Hons Degree in Interior Architecture from MMU. Worked in London for 2 years for architects. Entered into architectural visualisation working with several industry leading firms. International clients list including Land Securities, Bruntwood, Allied London, BBC, ING real estate, Aedas, Atkins & Benoy. Awarded Crains Northwest 40 under 40 for achievement in business. Recognised as an authority in architectural CGI with multiple accolades in the Exposé Worldwide Awards. Tony is also a regular contributor to Advanced Photoshop Magazine. Father of three.

Ian Hogg – Creative Director
Studied Animation (BA Hons) before embarking on a 10 year career in advertising, working across all product areas, all markets, all media, above and below-the-line. Key accounts include Appletiser, British Airways, Adidas, BBC, Kelloggs, Health & Safety Executive, CAT clothing, Loréal, Warburtons and UPS. Ian also has global advertising agency experience including working for McCann Erikson, JWT and TBWA. He has won 36 National and International Awards, Including a One Show Pencil (New York) and appearances in the EPICA annual (Europe’s Premier Creative Awards).

Gareth Thatcher – Technical Director
Trained as a character animator before entering a career in CGI. Now acknowledged as a leading authority, his work has been published consistently over the past 8 years in the world renowned Ballistic publishing annuals (Exposé, 3, 4, 5, 6 and Elemental 2, 3). He is also one of the few people to have earned both an Exposé Master Award, and an Elemental Excellence Award (Worlds best autodesk art). Gareth is also a regular contributor to 3D World magazine where he shares his technical expertise. Together with the other Mi key staff he won two accolades at the Big Chip Awards including ‘Best use of Animation’.

If you work with digital imagery you can now create anything you can imagine. The creative opportunities open to you are endless. We are an award winning animation and visual effects production studio. Our staff have been creating outstanding imagery for nearly 10 years. We are part of a new era of digital possibilities.

Our clients include the BBC, Distiller Records, Land Securities, Marketing Manchester and many others.
We work with advertising agencies, production companies, record companies, property developers, architects and Tv companies.

We have the technology and expertise to achieve incredible results for you, and a clear staged working system – Mi Method – which simplifies what can be a complex process.

We would love to hear from you: info@wearemi.com

We decided we needed something a little unusual. And loud. So we obtained the help of Zelig Sound, and set about creating a strange animated journey from our studio to the event venue. The Big Chips have become a big night in the calendar, so it made sense, well at least to us, to populate Manchester with some big things.

The film seemed to do it’s job too – from where we were sitting most of the room seemed to be watching, even if only through one eye.

So here is Leo – THE face of the News of the World’s online World Cup coverage. He’ll be providing opinions, and a dose of fun in his video column. You can even follow him on twitter.

Mi worked on the character with Chris Gooch of Rubber Studios. The project was completed in just over one hard-working week. The animations were all created in Maya, but Leo’s character was created by adding in a healthy dose of what we call ‘a bit of the Winstone’.

The job was great to work on, and we wish Leo, (and of course Eng-Ger-Lund), all the best for the World Cup.

Thankfully at the end of the shot our little hero perfectly kicks a non-existent football a very long way. (The football was then added using Maya and Fusion). The result is hopefully a good bit of fun.

The viral was viewed over 3000 times in it’s first week, which is pretty good going, a big thanks to Push On and @leeborrett for giving the film a nudge in the right direction.

Please send examples of work, your C.V., and rates to info@wearemi.com

Mrs Peppercorn’s Magical Reading Room is an ambitious short film being produced in the North West by Black Lake Films. Mi became involved when MD Tony noticed something unusual happening in his village: “I noticed, well, my kids noticed, that from a distance part of the main street through the village seemed to be covered in snow. On closer inspection I noticed the tell-tale trucks and lights of a film crew. A quick Google later found an article on How-Do and everything started to become clear.”

Mi contacted director Mike Le Han and now we are helping out with five effects shots for the production. Collaborating closely with VFX supervisor Ben Haworth, we’re producing set extensions and full CG shots for the film, which is to be shot all on RED, and by the looks of the teaser, is going to be fantastic.

Once again, we have to thank a huge amount of people who gave a lot of time to make this happen: our director Mark Jewitt, the gents at Redbutton films, Mark McQueen, Mike Costelloe & crew, Mercedes Crescenti and many others.

The whole thing was shot on Red, and produced entirely in Manchester.  The video is out and about on all the usual channels,  including NMETV.  We hope you like it.

Our technical director Gareth has recently had some of his work (including the image above) accepted into ‘Ispirato – A Collection of Fine Visualization Artists of the World – Volume I’ which is published soon. So now he is a Fine Artist. He has begun to wear black exclusively and hang out in cafes smoking Gitanes. This has been a little inconvenient, but we are proud of him adding another accolade to his C.V. so we’re letting it pass.

While we’re talking architectural CGI, we have recently finished some images for The Co-operative Group. This spectacular building is set to become the focus of the Co-op’s masterplan for their corner of Manchester city centre. Click on the thumbs to see them all big and nice.

We have recently been working on a project involving 3D holograms which appear onstage next to presenters. Yes, you read that right. Holograms. Real ones, like Star Trek. Tch eh?

Working with a creative agency we have created huge 3D assets which are to be turned into holograms by these people. The technology, according to the Musion website:

“…uses a specially developed foil that reflects images from high definition video projectors, making it possible to produce virtual holographic images of variable sizes and incredible clarity…”

The site features some pretty incredible examples of the holograms in action; the world’s first holographic beat-boxing and holo-DJing is here, and this real time presentation link up is fairly impressive too.

The holograms require the created assets to be pretty big (4K for those of you with a technical bent), which means our render farm had to work pretty hard on this job.