Toronto's Creative Post has spun a new high-end effects facility into the trailer park of life with Twister Digital Effects.

Twister was conceived as a natural extension of Creative Post's digital component capabilities, says Twister executive producer Tony Sasso. "Creative was already doing effects in their digital component suite but didn't have any high-end graphics capability. This is an expansion into the 3D cg market."

The new shop will have a multiplatform equipment base, accommodating Silicon Graphics, nt and Mac systems. The initial setup will likely consist of three SGI Indigo 2 Extreme workstations, and a speedy Raptor nt system has already been purchased.

Sasso says Twister will be one of the rare facilities delving into nt immediately for long-form and commercial projects.

"It's not certain where the market is going now, whether it will be sgi-heavy with Unix being the strong language or whether Microsoft nt will be the wave of the future and then other software will support that platform," he says.

At the outset, Twister will run Side Effects Prisms on sgi and Softimage on nt as well as on sgi, and will also run Lightwave and After Effects on Macintosh for compositing. Twister will be linked to Creative's digital suite to exploit Creative's rich endowments, including its digital Betacam suite.

About $250,000 thus far has been invested in the new shop from the Creative coffers, and the facility is being built to accommodate a large compositing room, where a future investment may include a Discreet Logic Flame or an upcoming Softimage nt-based software system.

In addition to Sasso, Twisted staff include Creative alumni Crawford Teasdale and Jean Marc Rodrigue and new hires senior animator Mike Tracanelli and systems manager Kevin Pitts.

The facility is being constructed in a 2,000-square-foot space with its own entrance in the Creative building on Front Street.

Look out for whirling white trash and pink flamingos flying as Twister officially touches down June 1 with a "themed" party. TI