Since 2009, Sarofsky has brought bold design thinking to film, television, advertising, and culture. Founded in Chicago by award-winning Executive Creative Director Erin Sarofsky, the independent studio works across feature film titles, typography, motion design, animation, editorial, VFX, live action, and branding.

Their impressive portfolio includes feature-film title sequences for Marvel Studios and DC Studios, including Superman, the Guardians of the Galaxy films, and Doctor Strange. For television, Sarofsky has contributed to acclaimed series including Netflix’s BEEF, HBO Max’s Peacemaker, and Prime Video’s Citadel. The studio has also created campaigns for major brands including Amazon, Apple, and Verizon.

Behind that range is a multidisciplinary team of artists using tools such as After Effects, Cinema 4D, Blender, Procreate, and traditional hand-drawn illustration. Increasingly, that toolkit also includes generative AI and Topaz Video.

Adopting AI Without Abandoning the Craft

Sarofsky approaches AI as an extension of an established creative process, not a replacement for it. Generative tools help the team explore ideas, develop mood boards, create animatics, and communicate concepts during pitches. This is especially valuable in an industry where studios may invest substantial time and resources before a project is awarded.

“Tools that help us reach a creative ‘yes’ faster let us invest more money in the work that will actually appear on screen,” Sarofsky explains.

The studio relies on experienced artists and proven production techniques to guide the work. AI is now used where it saves time or opens new creative directions, while traditional design, animation, compositing, and finishing maintain control and precision.

Topaz plays a different but complementary role. It helps Sarofsky solve technical production problems, enhance AI-generated imagery, improve motion, and prepare work for demanding professional delivery.

Meet the Skrimps: Giving Animated Characters More Detail

Meet the Skrimps is Erin Sarofsky’s ongoing personal project, a playful series of felt-like puppet characters inspired by musicians, athletes, celebrities, fictional characters, and political figures. Shared primarily through social media, the project gives Sarofsky and her collaborators a space to experiment with new generative tools outside the constraints of client work.

The Skrimps combine character design, pop-culture satire, and deliberately handmade visual styling. Recently, the team began using Topaz models Starlight Precise 2.5 and Astra 2 to upscale and enhance the generated animation, adding greater detail, texture, and realism to the felt-like materials while preserving the personality of the original designs.

For Sarofsky, the project is also a way to make experimentation visible and approachable. As she puts it, Meet the Skrimps is “our way of saying that AI isn’t scary.”
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Citadel: Rebuilding Frames for a Visual Effects Open

For the main title sequence of Citadel, the Prime Video spy series developed by AGBO and the Russo Brothers, Sarofsky created a complex bullet-time camera move. To refine the shot, the team needed to remove some of the original camera frames while maintaining smooth, continuous motion.

Using Topaz Video’s frame interpolation model, Sarofsky eliminated selected in-between frames and generated new ones to rebuild the movement. The result helped even out the source photography and produce a more fluid final camera move. The same feature has become useful in other Sarofsky workflows, particularly when clients request late frame-rate changes or when temporary editorial slow motion needs to be converted into a polished final result.

"Topaz is clearly born from real industry problems! It is like someone designed a specific hammer for a specific nail, and it works. That feels miraculous because the task was painful before and often did not work."

Washington-on-the-Brazos: Delivering Handcrafted Animation at Over 9K

For the Texas Historical Commission, Sarofsky created a large-scale museum installation for the Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, exploring the birth of Texas as a republic and later a state. The project combined live action with hand-drawn illustration and required final delivery at resolutions exceeding 9K for projection across two custom spaces. Rendering the layered After Effects compositions directly at such high resolutions would have created significant production and scheduling challenges.

Early tests showed the team could work at half resolution in Adobe After Effects, and in some scenes quarter resolution, then use Topaz Video to create the final oversized deliverables without losing the delicate texture of the artwork. Proteus was the primary enhancement model, with Rhea and Gaia used for selected elements.

Topaz also gave the team confidence during a tight turnaround. The upscaling process was reliable and consistent, allowing the artists to focus on the creative work rather than whether the final renders could meet the installation’s technical demands.

Sarofsky's Creative Innovation Lead Ryan Summers says, “I would 10000% recommend Topaz Video, especially for large scale, high-resolution experiential projects. As long as you test across a range of outputs ahead of time, it can be the bedrock of your finishing pipeline. It is reliable, accurate, and fast.”

A Practical Tool for Ambitious Work

Across experimental AI characters, large-format museum installations, and premium title design, Sarofsky uses Topaz for different reasons. Sometimes it adds detail to a generated image. Sometimes it makes an otherwise impractical render pipeline manageable. Sometimes it creates the frames needed to finish a difficult shot.

“We love Topaz Video. It is the tool we turn to when a project needs rescuing. We ask, ‘Can Topaz fix this?’”

What connects these projects is a practical, artist-led approach. Sarofsky adopts new tools when they help the team reach a better creative result, solve a real production problem, or spend more time on the work that matters.

Check out some of Sarofsky's amazing work on their company reel.