VisionArt

"'VisionArt Design & Animation'" was a motion picture and television visual effects company, founded in the 1980s by David Rose and Todd Hess. Though originally a small Orange County company working primarily on cable TV advertisements and flying logos, VisionArt moved to Santa Monica in 1992, winning its first major effects work with "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine." The studio originated in Santa Ana, California, later moved to Santa Monica, California, and closed its doors in 2000. (VisionArt is sometimes incorrectly cited as Vision Art or Vision Arts.)

Dennis Blakey, who headed the initial development and effects work for the shape-shifting character Odo, brought VisionArt its first prime-time Emmy award. Blakey and Dorene Haver later created the first CGI ship for Star Trek in the form of a 3D runabout shuttle for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Other important players at Vision Art included Vinh Le, Bethany Shackelford, and Barry Safley who all had successful careers in the VFX industry.

Other early work included the pilot of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman for which Rob Bredow, Ted Fay, Carl Hooper, Daniel Kramer, and Pete Shinners,demonstrated the seamless morphing between a human actor and a photorealistic CGI model of the actor. Ted Fay also created the first photorealistic talking dog for Northern Exposure, a technology that was further advanced for the film version of Dr. Dolittle.

VisionArt's claim to fame on the big screen was arguably its creation of the majority of the dogfight sequences for Independence Day, which won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Sparky, a dynamics/simulation software spearheaded by Rob Bredow, allowed for near-real-time animation of large groups of F-18 jet fighters, alien attackers, missiles, smoke trailers, shields, etc. Sparky was also able to render the frames in hardware anti-aliased at film resolution at just one minute per frame, allowing the delivery of two shots per day. Prior shots had taken about one month each.

...
Wikipedia