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PRIMARY SOFTWARE After Effects - 14 years experience OTHER SKILLS/INTERESTS Painting and sculpture, miniatures and fabrication, sets, props and costuming, faux finish, makeup and prosthetics. Graphic design, typography and motion graphics. Filmmaking and photography. Video editing, music and sound editing. |
EDUCATION HIGH SCHOOL: COLLEGE: GRADUATE SCHOOL: Lead Modeler and Texturer, V'ioran Station |
EXPERIENCE Check out my IMDb page... CURRENT EXPERIENCE: Los Angeles 2005 - present After years of working professionally as a graphic designer and prepress artist in New York City and as a designer, photographer and writer in Austin, Texas, I moved to Los Angeles in 2005 to pursue my career in motion graphics, visual effects and filmmaking. I was lucky to find employment relatively quickly at Rhythm+Hues' commercial division, where I worked during 2006 on various game trailer projects. Rhythm+Hues is an amazing place to work, and one that takes very good care of its artists. I also enjoy the fact that I got some time off between projects to pursue other interests and work on other stuff. I also worked with Oliver Hotz at Origami Digital on a cool 'futuristic stadium' spot for DirecTV. I worked on many elements but was particularly involved in the matte painting used for the final shot of the stadium floating over a city. Based on my shot design, the painting was executed by the fantastically talented Dylan Cole. I took his painting and added a multiplane pullback, animated helicopter, blimp, animated signs and practical light source elements, and tiny 3d traffic flows. Next I joined the team at Radical 3D and worked on the whole 17 episode run of the second season of the History Channel's popular show "Dogfights". It was great working at Radical because of their somewhat unique pipeline -- each artist was assigned a handful of shots for each segment and given only a brief written description, that artist then sees the shot thru from initial shot design, animation, layout, lighting, FX, rendering, and comp to final delivery -- all on a breathtakingly short TV schedule. Working from a digital backlot of largely custom-built planes and digital environments, and creating things on-the-fly as needed, it was a great environment for me to hone my skills as a jack-of-all-trades generalist, and to find that I really excelled as a compositor and matte painter, texturer, and FX artist. It was occasionally frustrating to have so little time to hone things to their final state -- we'd often have only one shot at getting passes through the render farm to stay on schedule -- and on effects-heavy shots with multiple voxel passes, dynamics and displacements this could be quite a challenge. I think it helped me hone a sort of discipline needed to work that quickly and efficiently, and still produce high-quality results. I was also one of the artists frequently called upon for environment work, completing many matte paintings and skies, generating terrain geometry and procedural foliage instancing, and lighting and surfacing the environments, which ranged from our most simple 7K "high-level" spherical maps, to our most detailed "low-level" set-pieces, featuring mountains, terrains, forests, deserts, canyons, or whatever was called for to send our dogfighting planes screaming thru at near ground level. Check out my Dogfights reels here (Season One) and here (Season Two). Multitasking workaholic that I am, I also worked on a number of freelance projects while at Radical, including some feature film FX shots (faux video game footage creation/insertion and digital product label replacement) and a whole bunch of pitch reel title sequences (e.g.) as well as a whole 2 minute promo animation for The Fright Channel which I designed, FX supervised, and largely executed with the help of a couple of friends. I also worked with my pal Howard Shur at Sunset Edit on a number of music videos and other post projects for clients including Marilyn Manson, the Foo Fighters, No Doubt, Enrique Iglesias, and most recently, the B-52s "Funplex" video, Robin Thicke's "Magic" and a music video for Nickelodeon's quiet hit "iCarly." After finishing up the season at Radical, I joined the team at Dilated Pixels as a compositor to help finish up their forthcoming horror flick "Infestation". Working in After Effects, under the guidance of supe Efran Potelle and FX producer PJ Foley, I was responsible for compositing CG elements into plates, keying, color-correction and a ton of roto. Most recently I completed several months work at Eden FX, as a compositor and 3D artist on shows like "Chuck". "Pushing Daisies" and "Life After People". I've also completed projects at Zoic and Battlestar Galactica ("Virtuality" and "Caprica"). Update: After two years permalancing at Eden FX, I was laid off in late 2012 in response to corporate pressure to cut costs. Fast-forward to the present (March 2013). I've just completed projects for The Weather Channel at Dilated Pixels ("Forecasting The End"), and for [adult swim] at Abominable Pictures ("Newsreaders"). Update: In June of 2013 I moved to Las Vegas, NV. Past Film Experience While a student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, I worked as crew on several independent feature films (including Parting Glances and Street Trash). I have a love of miniatures, costuming and prop fabrication, and worked in that capacity on the first season of “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” for Broadcast Arts. My team created the playhouse miniature and its surroundings used in the show's opening for the duration of the series. I also painted and finished some of the puppets used on the live action set. (I even took a brief late nite siesta in the enormous Chairy puppet one time!) I worked as a fabricator and physical effects technician for Dale Malley & Co. at the Kaufman-Astoria Studios on a series of Chevrolet and Burger King spots. I am intimately familiar with the production process, the chain-of-command, and the pipeline necessary to create magic on a schedule and a budget. I am a lifetime student and disciple of Visual Effects and Cinema (particularly sci-fi), ravenously devouring all information I’ve been able to get my hands on. My passion and enthusiasm on the topic is matched by few. It has been my drive and dream since my earliest days of childhood to create mind-blowing special effects for film and television. I am a quick study, and endeavor to fast become an asset to any project I become a part of. Thanks for your interest! |
