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| From the Super Bowl to the Olympics, Rezn8 sports a championship portfolio By Joe Shepter |
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Rezn8 CEO Paul Sidlo may be one of the few people on the planet who learned an important career lesson from the TV game show "Bowling for Dollars."
"In the beginning they didn't have an automatic pinsetter," he says, "and that's how I started working in television. A year later, they got [a machine] and didn't need me anymore. So you could say that I lost the job because technology made me obsolete." As much as he jokes about it, Sidlo never forgot that lesson. From his company's huge network of PCs to its Pinnacle DVD systems and stores of constantly crashing beta computers, the 30-strong Rezn8 (U.S) has any equally sized company beat in the "new gizmo" department. "Paul doesn't let technology get in the way," says Bill Kovacs, the firm's CTO. "Everything we have is the best we can get." |
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The other thing Sidlo took away from his "Bowling for Dollars" days was the knowledge that television was a great place for a guy like him. With no formal training, he became one of the broadcast industry's best designers, working for the likes of ABC and CBS, before splitting off on his own to form Rezn8 12 years ago. Since then, his firm has built a boutique reputation around sports and network identity graphics, winning eight Emmys and most recently producing the graphics for this year's Super Bowl. It's hard to imagine Sidlo as a pinsetter today. He's traded those glamorous, well-lit days for the dark walls and flat black tables common to 3D animation houses. Even in Rezn8's plush war room, where a semicircular leather couch sits under a Barco projector, there are no windows. Sidlo shows up to the interview fresh from a demo of Microsoft's proposed X-box and can hardly think about anything else. "Soon, you're going to see a revolution in the way we think about creating an effect," he says. To show what he means, he leans over a computer screen with an image of a burning building. With a particle program creating dust and water, a computer-generated brick storefront, and a human being getting knocked over, it has hundreds of carefully animated elements in motion. Then, a fireball arcs out of a second-story window, creating a pattern of shadows on the street. "Reality is complex," he says. "The more complex you can make an environment, the more believable it becomes. In a few years, we'll be able to set up the environment using a physical modelling program and then create effects dynamically." Sidlo has only a few moments today, but he gives Adobe.com the run of the studio. Rezn8 seems to run on a kind of osmosis. Sidlo favours the multi-tasker: Give him a CG master who can wield a decent mouse of After Effects and then crank out a Photoshop matte, and he's pretty happy. In practical terms, that leaves a bunch of people running around Rezn8 who can rally onto any project that comes up. "It's a very horizontal organisation," he says. "Everyone can do everything. I can shuffle the deck and everyone has the ability to adapt." The employees admit that Sidlo practices what he preaches. He's as likely to be found on a Pinnacle machine slapping together a DVD as he is schmoozing a client. And the firm often takes on projects that deviate wildly from its core business, like designing screens for ATM machines or producing an animated contribution to the IMAX movie "CyberWorld." With Sidlo's army stretched over a bewildering array of media, you really have to wonder where they will end up. In the meantime, though, the mix seems to be working, and let's face it: It's quite a ways away from pulling tenpins out of the gutter. Adobe.com Senior Editor Joe Shepter once nearly broke his thumb when it got stuck in a bowling ball. |
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