Founder/Creative Director, SWAY Studio

From a young age, Mark Glaser developed a keen eye for light and color using the centuries old art form of oils on canvas. Later, while pursuing an education in architecture at McGill University in Montreal, he decided to combine his love of visual art and science in a different way. Rather than designing and building in the real world, Mark decided to pursue his growing fascination with designing and building things virtually, in the emerging field of 3D computer graphics. Mark made a career of it, initially as an illustrator, and his skills evolved to include setting images in motion. He rapidly became sought after for his strong combination of creating photo-real digital imagery and natural understanding of animation.

As a Digital Artist and Animator for "Robocop: The Series" in Canada, Mark was amongst a handful of pioneering artists pushing this new blend of art and technology to places it had never been. At the conclusion of that project, Mark came to Hollywood to join another group of industry pioneers, at what was then Steven Spielberg's Amblin Imaging.

Along with five other Amblin alumni, Mark next helped form a new creative division at Digital Domain. There, he supervised a Nike tennis commercial starring a computer animated Andre Agassi that won him a Clio and an AICP award for Best Digital Animation. In "Obstacles" and "Roads", for Chevrolet, he created a photo-real CG vehicle that drives throughout both spot - it was the first time this had ever been done, and the work won him his second Clio.

Eventually, the majority of the Digital Domain team left to form an artist-owned company called Station X, where Mark continued to push the envelope of digital filmmaking. A prime example was an entirely computer generated Dodge commercial - the first of its kind - in which a pair of Dodge trucks formed the hands of a giant clock.

In early 2002, Mark founded SWAY Studio, a creative and technology driven digital production company of the future. SWAY is committed to developing new technologies and techniques that further the use of CG not merely as a post-production tool but a filmmaking medium in its own right. The company has a strong reputation for all CG photo-real visuals, particularly in automotive work. The SWAY Drive-A-Tron^TM driving simulator, in constant development over the past several years, is a key component in the firm's leading capabilities, and allows SWAY's artists to generate photo-real physics based vehicle animation in real-time.