Brendan O'Neil
Creative & Studio Innovation Leader
Studio transformation · AI & agentic pipelines · Visual production · Content operations
Creative leader who founded, built and ran a New York production studio, and now rebuilds content engines around AI, CGI and automation. 20+ years across visual production, VFX supervision and studio operations.
From the finishing suite to building with AI
I spent more than twenty years in high-end visual production. I started in the chair, as a compositor and Flame artist, became a VFX supervisor, and spent time at The Mill.
Then I founded Bonfire in New York and grew it to about 25 people. Running a studio teaches you things the craft never does: pricing, hiring, margins, clients, and the pipelines that keep it all standing.
I watched generative AI arrive in that world, first as a toy and then as something that changes how the work gets made. So I started building with it: agents, creative pipelines and products, including the tool I use to run this whole operation, built with Claude Code by someone who is not a traditional software engineer.
What you'll find here: real builds, honest verdicts, and the business lens most AI content leaves out. If a demo won't survive a senior creative's review, I'll say so. If something actually works, I'll show you how.
Target Senior studio leadership where creative standards, emerging technology and production economics meet.
Core expertise
- Studio transformation
- Creative direction
- AI & agentic workflows
- CGI & virtual production
- End-to-end photo & video
- Content operations
- Team leadership
Experience
- 001Aug 2025Now
Monks
Senior Craft Director · Creative / Agentic / Computational Creativity & Innovation
- Lead AI-enabled creative systems and agentic production workflows
- Builds POC applications for enterprise Monks AI platform Monks Flow and leads ongoing craft exploration
- Client communications, pitches and SOW builds
- Vendor and third-party platform enterprise deals and negotiations
- Design pipelines pairing generative AI and CGI with creative direction
- Building agentic systems to automate content creation and LLM workflows
- Architecting agent workflows, from VFX to task automation
- AI pipelines and AI content at scale
- Innovation across real-time, VFX, digital twins, AI image and video generation, model building, LoRAs and fine-tuning
- Building training and inference models for media creation; helping build Monks Flow and the vision for Monks Computational Creativity
- 002Feb 2023Jul 2025
Sombra Labs
Co-Founder · ECD / Head of Innovation & AI Pipelines
- Led creative and AI direction across global brand programs
- Directed AI pipeline solutions and company-wide R&D
- Oversaw production management and teams of creative technologists
- Web3 development
- Image and video generation pipelines, including ComfyUI
- R&D on LLMs and frontier models
- 00320152025
Bonfire
Founder · ECD / Head of VFX
- Founded and grew a NYC creative / VFX studio to ~25 staff and $5M+ revenue
- Owned studio strategy, creative direction, operations, staffing and P&L
- Ran end-to-end production: concept, bidding, shoot, post and delivery
- VFX supervisor on set across national commercial and brand campaigns
- Flame, Nuke, CGI, motion graphics and producing, remote and on-site
- Motion capture: Xsens, Rokoko, Perception, Manus, Leap Motion
- 004Oct 20132015
Independent
Senior VFX Supervisor & Creative Director
- Senior VFX supervision and creative direction for national commercial and brand campaigns
- Led teams of designers, Flame and Nuke compositors and 3D artists across NYC, LA, Chicago and international jobs
- Hands-on Flame, Nuke and Resolve compositing, finishing and colour, running jobs directly with clients
- Pipeline consultation and on-set supervision, laying the groundwork for Bonfire
- 005May 2009Sep 2013
The Mill
Lead Flame & Nuke Artist · VFX Supervisor
- Oct 2011 – Sep 2013Lead Flame & Nuke Artist · VFX Supervisor
- May 2010 – Oct 2011Smoke & Nuke Artist
- May 2009 – Apr 2010Nuke Assist
- Led client-attended VFX projects: conform, edit management, high-end compositing and mastering
- Second and third artist on lead jobs: compositing, CG, cleanup, tracking, versioning and mastering
Skills
- Creative direction
- VFX supervision & finishing
- Flame · Nuke · Resolve
- Agentic systems & LLM workflows
- AI image & video pipelines · ComfyUI
- Model training · LoRAs · fine-tuning
- Unreal Engine & real-time
- Motion capture (Xsens, Rokoko, Manus)
- Studio leadership & production
Education
Syracuse University
S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications
- B.S. Communications (Television, Radio, Film)
- B.A. Spanish Language & Literature
- Minor: Developmental Psychology
Brands
- Tumi
- Nike
- Adidas
- Staples
- Coca-Cola
- P&G
- Meta
- Chevrolet
- Porsche
- E*Trade