About Virgeo Studios
Virgeo Studios LLC is primarily a one manned operation run by Emiliano Acevedo (Emil to his friends).
During the summer of 1997, Emil and a childhood friend wanted to make a movie with some of their toys. Contemplating on how they would bring these characters to life, Emil’s friend suggested they try stop motion animation. And so, the summer of wacky animation began.
The earlier animations were crude, done with a camcorder, bad lighting and a misunderstanding of physics. They used Hi8 camcorders, having to push the record button and immediately push it again to end the recording. This gave an estimated 8 frames per second.
The sound design wasn't much better. They had to mix everything on VHS tapes through a VCR, streaming their animations from the camcorder into the VCR's video input, and doing their sound effects in real time with their mouths and a mic that was attached to the VCR's audio input. Needless to say, technology has come a long way since!
Suffering many hours in their makeshift studio under a heater that would randomly blast hot air from the ceiling, and with clay stained fingers, many broken Spawn action figures, and a new love for making ridiculous videos, Emil and his friends created many short movies that have since been lost; gone the way of VHS tapes.
In 1999 Emil met Ray Harryhausen at a talk in Boulder, Colorado. From Harryhausen’s talk, Emil learned a lot about film making, stop motion and inspiration.
While in high school, Emil's interest in film making waned, but in 2001 something changed; Robot Chicken premiered. A childhood friend called Emil and said, “That should have been our show!”
The idea that you could make a career from creating ridiculous stop motion animations was intriguing, but it would take a lot of work.
In 2006, Emil's friend proposed an idea to make a Lego® stop motion video that would go viral online. Over the summer they co created the Sound of One Man Snapping. It received hundreds of thousands of views and even was shown on a Japanese TV show.
At this point in time Emil's father, Mario Acevedo, had been published and commissioned Emil to create a Lego® stop motion book trailer. Having a new studio space, Emil pulled out his vast Lego® collection and had a new idea; to create Lego® animations with the characters acting out Emil's childhood when he played with Lego® toys. This, of course, meant violence, war, and, in some cases, profanity. Apocalypse Lego (or Frozen Terror) began.
Emil, wanting to have a studio name, settled on Virgeo, a mix of the Virgo and Leo zodiacs. He went with the YouTube user name Virgeo1228 as 12 and 28 are his and his brother's birthdays.
In 2013, Virgeo Studios became an LLC. Since then Emil had spoken multiple times at Denver Comic Con, worked with many of Denver's talents, and been a guest contributor on a couple nerd-based podcasts.
Having developed his talents behind the camera and as an editor, Emil began freelance work in the Denver area creating videos for small businesses, realtors, and lawyers (he doesn't do weddings).
Despite wanting a career as a successful YouTube partner and filmmaker Emil is still a little ways away from this goal, having to balance his time between his work, social life and hobbies, but knows that it takes hard work to achieve success.
You can support Virgeo Studios through Patreon or through PayPal
