongyue Yang
TD
Le Zhang
Visual Effects Coordinators
Mona Mohr
Trina Renee
Marlies Schacherl
Adrian Steel
Yinai Sun
Shanshan Xie
Yunrong Yu
Momo Zhan
Visual Effects Global Production Manager
Natasha Ozoux
Visual Effects Executive Producers
Thilo Kuther
Christian Vogt
Uncredited
Eri Adachi – Compositor
Rose Adler – Matchmove Artist
Carlos Anguiano – Pipeline Developer
Aitor Arroyo – Nuke Artist
Florian Ast – Compositing Intern
Ando Avila – Compositor
Justin Ball – Compositor
Zheng Bao – Compositor
Steven Barthen – CG Intern
Brandon Bartlett – Division CG Supervisor
Fritz Beck – Lighting Artist
Daniel Blöcher – CG Artist
Ioan Boieriu – FX Artist
Konstantin Borchert – Compositor
Chloe Bostian – Matte Painter
Jason Bowers – Compositor
Aaron Burnitt – Systems Administrator
Sue Campbell – Animator
Kyle Cascadden – IT Trainee
Zhongwei Chen – Matchmove Artist
Cheng Cheng – Rotoscope/Paint Artist
Sam Claitor – Compositing Trainee
Brian G. Curtis – Animator
Xu Dai – Rotoscope/Paint Artist
Gilbert Dawson-Kesson – CG Artist
Harish Devnani – Compositor
Matt DiNardo – Compositor
Doris Ding – Rotoscope/Paint Artist
Lucas di Rago – Digital Compositor
Maren Dolzmann – Visual Effects Coordinator
Pierre Drolet – Concept Designer/Modeler (pre-production)
Hugo Dominguez – Rotoscope/Paint Artist
Sebastian Domula – Lighting Artist
Daniel Emmerich – CG Intern
Juan Antonio Espigares Enriquez – Compositor
Benjamin Ey – Division Visual Effects Producer
Maeve Eydmann – Matte Painter
Hsuanyi Fang – Matchmove Artist
Salina Farkas – Accounting
Junaid Farooq – FX Artist
Dean Faulder – Animator/Modeler
Phylicia Feldman – Compositor
Chad Finnerty – Visual Effects Supervisor Consultant/Animator
Felix Fissel – IT Manager
Brian Fortune – Compositor
Layne Friedman – Compositor
Maxi Fröhlich – Compositing Intern
Christopher Fulmer – Systems Administrator
Matthaeus Gamroth – Animator
Liwei Gao – CG Artist
Jan Glöckner – Compositor
 Paolo Gnoni – CG Artist
Christian Godzik – FX Artist
Daniel Goertz – Pipeline Technical Director
Joanna N. Goslicka – Matchmove Artist
Björn Gottwald – Compositor
Elysia Greening – Compositor
Jonny Gu – Compositor
Phaneedra Gullapalli – Pipeline Developer
Benson Guo – Compositor
Thierry Hamel – Lead Matchmove and Environment TD
David Heimerl – Compositor
Andrea Hernandez – Division Lead Compositor
Nicholas Hiegel – Compositor
Isaac Hingley – Animator
Sebastian Hirsch – Matte Painter
Martin Höhnle – Matte Painter
Brian Holmes – Systems Administrator
Paul Hormis – Pipeline Technical Director
Craig Houston – Compositor
Gábor Hoványi – Compositor
Xiaoyong Hu – Matchmove Artist
Gary Huang – Render Wrangler
Xiandeng Huang – Compositor
Ali Ingham – Senior Visual Effects Production Coordinator
Florian Jackl – Systems Administrator
Robert Jackson – 2D Division Lead Compositor
Andrea Jamiel – Render Wrangler
Whan Je – i/o Coordinator
Henry Jefferson – Compositing Artist
Leo Jia – Animator/Modeler
Soyeon Olivia Jung – Rotoscope/Paint Artist/STereo Compositor
YeYoung Jung – Animator/Modeler
Christian Kalata – CG Artist
Sandro Kath – Compositor
James Kells – Compositor
Kolby Kember – Lighting and Shading Artist
Jun Young Kim – FX Artist
Dag Kjetsa – Compositor
Thomas Kleylein – FX Artist
Alexander Köhl – Digital Compositor
Christian Korneck – Systems Administrator
Sebastian Kral – Systems Administrator
Denis Kravtsov – Pipeline Developer
Lon Krung – Modeling and Texturing CG Artist
Norman Krüsmann – FX Artist
Michael Lankes – Compositor
Julius Lechner – FX Artist
Kenji Lee – Animator
Melissa Lee – Compositor
SeungJoo Lee – Compositor
Erik Lehmann – Texturing Artist
C.J. LePage – i/o
Jenny Leupold – CG Artist
Wenkang Li – Compositor
Zhunan Li – Visual Effects Coordinator
Jeff Lin – Animator
Kai Lin – Animator/Modeler
