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Sunny Teich

A profile image of Sonya Teich.

Sunny Teich is a writer and visual effects artist. Over the course of her 12-year career in VFX, she has developed an expertise in simulation, while working on feature films at major international studios including Disney Animation, Sony Imageworks and Wētā FX. In 2011, she was Weta’s Lead Technical Director in the development of a revolutionary facial simulation technique first seen in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. From 2014 to 2018, Sunny worked as a Lead Effects Technical Director for Framestore London, where she spearheaded an effort to move the fire workflow towards a physically-based model of simulation.

With a belief that visual effects artists have an obligation to participate in the conversation about the cultural significance of their work, Sunny has published articles on the state of the VFX industry and the implications of blockbuster films in popular culture venues such as Salon, Techcrunch and Quartz. She has been a speaker for organisations including the Royal Academy of Engineering, Sidefx and The Aesthetica Film Festival, and is an active member of Women in Film and TV, the UK’s leading organisation for women in creative media.

Her full filmography can be seen here.

Qualifications:

B.S.E., University of Pennsylvania

Research interests:

  • The Lexicon of Effects: Visual effects is most often described by the media as “wizardry”—a fact which speaks not only to the need to better educate the public about visual effects as a discipline, but also to the inadequacy of the language that practitioners themselves use to describe it. This research investigates how the level of discourse in visual effects impacts its production and its reception by the clients financing it, and by society more broadly. What are the origins of that language? How is it disseminated and how can it be made more effective?
  • Realtime Effects and Design as Narrative: Computing power has come a long way since the dawn of computer graphics, allowing effects artists to employ increasingly computational-heavy methods to produce final images. As we enter the latest era of virtual reality story-telling, how do the limitations of real-time effects simulation and rendering impact the kinds of stories we tell and the ways we can tell them? And how does the artist’s technological experimentation in what is achievable feed back into narrative design?

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