Bio

Currently a senior texture painter at MPC on Zach Snyder’s ‘Man of Steel’ and having just completed work on Ang Lee’s ‘Life of Pi’ and Tim Burton’s ‘Dark Shadows’ Laurel Smith has more than 15 years experience in traditional art and visual effects for major motion pictures. Her passion for visual excellence has given life to characters, props and environments in both feature animation and live action blockbusters.

Recent projects include texturing and rendering the hero character ‘Pi’ in ‘Life of Pi’ and doing lookdev for the hero character ‘Sleipnir’ as well as lighting several shots in ‘Thor’. Preceding ‘Thor’ Laurel was chosen to lead the texture team for Robert Zemecki’s remake of ‘The Yellow Submarine’ at Image Movers Digital. At IMD she also worked on the visual effects for ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Mars Needs Moms’ as a texture and lookdev artist. Other projects include ‘Fred Claus’, ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, ‘Sweeney Todd’, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’, and the Academy Award winning ‘Happy Feet’.

A graduate of Sheridan College where she studied computer animation and also a graduate of the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction in Art and Design, Laurel is an award winning traditional oil painter as well as a VFX artist.