Benjamin Liu – FX Artist
Heng Liu – Animator/Modeler
Sunyan Liu – FX Artist
Jacob Lundmark – Roto/Paint Artist
Lap Van Luu – Systems Administrator
Chenchen Ma – Matchmove Artist
Zijun Ma – Roto/Paint Artist
Uwe Majer – Compositor
Fredrik Mannerfelt – Digital Compositor
Artur Margiv – Compositor
Jose Marin – Compositor
Natalie Meffert – Compositor
Felix Messerschmitt – Animator
Philip Meyer – Lighting Artist
Thomas Middleton – Digital Compositor
Brandon Miletta – Lighting Artist
Tobias Moenninger – Systems Administrator
Sven Müller – Lighting Artist
Alexa Müller-Heyn – Animator
Andrew Mumford – Compositor
Alex Murtaza – Matte Painter
Christine Neumann – Animator/Modeler
Giang T. Nguyen – Animator/Modeler
Kristin Nietzig – Division Accounting
Philip Nussbaumer – Division Lead Compositor
Fedor Odegov – Pipeline TD Post Production
Viktorija Ogureckaja – Visual Effects Global Production Manager
John F.K. Parenteau – VFX Executive Producer
Steve Parsons – Compositor
Bethany Pederson Onstad – Visual Effects Artist
Samuel Perez – Animator
Betsy Peters – Compositor
Hieu Phan – Roto/Paint Artist
Johannes Pink – Pipeline Technical Director
Leszek Plichta – Lighting Artist
Eleonora Principi – Rotoscope/Paint Artist
Daniel Profus – i/o
Zhennan Quan – Matchmove Artist
Andy Quinn – Compositor
Sean Raffel – Animator/Modeler
Antonio Ramos – Digital Compositor
Sebastian Reichhold – FX Trainee
Johannes Retter – Compositing Intern
Caroline Riess – Human Resources
Rick Rische – Matte Painter
Duncan Rochfort – Visual Effects Editor
Marcus O. Roth – Division Visual Effects Producer
Alexander Rumpf – Roto/Paint Artist
Toshihiro Sakamaki – Animator
Juan Ignacio Salgado – Division Lead Compositor
Cara Samuels – Visual Effects Coordinator
Kai Schadwinkel – Lighting Artist
Sebastian Schäfer – FX Artist
Katja Schmidt – Division Accounting
Roman Schmidt – Division CG Supervisor
Silam Schmidt – Global Talent Manager
Karie Schwabl – Production Assistant
Diane Schwebs – Human Resources
Kino Scialabba – Designer: Legion Entertainment/Matte Painter
Benjamin Seide – Division Visual Effects Supervisor
Marcos Shih – 3D Matte Painter/Concept Artist
Jason Shulman – Animator
Alexandra Simmes – Motion Graphics Artist
Miro Skandera – Matchmove Artist
Sven Skoczylas – Lighting Artist
Tammy Smith – Compositor
Simia Song – Rotoscope/Paint Artist
Roger Sparwasser – Lighting Artist
Mark Spindler – Compositor
Christopher Stack – i/o Manager
Michael Stark – FX Artist
Paul Stoll – Lighting Artist
Rainer Stolle – Matte Painter
Vladan Subotic – Animator
Haidong Sun – CG Artist
David Swift – Digital Matte Painter
Michael Thalmann – Head of IT
Duc Minh Tran – Animator
Tom Truscott – Compositor
Robert Tucker – Compositor
Jason Ullrich – Compositor
Claudius Urban – Senior Animator
Dirk Valk – Animator
Juliane Walther – Motion Graphics Trainee
Bill Wang – Visual Effects Coordinator
Cuiling Wang – Matchmove Artist
Huida Wang – Matte Painter
Hui Sophie Wang – Pipeline Intern
Steven Wang – CG Artist
John Watkins – Digital Effects Supervisor
Kaifeng Wei – Rotoscope/Paint Artist
Henry Weickert – Pipeline Technical Director
Claudia Weingärtner – Accounting
Florian Werzinski – Lighting Artist
Jon Wesström – Roto/Paint Artist
Patrick Wolf – Head of Pipeline
Sascha Wolf – i/o
Lonni Wong – Compositor
Carol Wu – Compositor
David Wu – Matchmove Artist
Runlin Xiong – Animator
Tou Yeng Xiong – Animator
Tolga Yalkir – Systems Administrator
Zhao Yang – Compositor
Seda Yilmaz – Coordination Trainee
Ben Ying – Visual Effects Compositor
Kei Yoneoka – FX Artist
Aiping Zhang – Compositor
Zhuotao Zhang – Matchmove Artist
Zihao Zhang – Matchmove Artist
Bin Zheng – Compositor
Carol Zhou – Animator
Jianghong Zhu – Compositor
Huajing Zhuo – Compositor
Xinguo Zou – Compositor

