Darrell Benvenuto

Darrell Benvenuto founded Med Systems Company as a Sole Proprietorship in 1983, which was reorganized as Med Systems / Vision Entertainment, Ltd., a New York State Corporation, in 1996. This company eventually became known as the Vision Entertainment Group, a holding company that encompassed three distinct other companies: Vision Books, Vision Comics and Vision Productions. Vision Books published Books and Magazines, Vision Comics published Comics and Graphic Novels, and Vision Productions produced 2D/3D Animation, and also provided Software Development services.

The first Furry book that Vision published was Volume 1 of The American Journal of Anthropomorphics (ISSN 1071-8745) in 1993. This was a 128-page coffee-table book intended to showcase the work of various Anthropomorphic artists around the world, and followed an annual publication schedule. The American Journal of Anthropomorphics was one of the premier showcases of Furry art and Artists throughout the 1990's, and the first of its kind to attempt to reach a wider market and to generate business for its body of contributors from Advertising Agencies and Promotional Firms. Initial sales were insufficient to pay participating Artists any royalties (and were published at a loss), but each featured Artist was provided with complimentary copies to sell (70 copies apiece by Volume 4) and so were able to generate a reasonable payout from participating ($700, if selling all 70 copies at the cover price of $10). The book was distributed through Diamond Dialog, Friendly Frank's and Capital City Distributors, and Issues 3-4 were also globally available through INGRAM. The AJA was visibly present on many Dealers Room Tables at various Comic and Furry Conventions of the period, including Confurence, Confurence East, AnthroCon and the Chicago ComiCon. After four volumes had been published (each at a loss), and despite multiple 5-figure paid advertising campaigns (in Diamond Dialogue and other Channels) sales had remained below 5,000 copies of each issue, Vision discontinued the magazine in 1997 due to insufficient circulation.

When it came to Anthropomorphic products, Vision was not limited to publishing The American Journal of Anthropomorphics. The company published dozens of other furry novels (most notably Paul Kidd's epic A Whisper of Wings in 1999), cookbooks (most notably Margaret Carspecken's Sweet Treats-Dessert Recipes from the Kitchen of Marsha Redfox in 1997) and various comics (most notably including a full-color comic BEATRIX, which was printed on glossy super-white stock using a 12-point register Heidelberg heat-set web press by Quebecor Printing in Canada, and which was nominated for an Eisner Award for best production values in an independent comic). Vision also produced a line of ancillary merchandise, including prints, t-shirts, framed photos and more. At one point they had over a dozen Furry comics and books in publication, including Shanda the Panda, Katmandu, Walter Kitty in the Hollow Earth, Savage Squirrel, BEATRIX, and many others, including a Shared World of intelligent animals (Tales from the Mornmist) that was developed by Lynn Abbey (of Thieves' World) and Ed Greenwood (of TSR's Forgotten Realms).

Mr. Benvenuto has previously been a special guest at ConFurence, where he has sat on various panels. He has also given keynotes on the declining state of the comic industry as a whole, and its ramifications for the independent comic market.

Mr. Benvenuto maintained Vision's two offices (Vision Books & Comics in New Hyde Park, New York, and Vision Productions in Roslyn Heights, New York) from 1992-1999. As the ongoing collapse of the Comic Industry's distribution networks in the wake of Marvel's HERO WORLD fiasco shuttered one Distributor after another, Vision saw its revenues dwindling. It had pinned all of its hopes on its book lines, a series of 10 Horror, Science-Fiction and Fantasy Novels by best-selling Authors including Lynn Abbey, Ed Greenwood, Paul Kidd and many more.

Mr. Benvenuto's planned distribution deal for the Book Line with Random House fell through in late 1999, which resulted in the New Hyde Park offices of Vision being closed and all of Vision Books' and Vision Comics' forthcoming publications being shelved. Vision's Animation Studio, Vision Productions, first relocated to the top floor of the GLOBIX Building in Chinatown, Manhattan, where it worked on various projects, most notably the pilot episode of Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer, performing all of the digital ink & paint + composition and sound sweetening work on the effort.

Following the Dora the Explorer production, Mr. Benvenuto relocated the Animation Studio to New Jersey, where over the course of the year 2000, he partnered with Invision Media Communications and helped to generate the first web-based, motion-capture-driven rotoscoped Flash Web Site showing how to do all manner of stunts and tricks with bicycles, skateboards and even showing proper form for bowling, basketball and more.

Mr. Benvenuto relocated the Animation Studio to the 46th Floor of One World Trade Center in mid-2001, sharing an office space with All E-Comers in the ASTDC suite. This office was lost in the attacks of September 11, 2001, but no Vision Staff were present at the time of the attack.

