Aristomenis “Meni” Tsirbas was born in Montreal, Canada, where he majored in film production at Concordia University. After several years of working as a graphic designer and film editor, Tsirbas moved to Los Angeles to work on visual effects. His first major project was working as a visual effects artist on James Cameron’s Academy Award-winning Titanic (1997). He also worked on national advertising spots for Nike, 7UP and Coca-Cola before graduating to visual and digital effects supervisor for such projects as Miramax’s “A Wrinkle in Time” (2003), and Paramount’s “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (1993).
In 2000, Tsirbas made the jump to writer-director with a string of highly successful animated short films including SIGGRAPH’s Ray Tracey in Full Tilt, Microsoft’s Mech Warrior: Vengeance, and the acclaimed The Freak (2002), which received over a dozen international awards. In 2003, he directed the short Terra for Fox Searchlab. In 2004 Tsirbas worked on visual effects and direction for two back-to-back music videos, including Tears For Fears’ “Closest Thing To Heaven,” before setting off to direct his first feature film, Battle for Terra, in 2005.