Star Trek: Discovery 
Following CBS' February 2017 decision to pass over its own in-house VFX subsidiary, CBS Digital, and outsource the work, Pixomondo Toronto (as indicated by the "Canadian Production Services Tax Credit" in the end-credit roll of each episode) became the primary effects house for the  series, though under supervision of the LA head quarters.  Though for other reasons, this was actually a case of Star Trek history repeating itself as predecessor and former franchise owner Paramount Pictures had passed over its VFX subsidiary FGC – which had co-provided the VFX for  – in 1981 in favor of ILM for the  from  onward. Unlike CBS Digital, FGC went defunct immediately afterwards.

Pixomondo also supplies screen-used 3D studio models to Ben Robinson, the project manager of Eaglemoss Collections' Star Trek: Discovery The Official Starships Collection. 

Incidentally, the LA branch of the company also started from its second season onward to work for Seth MacFarlane's, heavily -inspired, science fiction show The Orville,  which in the meantime had become something of an unintended franchise competitor for Discovery.

Short Treks 
Pixomondo provided the animation for the  episodes  and .

Star Trek: Picard 

Pixomondo and CG supervisor Dan Smiczek were brought onto  very early in development, with a crew of approximately 50-75 designing the CG models for the  and La Sirena.  A promotional digital breakdown video short of the hugely detailed Artifact was posted by the company on the filesharing website YouTube. 

Pixomondo was not the only digital visual effects company working on the show. Reinforcements were secured in the form of the companies Crafty Apes, Double Negative, Filmworks/FX and Technicolor VFX.  Crafty Apes and Double Negative had already, along with other visual effects companies, assisted Pixomondo for all seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. 
Star Trek: Picard crew (as ascertained from YouTube video end credit roll and IMDb)
VFX Executive Producer
Perry Kain
VFX Producer
Dan Carbo
VFX Supervisor
Derek Spears
CG Supervisor
Dan Smiczek
Asset CG Supervisor
Nico Bauerschäfer
Digital Production Manager
Colin de Andrade
Division Digital Production Manager
Laura Dochtermann
Division CG Supervisors
Marc Roth
Prapanch Swamy
Senior Compositors
Tun-En Chen
Dan Knight
Compositors
Kyle Patrick Brown
Amy Davis
Duff Chung-Pu Hsiao
Digital Artists
Joseph Civitate
Omar Hesham
Previsualization Artists
Noah Sage Amrani
Ryan Walton
Environments Supervisor
Milan Schere
Senior Environment Artists
Niall Booker
Greg Szafranski
Lookdev Artists
Matthew Dale
Leonardo Ledesma
CFX Lead
Nathan Breton
FX Lead
Khi Kim
FX Artists
Kenneth Bailey
Nicholas King
VFX Editor
Nicole Cedic
Senior Animator
Nathan Hopkins
Poduction Accountant
Matt Hughes

Other Star Trek connections 
Prior to its first official involvement with the Star Trek franchise, Pixomondo had already served as a refuge for a number of former Star Trek digital artists, after both the Berman-era Star Trek and the Ronald D. Moore-era Battlestar Galactica live-action franchises had run their courses. After these series concluded, their respective effects houses, Eden FX and ZOIC Studios, were forced to lay off much of their staff, as a consequence. 

Digital artists with a strong Star Trek pedigree who found a (temporary) new home at Pixomondo included Robert Bonchune, Pierre Drolet, David R. Morton, John F.K. Parenteau (formerly of Amblin Imaging and co-founder of Digital Muse, which went defunct before Eden FX), Eric Hance, and Mitch Suskin. Excepting Drolet's short-lived preliminary contributions to Into Darkness, none of these other veterans have worked on Pixomondo's Star Trek commissions as of 2018, save Parenteau who was known to have worked on Into Darkness as well as "VFX Executive Producer", albeit uncredited. Drolet however, was shortly reacquainted with his former Pixomondo colleagues when he was sub-contacted by CBS Studios in 2017 as an independent contractor to help out as 3D modeler on the first two VFX heavy episodes of Discovery, though he received no credit for it. 

Instead, employees including Darrell Abney, Jan Adamczyk and Miro Skandera became professionally acquainted with the Star Trek franchise for the first time, when the company secured the commission for Star Trek Into Darkness. Former Pixomondo employees Jason Michael Zimmerman,  Ante Dekovic, and Star Trek veteran Eric Hance are serving as the studio's senior VFX supervisors for Kurtzman-era Star Trek, where they were reunited with many of their former Pixomondo colleagues.

Documentaries 
 DIS Season 1 Blu-ray-special feature, "Creating Space"

Further reading 
"Dark Side of the Earth", Joe Fordham, Cinefex, issue 134, pp. 70-91

External links 
  – official site
 
Digital visual effects companies