Following this, Mr. Benvenuto took a job close to the former World Trade Center as the Chief Technology Officer of DAH Consulting, a Federal Contractor with offices at 99 Wall Street and in Washington, DC. There, he won several contracts for three different Major Commands (MAJCOMs) of the United States Air Force (the Air Mobility Command (AMC), Air Education Training Command (AETC) and Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC)) under direction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The software he developed was known as "FIT FORCE", and it was deployed out to all 10 Domestic US Air Force Bases, used daily by over 45,000 Servicemen and Servicewomen.

Mr. Benvenuto remained the CTO of DAH Consulting from 2001-2005. During this time, the software development side of Vision Productions began to slowly make a comeback, and commenced development on two handheld games, Caddyshack Golf on 200 different handsets for Warner Bros., and Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends on the Nintendo Gameboy ADVANCE, for Cartoon Network.

In 2005, Mr. Benvenuto co-founded Collision Studios, Inc., a third-party Console Development Studio, and relocated Vision to California. Mr. Benvenuto was awarded development of a day-and-date motion picture game, 300: March to Glory by Warner Bros. With the two other games from Vision added to the stack, Collision had three games on the show floor at E3 in 2007. Mr. Benvenuto's game 300: March to Glory was extremely well-received, rating higher even than the film itself (Zack Snyder's 300) on Metacritic, its enormous sales (nearly 600,000 units at full retail in the USA alone) earning it a place on Sony's rarified GREATEST HITS list.

From 2005-2010, Mr. Benvenuto developed over 25 major titles, many of which were day-and-date games intended for release with major motion pictures. A partial list of these titles follows:

• 300: March to Glory (PSP) [and Unreleased Wii Version]
• Brave: A Warrior's Tale (Xbox 360 & Nintendo Wii)
• Jumper: Griffith's Story (PS2 & Xbox 360)
• Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010 (Nintendo Wii)
• Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2011 (Nintendo Wii)
• Ultimate Duck Hunting (Nintendo Wii)
• Mathews Bow Hunting (Nintendo Wii)
• Wheel of Fortune (PC & Mac)
• Ultimate Hoops (Nintendo Wii)
• My Royal Wedding (iPhone / iPad)
• Jeopardy (PC & Mac)
• City Builder (PC)
• Daisy Fuentes Pilates (Nintendo Wii)
• Jaws: Ultimate Predator (Nintendo Wii)

In 2011, after developing Jaws: Ultimate Predator for Universal Studios, Mr. Benvenuto closed the Collision Studios offices on Main Street Santa Monica. The Company relocated to Pier Avenue and carried on for several years performing various smaller bits of work, but was eventually dissolved by the other Founder in 2020.

In 2012, Mr. Benvenuto founded the National Carrier Exchange, a free Fleet Management Platform for small carriers, enabling Fleet Operators to track their trucks, electronically dispatch work to their Drivers, create Invoices, maintain a Chart of Accounts and obtain instant copies of the Bill of Lading at the moment of delivery by the Driver.

In 2016, Mr. Benvenuto appeared as a Speaker at the Surface Transportation Summit in Canada, where he spoke at length about the NCX Platform and its (then) pending deployment across Canada.

In 2018, Mr. Benvenuto was featured in a Worldwide Business segment with Kathy Ireland, speaking about NCX. The segment aired several times on FOX Business and Bloomberg International.

The National Carrier Exchange has remained in operation to this day, and continues serving Fleet Operators across Canada, the United States and Mexico. It is currently headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

Controversy

At least two artists, Tiina Purin and Woodlander, have stated that they did not receive payment for work done for Wintervision Graphics. There have also been allegations of delayed payments.

There are also questions concerning his story "Tales from the Reservation". According to Mr. Benvenuto, the only copy of the story was destroyed in the attacks of 9/11, and that is why it was not completed. However, as the story was notably absent from Issue #4 of the American Journal of Anthropomorphics, which was published in 1997, it is debated whether he is simply using the attacks as an excuse. Although, as Mr. Benvenuto had previously stated that installments of the Story were only used as (and would only appear as) filler in the event there were not enough Artists' work to fill all 128 Pages, it is entirely possible that Issue #4 simply did not have any free space that needed filling.

External Links

https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrell-benvenuto

https://www.darrellbenvenuto.com/

https://www.darrellbenvenuto.net/

https://twitter.com/makerofgames?lang=en

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/view_profile.php?userid=8639501

https://e27.co/user/darrell.benvenuto/