Talent

Tom is an Emmy award winning (and four times Emmy nominated) Creative Director. He specialises in all creative aspects of visual storytelling: script, world building, character and production design, mise-en-scéne and art direction. With a background as an illustrator and TV director, Tom joined Jellyfish Pictures as a writer and Motion Graphics Director on the BBC’s ground-breaking CGI series, Planet Dinosaur. Tom now looks after Jellyfish's art department and oversees the creative direction of many of the key projects. Tom has a long track record of creating beautiful worlds for all types of film, TV and animation. Over the last ten years, he has creatively led successful projects for the world’s leading broadcasters and filmmakers, including BBC, Netflix, Apple, Sky, PBS, National Geographic, CNN, Participant, Channel Four.

Since joining Jellyfish in 2010 Tom has won an Emmy award for outstanding art direction on PBS’s Your Inner Fish and an AEAF Gold Award for animation direction for his title sequence work on Beyond Reasonable Doubt. In addition, Tom has been nominated for a further four Emmys and a British Animation Award.

Tom heads up Jellyfish’s Art Department, an incredibly talented group of artists, designers and story-tellers. The department now provides much sought-after design work for a host of live-action and animation development projects. Alongside this, Tom works with Jellyfish’s head of development, Natalie Llewellyn, to oversee the company's intellectual property (IP) creation, developing a slate of original Jellyfish series and feature ideas.

Tom is also a regular guest lecturer at University of the Arts London, teaching production design and mise-en-scéne to undergraduate film and design students.

Commercially driven, Michelle is a dedicated Financial Director, with a career spanning over 25 years. As part of the Leadership Team at Jellyfish Pictures Michelle works closely with the CEO to manage the finances and bring her expertise to ensure Jellyfish’s growth strategy is realised. During her time at Jellyfish, Michelle has implemented policies to ensure the company is on track to achieve its goals and manage sustained growth.

Prior to taking up her position at Jellyfish Michelle has held senior positions at commercial companies, including Pret A Manger, Selfridges, Cath Kidston, Brasher Leisure Limited and Azzurri Group.

Jeremy Smith studied IT and VFX in Canada and later came to England where he joined Jellyfish Pictures.

Over the past ten years he has witnessed Jellyfish’s growth from an eight-man team to a facility that houses over 300 members of staff across 5 locations. He has overseen and managed several company expansions to different premises and has re-imagined the production pipeline using a hybrid of cloud-based and desktop-based technologies. He has become one of the most respected CTOs in the VFX industry always pushing technology to the absolute limit, helping to make Jellyfish one of the most advanced technical VFX facilities in the world. Through relationships built with leading players at companies such as Microsoft Azure, Teradici, Pixit Media, AMD and many others he has helped keep Jellyfish at the vanguard of what is possible, which always provides the company with a competitive edge.

Jeremy manages an IT team of six people helping to keep the day-to-day running of the facilities, two screening rooms and several editing suites. He is currently responsible for all technical management of Jellyfish Pictures (VFX) and Jellyfish Animation studios.

Joining Jellyfish Pictures as HR Director in 2017, Sarah Tanner brings over 15 years’ experience of high-level HR strategy planning. Working within the leadership team, Sarah has been a crucial part of streamlining Jellyfish Picture’s rapid growth plans, overseeing a company expansion of over 100%; ensuring a structured employee engagement strategy. As of 2020, Sarah has taken on the role of Director of Operations, overseeing all operations and resources, in addition to her HR responsibilities.

As well as her work at Jellyfish Pictures, Sarah is active across industry associations including, UK Screen Alliance, Animation UK, Screen Skills and Access: VFX.

Manuel is an experienced VFX supervisor with over 10 years industry experience. With both a technical and artistic background, Manuel has a second to none knowledge of the production pipeline. Manuel joined Jellyfish Pictures in 2016 as CG Supervisor on CBeebies animated pre-school show Bitz & Bob and now oversees all CG on Jellyfish’s original content pipeline.

Starting his career as a 3D artist working specifically on commercials, Manuel progressed to work as a lead 3D generalist on Hiroku: Defenders of Gaia, a fully CG 90 minute feature film, which went on to be nominated for the Spanish Film Academy Goya Awards

Shortly after this Manuel began work as CG and On Set Supervisor for CBeebies animated preschool show, Messy Goes to Okido. During this time Manuel also directed, produced and supervised his own short entitled Nouvelle Cuisine. To date the film has garnered 11 international awards including, Best Animation Short film at Sacramento Underground Film & Arts Festival and Best Animation Short Film for Children at ANIMA2017.

Jonathan is a highly adept VFX Supervisor and Senior VFX Artist, with a career spanning over 23 years. Jonathan’s extensive experience ranges from VFX Supervision, Compositing Supervision, Creative Team Leadership, Compositing and Graphic Design.

Starting out in the industry as a runner for London based VFX house Rushes, Jonathan soon rose through the ranks holding senior positions at a number of high-profile outfits including First Post Productions, Motion FX, uFX and Method Studios, working as 2D and VFX Supervisor on titles such as, The Hateful Eight, Ant Man, Terminator Genisys and The Fifth Estate.

Since joining Jellyfish Pictures in 2016, Jonathan has headed up the 2D team, overseeing all 2D work on the company’s VFX portfolio, with TV credits including Watchmen (HBO), The Innocents (Netflix), Black Mirror – Hated in the Nation (Netflix) and feature film credits including Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Award-winning children’s animation director Kitty Taylor has over 35 years’ experience in directing commercials, promos, short films and children’s animated series for companies including BBC, HIT Entertainment, CITV, Tiger Aspect, Blue Zoo and Jellyfish Pictures.

Kitty’s early credits include the BBC educational film Muzzy in Gondoland and the World of Eric Carle animated shorts, including the global classic, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

In 1998 Kitty began her partnership with Grand Slamm Children’s Films (GSCF) and Hit Entertainment, directing Percy the Park Keeper and Angelina Ballerina, of which she won a British Animation Award and was nominated for a BAFTA in 2002.

In 2003 she joined forces with Tiger Aspect and notably developed and directed three series of the celebrated CBeebies series Charlie and Lola, based on Lauren Childs’ illustrated book series. Kitty picked up a plethora of awards, including three BAFTAs, a British Animation Award, Annecy Best Children’s Series and a Daytime Emmy Nomination.

Following the success of Charlie and Lola, Kitty completed Gaspard and Lisa, a 52 x 11 CGI Pre-School series for Chorion Silver Lining, based on the award-winning books by Anne Gutman.

In 2016 Kitty joined Jellyfish Pictures as an in-house series director on Cbeebies pre-school animated show Bitz & Bob. Kitty is currently directing the second series of Beano Studios Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed!, bringing a great British heritage brand to 21^st century audiences.

With a career spanning over 10 years, Lucy started her life in production at creative agency, Knifedge. Here she entered the world of live entertainment, cutting her teeth on the set, video and lighting design for Josh Groban’s World tour. At the beginning of her career, Lucy focused mainly on projection work and set design, boasting clients such as, Snow Patrol, Cameron Mackintosh and Glyndebourne Opera. Following her three year stint at Knifedge, Lucy joined a branding agency specialising in design packages for sports broadcasting, working with industry heavy weights such as, UEFA, FIFA, FIBA and FEI.

Further honing her skills, Lucy moved to a freelance position, focusing on both production and post-production for clients including, Sky, Saatchi, Netflix, BBC and PBS, before joining Jellyfish Pictures in 2018.

Since joining Jellyfish, Lucy has specialised in bidding, instrumental in securing some of the company’s biggest clients to date and has recently been nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy for her work on PBS documentary Neanderthal.