Massive Software Hires Former Legion CEO, And Moves Into "Real World" Simulation Markets

On the heels of its move into non-entertainment markets, Massive hires VP Product Strategy and Director of Finance

Friday 17 April 2009

Massive Software, developer of the Academy Award®-winning 3D animation software for AI–driven characters, today announced the appointment of Kevin Mannion as VP Product Strategy and Israel Cooper as Director of Finance.

Most recently Mannion served as CEO of Legion, a leading software company known for transportation and pedestrian planning for the London Underground, Beijing Olympics, and other large simulation projects. At Legion, Mannion drove the commercialization of the software, making the company profitable within eighteen months and winning major contracts. His industry exposure includes enterprise, infrastructure, database, web services and networking technologies.

Cooper was most recently a finance and corporate strategy specialist with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Prior to spending five years at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a finance and corporate strategy specialist, Israel Cooper worked as a consultant for Accenture and Silverstone Global. Experienced in economic modeling, financial analysis and forecasting, Israel has provided advisory services in landmark mergers and acquisitions, capital raisings, corporate treasury activities, IP commercialization, brand leveraging, global distribution, and has completed a number of public and private sector reports for government entities.

On joining Massive, Mannion explains "By making its award winning artificial intelligence technology accessible to architects and engineers, Massive is helping transform the way in which buildings and other public spaces are designed, and in the process opening up a huge new software market. This, coupled with its already powerful position in the visual effects markets, makes Massive one of the most exciting software companies in the world, and I am delighted to join its first class management team."

These new executive hires come on the heels of the beta launch of Massive Insight which utilizes AI–driven agents that use natural senses such as vision and hearing to accurately model real–world behavior, and can be used to simulate any object or creature that moves – from pedestrians, planes, trains and automobiles to insects, snakes or microbes. Areas of use for Massive Insight include pedestrian planning, transportation simulation, architectural design optimization, disaster prevention and recovery, environmental impact, consumer behavior research, life sciences, and many more.

About Massive Software

Massive Software is the leading creator of artificial intelligence-based 3D animation systems which was first used on the Lord of the Rings trilogy to enable complicated battle and other crowd scenes involving hundreds of thousands of digital characters, and has since become the ubiquitous crowd animation solution for film and television. Massive received a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for its outstanding contribution to the motion picture industry.

Today, Massive Software develops a family of standalone, commercially available products, with customers including Pixar, The Mill, Centro Digital, Digital Domain, Moving Picture Company, Rhythm & Hues and other leading digital production and effects studios.