kyle yoneda

In 1989 my rebellious uncle took me, at 12 years old, to the theater to watch a little movie called Akira. My poor young mind was altered that day and the love of animation and filmmaking was born. After graduating high school I saved up and bought my first CD-ROM drive with the game “Full Throttle” and was instantly amazed with the 3D animated cinematics. It was then I knew what I wanted to do for a career. After some college and a 3D animation program I worked at a couple of small Vancouver studios before making my way out to Toronto in 2004 and joining the 30 person team at a new company called MrX.

I was the only FX artist and luckily back then FX was a bit more simple. Lots of snow and impact hits, all things you could accomplish as an individual. Eventually we got so busy we started adding more artists to the team, shots started to become more complicated and team orientated. The FX demands got bigger and the studio started taking on more and more movies. Within a just over a year I had 7 movie credits to my name and a small team that I would eventually build upon year after year. I was given the opportunity to lead this team, then FX supervise, CG supervise, VFX supervise, and finally resting where I found the most rewarding work as Head of FX. Over that past couple of years our creature pipeline began to grow beyond it’s Maya means and that too was added to my responsibilities. Taking my Houdini knowledge and transplanting it into our CFX workflow and developing a team that partnered with our FX team. Nowadays MrX is much bigger. I’m proud to have been a part of that growth and to learn from being a small company that has evolved into a large one has given me tremendous perspective on the industry, that I am thrilled to share with artists getting started up in their career.

Throughout my experience so far I’ve had the amazing opportunity to mentor and teach all levels of FX and CFX artists. It’s been the highlight of my career to be part of an artist’s development in their own growth in the VFX industry. At Lost Boys I am excited to be able to solely focus on artist development, at the same time reignite my passion for Houdini. After doing a lifetime of movies and large TV episodic work I look forward to preparing artists for what I know is an incredible journey.