The VES Awards are the most prestigious recognition in the visual effects industry, considered the Oscars of the industry. The Estonian studio was recognized for its work on "After Hours," an episode of the hit HBO series "The Penguin" for which the FrostFX team created the rainy and stormy scenes of Gotham City.

Previous VES Award winners include "Avatar," "Avengers: Endgame," "The Mandalorian" and Dune Also among this year's nominees are "Dune: Part Two" and "Shōgun."

"When we got nominated, we looked at who the competitors were. Shōgun was actually a very, very strong contender. I think it could have been a pretty close race between 'The Penguin' and 'Shōgun,'" said FrostFX founder and CEO Marko Post on ERR radio show "Vikerhommik."

Post first became interested in special effects as a child. "One of the TV shows I really liked was 'Quantum Leap,' which was on some Finnish channel. A couple of years ago, an American producer asked me if I would be willing to do the effects for it. I said yes, of course," Post said.

For post, special effects are all about creating an experience for the viewer. "For example, children think that if two cars crash into each other, there will be an explosion. In reality that doesn't happen, but in their minds they have an image of something bigger and more violent. That's what special effects create."

It took years of hard work and effort for the Estonian studio to get its big break in Hollywood. "It wasn't that something really big happened at some point, it's taken years of striving for something, improving all the time, getting to know the U.S. clients and then also constantly improving ourselves. You do one project and then you think about what went well and what could have gone better. That's how you keep getting better," said Post.

Post has only had positive experiences of working in the U.S. "U.S. productions are generally very well prepared and they know what they want. The level they want, it has to be very high, the best artists have to be there," Post said.

When working on "The Penguin," Post really enjoyed the freedom the team was given. "That's very rare. It shows that there was a lot of trust," he said.

Post also said he is not afraid of AI taking the job away from special effects masters like himself and his company.

"I hope that the legislation and the understanding of how this tool is dealt with and how it will be legally interpreted will be in place in the next couple of years. /---/ In the U.S., a law has been passed whereby content created by artificial intelligence can be copyrightable if there is a human hand involved in modifying or assembling something. That's a good sign," he said.

"My own feeling, and I've been told from the U.S., is that Estonia is in a unique position whereby we would benefit the most from using AI, because we are few in number, but we also know how to use these tools well," he added.

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