British Columbia, Canada-based indie studio Bron Animation, a new division of film prodco and finance group Bron Studios, has announced several new hires under creative directors Gil Rimmer and Ben Burden Smith.

Veteran animation producer Barbara Zelinski (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) joins the company and will head up Bron Animation’s two Mighty Mighty Monster specials “Halloween Havoc” and “New Fears Eve” with Bron managing director Aaron L. Gilbert.

Former Pixar animator Adam Wood has been tapped to direct the specials. He most recently completed animation directing duties on the Weinstein Company’s feature Escape from Planet Earth and prior to that worked on Pixar’s Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. as well as the John H. Williams-produced Space Chimps feature film.

Teunis de Raat joins Bron as visual effects supervisor. He previously worked for Pixar Canada, Disney Animation Studios, ImageMovers Digital and Rainmaker Entertainment. Also joining the CG pipeline team is Kirk Chantraine (A Christmas Carol, Man of Steel, and Happy Feet Two) as the senior pipeline technical director.

Bron also welcomes Terry Bates as CTO and Rainmaker veteran Larry Bodnar as AV systems manager.

Rounding out the new hires are Tarek Elaydi (Over the Hedge, Shrek the Third) as lighting technical director and Dimitry Kachkovski (Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, Jack the Giant Killer) as technical animator.

The latest appointments come on the heels of Bron Animation announcing Mighty Mighty Monsters as its first project in production. It is based on the book series written and created by Sean Patrick O’Reilly.