Dec 5, 2022

Tilo Kutar, founder of Oscar-winning VFX company Pixomondo, dies at 58

Tilo Kuter, founder of VFX company Pixomondo, died of cancer on Thursday, December 1, at his home in Marina del Rey, California; he was 58.

A native of Frankfurt, Germany, Kuter founded Pixomondo in 2001 in Stuttgart as a corporate commercial video and 3D animation company. The company expanded rapidly and by 2005 was doing VFX for German TV shows and feature films. By the end of its first decade, Pixomondo had offices in 12 cities around the world, including Santa Monica, where Kutter eventually settled.

His feature film, Martin Scorsese's Hugo, won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Pixomondo also worked as one of the primary effects companies for HBO's Game of Thrones. A visual effects breakdown of the company's season eight films can be seen below:

In 2008, the German VFX company began working closely with German filmmaker Roland Emmerich, known for directing VFX blockbusters, and the two benefited greatly from this relationship, as the two worked together on a number of films, including "The Last Airbender" (2008), "The Last Airbender" (2009), and "The Last Airbender" (2011), Pixomondo was responsible for many of the effects in films such as 2012 (2009), Independence Day (2016): Resurrection (2016), and Midway (2019).

In 2018, technology and consumer private equity firm Mayfair Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in Pixomondo, with Kuter staying on as CEO and executive producer at the time. In October of this year, Mayfair sold the company to Sony Pictures Entertainment, but sources with knowledge of the deal say that Kuter was no longer with Pixomondo when the Sony sale took place.

According to his nephew Niklas Fissel, who spoke to The Hollywood Reporter, Kuther most recently worked for Xmachina, a California-based theme entertainment design company.

Kuther has a wife, Claudia.