Santa Barbara Studios

Santa Barbara Studios, or SBS for short, was a CGI visual effects (VFX) company, founded by John Grower in , and located in Santa Barbara, CA. The company's contributions to Star Trek included the bottle sequence during the christening of the in (Cinefex, issue 61, p. 65), as well as the space-based visual effects for , where they worked alongside Blue Sky/VIFX. They also created the D'Arsay archive and comet effects for (their first contributions to Star Trek) and the comet effects for the series title sequence. 
Subsequently they worked with Dan Curry on the spatial effects in the main title sequence for , additional CGI effects for the first two seasons, and later the nucleogenic lifeforms for and . ()
The CGI for Voyagers title sequence was created by using the company's own in-house developed software called which earned developer Jim Hourihan an Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1996.
Outside Star Trek, the company has worked on productions like Spawn (1997), An American Werewolf in Paris (1997), Ghosts of Mars (2001), and K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) as well as the critically acclaimed documentary series 500 Nations (1995).
SBS apparently ceased its existence shortly after 2002, as no website is available of the company and no further credits are known, whereas founder Grower has accumulated further credits outside the SBS framework.
When Project Manager Ben Robinson embarked on the 2013 British partwork publication, Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection, he discovered that SBS' digital work for Star Trek most likely no longer existed. "Santa Barbara Studios didn't archive them and used their own software," stated Robinson, in the process also implying that the franchise had failed to maintain ownership over these elements, but, "Nothing is impossible though and I do have perfect reference." Robinson was referring to his earlier projects, Star Trek Fact Files and its US derivative, which SBS had provided orthographic views for. 
==Staff==
*Curtis Breber
*Phil Brock
*Michael Kaelin 
*Eric DeJong
*Axel Dirksen
*Bruce Jones – Executive Producer
*Janet Grower
*John Grower – CEO/Effects Supervisor
*Eric Guaglione – Animation Supervisor
*Diane Holland
*Jim Hourihan
*Bill Kovacs
*Richard Kriegler – Art Director/Digital Matte Painter
*Peter Lloyd
*Rick McDonald
*Ron Moreland – Technical Director
*Craig Mullins – Digital Matte Painter
*Matt Rhodes – R&D
*Will Rivera
*Eric Saindon – Lead Modeler
*James Strauss – Animation Supervisor
*Kathi Sumec
*Pete Travers 
*Mark Wendell – Animator
*Kelly Wilcox Travers 
*Michael Kaelin – Technical Assistant 
==Further reading==
*"Designing The Title Sequence" (for VOY), Dale Kutzera, Cinefantastique, Vol 27 #4/5, 1996, pp. 72-75
*"Effecting an Insurrection", Ron Magid, American Cinematographer, January 1999, pp. 40-46
*"Star Trek Insurrection: Visual FX", Larry Nemecek, , February/March 1999, pp. 52-59
*"Lost in the Briar Patch", Kevin H. Martin, Cinefex, issue 77, April 1999, pp. 68-95
== External link ==
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Category:Digital visual effects companies