Gary Poster, with essential assists from Galyn Norwood, Phiroon Phihakendr, Jose Quijada, Pavandeep Kalra. Yet even with some 700 commercials and dozens of film and video credits to its name, the 80-person company was still just a bit player located some 350 miles north of Hollywood. While Rosendahl, PDI's founder, had longed to produce feature films ever since he formed the company in 1985, getting there was a series of high hurdles. For Antz, the company more than tripled in size and custom-built software to refine its trademark character animations and render crowd scenes that show up to 60,000 ants in a single shot.
Moviegoers can decide whether it was all worth it.
The release of Antz, a tale of a worker ant who falls in love with a princess and leads a revolution, is a huge step for PDI, marking the company's first feature film-length project for Hollywood.