Work Experience
Encore (cont’d) (March 2018 – August 2019):
Assets Supervisor / CG Supervisor / Character Artist
- Managed a team of 16 character artists and 7 hard surface modelers.
- Participated in production meetings for the seven major shows that we were working on
- Worked to schedule incoming assets appropriately with production and department coordinators, basing projects on artists’ specific skill-sets, skill level, and requirements of the asset’s deliverables.
- Had a thorough understanding of each artist’s abilities and comfort level with various packages, and spent time to understand what their individual learning goals were and tried to further their education where possible.
- Conducted hiring interviews to find candidates that would fill in expertise gaps in the existing teams. Hired roughly twelve artists.
- Created lighting rigs and standardized assets to speed up production across the entire department.
- Streamlined the modeling/texturing/shading pipeline for consistency.
- Participated in multiple company sponsored management training sessions.
- Arranged for Anatomy Tools to come and teach a week long seminar on human anatomy for the character artists and riggers so that they had a thorough understanding of how the human form looks and functions.
- Responsible for reviewing all assets before they proceeded to the departments downstream from us (rigging, animation, lighting and rendering, and compositing) ensuring that everything looked, functioned, and was handed off properly.
- Stepped in as acting CG Supervisor as needed while the CG Supervisors were unavailable to ensure that shots were delivered to the client as required, working with all teams necessary.
Encore (January 2015 – August 2018):
Character Artist, Generalist
- Modeled environments based on LiDAR scans from on-set.
- Modeled 100+ digital doubles for various characters across seven shows, including The Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow, Black Lightning, Titans, Doom Patrol, Batwoman and several others.
- Models ranged in quality from low quality background models, to very high quality hero-level models that were used throughout the show.
- Responsible for all aspects of delivering a character: scan clean-up, posing for rigging, modeling and retopology, sculpting, UV layout, texuring, and shading in both Vray and Redshift along with grooming as needed.
- A great deal of time was spent understanding the needs of each character for how they would be used in production and finding which departments downstream would be affected and how, so things went through as efficiently as possible.
- Communicated with downstream departments regularly and would address any issues quickly to ensure production went smoothly.
- Created many characters that had special abilities (such as blobbing, extreme stretching, or morphing from one character to another) working to find the best way possible to ensure quality from start to finish, working with all the various teams to create specific effects.
- Worked in 3ds Max, Maya, Lightwave, Modo, Zbrush, Topogun, Wrap3, Marvelous Designer, Mari, Substance Painter, Redshift, Vray, Arnold, and Ornatrix.
Inhance Digital (May 2010 – Dec 2014):
Visual Effects Generalist / Character Artist
- Worked on both corporate side (interactives, cinematics) and visual effects side of the company doing everything from tracking and modeling, to compositing final shots.
- Was one of two Character Artists on our team and was often responsible for completing a shot sequence from the concept sculpting stages all the way through to the completed final composited shot.
- Used a mixture of different packages (Lightwave, Zbrush, Mari, Maya, Fusion) to get the job done.
- Worked on various shows: Grimm, CSI: Las Vegas, Jane The Virgin, Ground Floor, Nashville, Rosemary’s Baby, The Cape, The Big C, and several others.
- Worked on various films such as The Normal Heart and Atlas Shrugged: Part II.
Flash Filmworks (August 2015, April, 2016, May 2018):
Visual Effects Generalist / Character Artist
- Created a 3d matte painting for the show The Librarians
- Created several specialized 3d effects to help out the compositors on the team.
- Created concept of creature for film project. Produced final sculpt, rigged character, and test animations for character movement for the animators in the studio to have a feel for how the character should move.
- Modeled, rigged, animated, and composited a series of shots for Jane The Virgin (2018) based on lip-sync track.
Rogue State (August 2009 – May 2010):
Visual Effects Generalist / Animator / Effects Artist
- Worked as one of 5 animators on a feature length fully animated 3d movie.
- Worked as a RealFlow artist for a water-creature movie, producing over 30 water shots in less than 5 weeks.
- Served as a general visual effects artist and was responsible for seeing shots from start through to completion often under very tight deadlines.
EdenFX (June 2009 – August 2009):
Effects Artist
- Worked in 3ds Max as a FumeFX artist to create smoke effects and elements for the compositing department.
Tiny Juggernaut (October 2008 – June 2009):
Visual Effects Generalist
- Served as visual effects generalist for 13 movies in 12 months.
- Was required to turn out shots under extremely tight deadlines.
- Worked hand in hand with other artists on the team to make sure that everybody’s shots were as good as they could be in the constantly tight deadlines.
Software used (and skill level as of August 2019):
- 3D: Lightwave (master), 3ds Max (high-master), Maya (mid-low), Modo (mid-low), Zbrush (master), Wrap3 (master), Topogun (master), World Machine (high), Houdini (low-learning)
- 2D: Fusion (high), Nuke (mid), AfterEffects (high), Photoshop (master), Mari (high), Substance Painter (low-mid)
- VR: Unity (low-mid), Unreal (low-learning)
- Render Engines: Vray (master), Redshift (master), Arnold (mid-high)
Education
AnatomyTools On-Site Class (July 2019): Arranged for on-site training by Andrew Cawrse for character modelers and riggers covering human anatomy, skeletal structure, and muscle forms and attachment points.
Studio Arts: Creature Concept Design (June 2017): Justice Joseph
Studio Arts: Nuke 101 and 201 (August 2017, October 2017)
Studio Arts: Hard Surface Modeling in Zbrush (June 2016): Tony Leonard
AnatomyTools Masters Class (April 2013): Zbrush / live model sculptural anatomy class taught by Andrew Cawrse and Kris Kosta.
Gnomon School of Art (December 2011): Beginning Zbrush class
DAVE School (2007-2008): Digital Animation and Visual Effects, Associates Degree.
Studio Art Centers International (2005-2006): Art Conservation and Archaeological Preservation, Post-Baccalaureate Degree. Thesis on non-destructive 3D scanning techniques for various types of artworks.
Louisiana Tech University (1999 – 2004): 3D Studio Art, Bachelor’s Degree – concentration in the Human Form in Stone and Bronze.