Following the phenomenal success of both The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, writer/director Stephen Sommers, has returned to the multiplexes with a movie that reinvents the classic movie monsters: Dracula, the Wolfman and Frankenstein. The $US170 million action blockbuster Van Helsing, starring Australian actors Hugh Jackman and David Wenham, also boasts some strong Australian talent behind the scenes.

Industrial Light & Magic’s Ben Snow one of the visual effects supervisors responsible for creating all of the 3D creatures populating the film, including the Wolf Man, vampiric Brides and Dracula’s ultimate form…The Hellbeast, a gigantic, winged demon fully deserving of its name.

Raised in rural Australia, Ben Snow studied computing and film at the University of Canberra. He did a variety of work and traveled extensively before working as a runner for a computer graphics house in London. Snow later returned to Australia to set up the computer animation department for a company in Sydney. There he worked on commercials, broadcast idents and openers, including a computer graphics title sequence for Beyond 2000.

Snow left Australia to join Industrial Light & Magic in 1994, where his first project was to help create the three-dimensional computer graphics image of the “Enterprise B” for Star Trek: Generations. This version had to intercut seamlessly with the motion control model shot on ILM's soundstage, one of the first such endeavors for a feature film. In addition to his feature credits, Snow has been instrumental in the research and development required for the groundbreaking images seen in Twister, Deep Impact and Pearl Harbor. His work on Star Wars: Episode II “Attack of the Clones” was most recently honored with an Academy Award nomination for best achievement in visual effects.

Ben Snow will speak at the Australian Effects & Animation Festival Melbourne, June 1-3 at the Melbourne Convention Centre. At AEAF Melbourne, Snow will join some of the world’s biggest animation and visual effects companies to provide an insiders’ look at the creation of the stunning visuals in today’s film, TV and games.

The AEAF Melbourne program includes the creative and technical talent behind Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Shrek 2, Master and Commander and the forthcoming Columbia Pictures movie Hellboy, a supernatural action-adventure based on Mike Mignola's acclaimed Dark Horse Comics series of the same name.