Cafe FX

Cafefx

Type	Private
Industry	Visual effects, CGI animation
Founded	1993
Headquarters	Santa Maria, California, USA
Number of employees	14 or more
Website	cafefx.com

CafeFX was an award-winning feature film visual effects facility offering visual effects production and supervision, CG character creation, and 3D animation. Founded in 1993 by Jeff Barnes and David Ebner, CafeFX was located in a 36,000-square-foot (3,300 m²) studio on an eight-acre campus in Santa Maria, the heart of Santa Barbara County. Its commercial and music video division, Santa Monica-based The Syndicate, was a creative design, branding services and digital production studio, specializing in live action direction, visual effects, animation, motion graphics, and telecine. CafeFX and The Syndicate were held by umbrella corporation ComputerCafe Group, which has also established Sententia Entertainment, a long form production company.

After founding the company in 1993 as Computer Café, Jeff Barnes and David Ebner kicked off their part-time hobby in a small 10-by-10 room inside a local print design studio in Santa Maria. Their initial tools included two Amiga 2000 computers, a VHS deck and video toaster. They used Lightwave 3D, D-Paint and Imagine 3D as part of their initial arsenal of software creation. Over the next 17 plus years Computer Cafe would change its name and grow to one of the world top visual effects studios in the world. Their first official employee was Ron Honn who acted as the company Designer and Storyboard artist. Soon to follow was vfx supervisor Tom Williamson, who's connection in the LA make-up effects industry helped to launch the group to the feature film market.

The team worked their way up from local to regional and then national commercial and broadcast assignments. “Our first job was to show how a product called Shoe Goo worked.” said David "and then SLIME tires, some crazy projects back then". As their commercial reputation grew, so did their client base. Starting with an initial campaign on 24 spots for Foster's Freeze to their first national contract for Shasta Soda. Shasta was the first US nation spot to be fully rendered on a desktop PC. The team next steered its focus on broadcast work being repped by Our Gang Productions and studios such as Pittard Sullivan. During that time they produced various opens and TV station packages for both regional and nation clientele. Some projects include, NBC, TNT, Nickelodeon, NBC, CBS, Dateline, Entertainment Tonight and the long running HBO Feature Presentation. Still under the banner of Computer Café, Jeff and David moved into motion picture effects by first tackling Clive Barker’s 1995 feature, Lord of Illusion. Yet even then, notes Jeff, “Everything we made, we put back into the company.”