About Me

 

I think I first became aware of the potential of movies married with computers when I first saw the movie Tron when I was a little kid. A few years later, I saw Young Sherlock Holmes with the scene of the knight jumping from the stained glass window. At that instant, I knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. The Abyss and Terminator 2 pretty much sealed the deal.

I have 5 brothers and our favorite thing to do growing up was to make home movies. We made everything from the typical home-made horror slasher flicks, complete with fake ketchup blood and raw chicken meat for internal organs, to our version of situational comedy with one of us wearing a baseball cup and repeatedly getting hit in the groin with larger and larger objects. Eventually we learned about story, character, and plot, and our movies slowly started to get better. This culminated in our own feature-length movie, Ghost Town, that we made while a couple of us were in college. Ghost Town could best be described as a western horror comedy and it was my first taste of creating serious visual effects.

I began my education majoring in Computer Science and minoring in film. I taught myself web design to pay the bills and finance my way through school. They had only one 3D class at my school at the time and I took it three times until the teacher told me I couldn't take it anymore. Disappointed by the lack of a 3D major and finding programming not visual enough for my artistic side, I decided to firm up my artistic foundation by taking art, drawing, design, and multimedia classes. I eventually earned a graphic design degree. I have always straddled both the artistic and technical end of things and I love how 3D work encompasses both.

After graduating, my next step was to go to a school specializing in 3D and visual effects. But first I was sidetracked for about a year and a half to get married and put my wife through her final year of her Teaching Degree. Finally, we moved up to Vancouver, BC so that I could attend Vancouver Film School. I worked my butt off at VFS, sleeping very little and learning everything I could. I did very well, ending up getting a Festival Scholarship that extended my time there and being chosen to go and represent VFS in France for a 3D symposium.

Returning from France, I tried to find whatever 3D work I could in the Seattle area, but there just wasn't much, especially for someone new to the industry. I was able to get a contract job for Microsoft Studios to do some particle simulations to hype their upcoming Xbox 360 at that summer's E3. But after that, there was not much to be found (much to my regret because I love the Northwest). So I decided to take the plunge and move down to the L.A. area and see what I could find. After sending out tons of demos, and going to SIGGRAPH, I eventually landed at Motion Theory and perma-lanced for them for about a year. While there I gained a ton of experience, made a lot of friends, and found my true calling of lighting and rendering. It was there that I first started to gain a love of look-development, and nailing the look on jobs to match the client's vision, be it photorealistic or art-directed.

From there I worked at a handful of some of the top-notch commercial studios in the area including Method, The Mill, Psyop, MPC, and Superfad. I continued to specialize in lighting and look development, with work ranging from photorealistic, distorted human faces to high-tech, futuristic mechanical arms. Having worked now for the better part of four years in commercials, I decided it was time to try and get into film more. While I enjoyed the quick pace and fast turn-around that commercial work brought (which helped me to quickly build up my demo reel), I wanted a chance to work on some longer-term projects.

I was able to land a gig at Sony Imageworks working on my first animated feature, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs." To this day it has been one of my most favorite projects. It was a great change of pace from commercial work, having more time to work on shots. It was also great to have the freedom to light according to the art direction and my own creativity instead of always matching to plates. Of course it also helped that the movie is pretty hilarious.

Sony was happy with the quality of my work and I was happy to be working in film now, so our relationship continued through several more movies including Cats & Dogs 2, Green Lantern, and the Amazing Spider-Man. The latter two movies I moved out to Albuquerque, NM to work on at Sony's satellite studio. My family and I were tired of L.A., with the miserable commutes and expensive standard of living, so we jumped at the opportunity to move somewhere smaller and more affordable, yet still have the chance to work in visual effects.

Working at Sony Imageworks was a great experience and I enjoyed all of the films that I worked on there. Unfortunately for me and everyone else who had moved out to Albuquerque though, Sony decided to close their New Mexico office after the end of Spider-Man and move the majority of their artistic work to Vancouver, BC. My wife and I struggled with what we should do, but finally decided to try and stay in New Mexico. Two of my Sony co-workers had started their own businesses, and I would be able to try and help get them off the ground.

Also, by staying in New Mexico, I could have the time to start to look more into one of my passions: that of gaming. I have always been an avid gamer, and really the only reason I went into film instead of games was that in games, you couldn't really achieve the degree of realism that I was interested in. With the new consoles that have come out recently and the amazing strides that gaming graphics have made in recent years though, I feel like the time is right to bring my expertise in photorealism and lighting to play. To this end I have started learning UDK, CryEngine, and Unity and am looking to further expand my talents into the gaming realm...