In this series, we’re highlighting world-class studios where artists trained by Ganz and Andrew have gone on to work.

Each post celebrates the incredible work these studios have created over the years, the same kind of productions our graduates now help bring to life.

Today: Ghost VFX, the studio behind the seamless, invisible world-building in Shameless Season 11, the final chapter of the long-running Showtime series.

When the pandemic halted production, the team faced an unprecedented problem, they couldn’t return to Chicago, the city where the Gallagher family’s story takes place. The city had always functioned as a character in its own right, its streets, its houses, its texture. Losing physical access to it risked breaking the show’s visual continuity.

Ghost VFX stepped in. Working from scans captured by a New York–based laser scanning and reality-capture unit, over 8,000 photographs, drone passes, and LiDAR data, they rebuilt South Pullman Avenue in full CG. Using 3ds Max for layout, SpeedTree for vegetation, and Megascans for texture work, they reconstructed the Gallagher neighborhood down to the last fence and mailbox.

The objective wasn’t spectacle, it was continuity.
They delivered digital extensions so accurate that production maintained its handheld, documentary-style shooting without adjusting for bluescreens or VFX staging.

Across the season, Ghost VFX completed 774 shots of invisible effects, a fully realized Chicago that viewers accepted as reality.

Mastery in visual effects is often measured by what the audience never notices, the work disappears and the story remains intact.