Michael Coldewey started his film career assisting Wolfgang Urchs for the animated feature Peterchen’s Mondfahrt Peter in Magic land. He lectured cel animation at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and computer animation at the Fachhochschule in Augsburg. After several commercials and supervising a TV pilot, he directed the animated features The Fearless Four (Warner Bros.) and Kevin Eastman’s Heavy Metal 2000 (Columbia Tristar). Michael founded TRIXTER in 1998 and TRIXTER Productions in 2002 together with Simone Kraus. He produced 26 half hour TV episodes of Lilly The Witch and co-produced Dragon Hunters (Universum Film) with France. Michael went on to produce the first Walt Disney live action movie Lilly The Witch – The Dragon And The Magic Book, and is currently in post-production of the sequel, Lilly The Witch – The Journey to Mandolan. In 2008 Michael won the Bavarian TV Award, the German TV Award and got nominated in 2009 for the German Film Award for best family entertainment. Between 2007 and 2009 Michael served as President of the German Animation Association. Michael is expanding his TX Production company, with offices now in Berlin.

Simone Kraus has worked in the animation and visual effects industry for the past 15 years. She has been the Animation Supervisor for many feature films such as TRIXTER's work on Chris Columbus' Percy Jackson (Fox), the latest Wachowski Brother's Ninja Assassin (Warner Bros), and was the overall Animation Supervisor on Lilly The Witch 1 and 2, (Walt Disney), Hui Buh (Constantin Film) and Dragon Hunters (Universum Film). She has also worked on many commercials creating animation for clients such as Volkswagen, Kraft and Ferrero. She has been the co-owner of TRIXTER since 1998, and in 2008 won the the German TV Award for the film Wonder Of Loch Ness. Over the past few years, TRIXTER has evolved into the field of high end visual effects for live action feature films. Simone is currently responsible for TRIXTER's service work for ILM.

Architect, designer and illustrator, Alessandro Cioffi has built his VFX knowledge working in the UK, Germany and Italy. Alessandro's compositing skills and techniques were applied on major productions such as Sweeney Todd, 300, Kingdom of Heaven and Troy. He joined TRIXTER in December 2007 and is now the Head of Compositing, bringing with him a talent for leading a team and dealing with clients, as well as great artistic skills and a keen eye.

Jan Stoltz studied animation and digital effects at Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg. From 2001 to 2003 he established the visual effects department for ELEKTROFILM GmbH. In 2004 he worked as a character animator for film such as I, Robot, Hui Buh and as character lead for Bully´s Lissi und der wilde Kaiser. Jan worked as visual effects supervisor for over 440 shots of animation and effects in the feature Lilly The Witch, the first European movie from Walt Disney Pictures. He has just completed works on Vorstadtkrokodile and is currently working on Lilli the Witch 2.

Dietrich has worked for a wide variety of feature films and television productions since 1998 covering positions as sequence animation lead at Weta Digital for King Kong, previz supervisor and animation lead for Bully's Lissy und der wilde Kaiser and animation supervisor at VFX Production Company/Los Angeles. Transferring his expertise as an industrial designer into animation and vfx, he somehow became a missing link between creative and technical aspects whithin cg productions. In 2007 he joined TRIXTER as a vfx and cg supervisor with an additional responsibility for 3d pipeline development.

Engineer in the fields of media technology, he has worked as a 3D artist on international feature films for several years and gathered profound knowledge of cg processes and workflow. Georg has been working as a visual effects producer since 2006, completing his profile with a Master of business administration. Dedicated at TRIXTER for international feature films such as Ninja Assassin, Percy Jackson, Iron Man 2 and commercials as well as full cg projects. Georg is also an expert in setting up stereoscopic workflows.

Frank studied economics at the university in Munich and film production at the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg. Since 1998 he is working as a freelancer for German feature films, television movies and high-class commercials. Frank joined TRIXTER in 2009 as line producer. His former experience on the client side gives TRIXTER the potential to transport our client’s visions, wishes and needs in an ideal way.

After script meetings we create the storyboard. There are two different kinds of boards:
The production storyboard, which is used only for in-house production and for corresponding with the director and the director of photography.
The presentation storyboard (sometimes in color), which is used for presenting the film to the client.
The storyboards are created to be as close to the final look as possible.
A storyboard in motion is called an Animatic and is put together using the stylized frames from the storyboard in a sequence and adding sound to it.
This gives the client a better overview of the sequence.

In every story, characters have to perform roles that are not real life. Only the voices and some specific attributes will be taken from real life action. In-house as well as externally, we work together with world famous and well known designers to create and find the best character design to fit the story. Whichever the case, if the character has to be a traditional cel animated one or a photo realistic CG monster, we find the right one!

We work in consultation with producers, directors and DOPs in technical breakdown meetings to maximize CG potential to suit script, budget and timing issues. We are always very involved in finding creative and practical solutions. Turn a problem around long enough and a solution will always fall out. To combine animation with life action, we also supervise the film shooting. We measure the sets and camera positions as well as take digital HDR pictures of the lighting environment.
Our emphasis on set is efficiency, accuracy and support.

Cel Animation (2D Cartoon Animation):
Following the school of Disney, we animate characters in the traditional cel animation process using pencil or line tests for approvals.
The cleanup drawings are scanned and colored by a digital Ink&Paint system and rendered for all formats, including FLASH, video or HD for theatrical 35mm prints.

3D Animation:
We source world wide know how from the world of 3D animation to provide up to date modeling, rigging and animation solutions for every need.
We use MAYA and SOFTIMAGE XSI and write our own plug ins and scripts to improve pipeline work flow and animation control.

Using The Foundry's Nuke, Shake and Adobe After Effects, we cover all compositing needs. From camera tracking and keying to retouching – everything is included in the work flow.