About Island of Misfit Toys
Meet our team!
Steve Hubbard
Co-Founder
Steven brings over 15 years professional experience to IMT. Starting his career in the early 90’s in new media, he delved into 3D computer graphics early on. He led several companies as a new media director staying at the forefront of technology.
Moving from the internet into commercial production, he was instrumental in several award-winningcommercial productions. Having won 2 Emmy Awards while working for ABC Television, he was heavily involved in moving commercial production further with 3D motion graphics and visual effects. In 2005 he received a Telly Award for his work on a PSA campaign, for a nationally recognized ballet company.
After a successful career in television, he set his sights on feature film. He joined three time Academy Award winning Rhythm and Hues in 2010. While there he worked as a Technical Director on many feature film projects including XMen: First Class and RIPD. In 2012 he was on the team that delivered the spectacular Richard Parker tiger for the feature film Life of Pi, that won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. He then moved onto the art department at R&H, as a matte painting TD, where he worked on several other feature projects.
In 2013 Steve sought to broaden his horizons even further and became 3D Supervisor at Base F/X in Beijing, China. There he worked on projects such as Black Sails, Captain America 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers:
Age of Extinction. He was also instrumental in starting the new media division of Base F/X with IMT cofounder, Michael Cox.
Michael Cox
Co-Founder
Michael started out in the industry in 1993 producing 3D technical illustrations for CSIRO (Australia’s federal scientific research agency) and CAD based architectural visualisations. Over the years these skills took Michael from corporate Video production to a rewarding stint in the computer games industry. In 2007 Michael made the successful leap to the world of feature film visual effects, by taking on a leadership role at Peter Jackson’s highly successful VFX company Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand.
As the environment lead at Weta, he was part of the 2010 Academy Award winning team that brought Avatar to life. He also supervised on Tintin, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, X:Men First Class and the 360 King Kong 3D Experience – where he was responsible for developing the environment and the look of the dinosaurs. Michael left Weta Digital into 2011 to help establish Digital Domain’s Animation Studio in Florida. There he was tasked with building a texture and look-development pipeline and to oversee all the texture and look-Development work of Digital Domain’s first feature animation project, “The Legend of Tembo”.
As technically minded artist, Michael has successfully helped build and develop the texture and look-development pipelines at many of these studios and through his R&D work was able to implement new methods and procedures that enabled some of the more complex VFX sequences on films like Avatar to be brought to life.
In 2013 after witnessing first hand the global shift in the industry and the subsequent opportunities that were opening up in countries like China, Michael took up the position of texture supervisor/VFX Supervisor at Base-FX in Beijing. Early in 2014, Michael along with Steve Hubbard helped establish the New Media division of Base-FX to develop and produce new forms of media production.