PHOTO BY: KELVIN JONES--DREAMWORKS
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President, Pacific Data Images
AGE 41
ADDRESS 3101 Park
Boulevard, Palo Alto, Calif.
BIO In 1996, special-effects house
PDI boasted an impressive resume with credits for the Pillsbury
Dough Boy, Batman & Robin and the morphing faces in Michael
Jackson's "Black and White" video. Yet even with some 700
commercials and dozens of film and video credits to its name, the
80-person company was still just a bit player located some 350
miles north of Hollywood. All that changed 2 1/2 years ago when
DreamWorks selected PDI to co-produce its animated feature film
Antz. While Rosendahl, PDI's founder, had longed to produce
feature films ever since he formed the company in 1985, getting
there was a series of high hurdles. "We had to form a
relationship with a studio, build up our creative talents and
develop the technology to take on a project like this," says
Rosendahl, a California native with a degree in electrical
engineering. In many ways the technology proved the biggest
obstacle, as no off-the-shelf software offered the features that
PDI's team needed. For Antz, the company more than tripled in
size and custom-built software to refine its trademark character
animations and render crowd scenes that show up to 60,000 ants in
a single shot. Moviegoers can decide whether it was all worth it.
1998 POWER PLAY The release of Antz, a tale of a worker ant who
falls in love with a princess and leads a revolution, is a huge
step for PDI, marking the company's first feature film-length
project for Hollywood.
PLACE YOUR BETS Antz is so unique and
entertaining that it's likely to be a big hit--at least until
Disney's rival film, A Bug's Life, comes out in November. Even if
A Bug's Life beats Antz at the box office (as some early
reviewers expect), PDI's second animated movie, the "fractured
fairy tale" called Shrek, is slated for a late 2000 release, and
DreamWorks' 40% stake in the company makes PDI's prospects look
bright.
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