This reel comprises a selection of 11 of my favorite projects I have worked on that best demonstrate my abilities as a CG artist and supervisor using primarily Maya, Mental Ray, Nuke and After Effects. My background in CG started with teaching myself Lightwave in 1993, then Prisms and Houdini and now Maya.

All of these projects were designed and produced at Picture Mill (with the exception of Sky Captain) where my primary role is the CG/VFX Supervisor. I oversee all 3d, stereoscopic and 2d production. Picture Mill is not a large company and because of my fine art background I often have an additional roles as Designer, Art Director or Animation Director on certain projects.

At the top I have noted the project and underneath in the lower letterbox area, I have listed my responsibilities and role in the project. These responsibilities vary from camera tracking in Boujou to modeling and texturing in Maya as well as advanced Nuke compositing in stereoscopic 4K. I also code tools for production in Mel and Perl to automate redundant tasks, track scene files, submit renders to the farm and more. This is the nature of being with a small company. We all have specialties, but can jump in and work on many tasks.

Enjoy!

I recently completed the Soldier Ride logo re-design and branding standards for the Soldier Ride program that is part of the Wounded Warrior Project.

The branding standards guide ended up being close to a 20 page document outlining the correct usage of the new logo I created as well as guiding people in the correct brand colors, advertising collateral and layout design motifs. I worked with Lindsay Garrity, Marketing Coordinator at WWP/SR to collaborate on the logo and standards.

I have personally been a big supporter of the WWP and Soldier Ride since I met Sgt. Brett Miller, US Army and US Army Company Commander and former WWP SR Tour Director Woody Groton during the start up period of  my company Evomo, an independent clothing brand with deep roots in cycling. Evomo continues to create awareness via articles on the company blog, participating in rides when ever possible and distribution of information pamphlets and materials with each clothing order we ship.

Soldier Ride is a Wounded Warrior Project initiative that provides adaptive cycling opportunities across the country to help wounded warriors restore their physical and emotional well-being. It is a unique adaptive cycling experience that honors our military men and women as they courageously battle the physical and psychological damages of war. Through the exhilaration of cycling, warriors embrace possibilities for the future in a supportive environment with fellow injured service members.

I was a speaker at the Motion Conference in ABQ.  Its in many ways like the TED conference which I very much admire in its content and presentation.  Motion is very young and has great potential.

I spoke about stereoscopic 3d for motion graphics. It was a very brief overview of very complex technology and some of the considerations when generating stereo imagery. The other session I was part of was a Film Title Design session in which William Lebeda and I critiqued some designers and their presentation for a fictitious film.  William and I made up that the movie Them! was being remade into a modern day version and we needed titles designed for the film. It was great and it allowed us to talk the audience through our process of concept, design and pitch.

I got to hang out and talk with some wonderful people including Rod Basham of IF, Stephen Lawes of Cantina Creative and Andrew Orloff of Zoic Studios who work just around the corner from me but I have to fly all the way to ABQ to hang out with them!

Lauren Indovina from PSYOP had a great opening talk to the event and Eric Guaglione is an amazingly talented animation director. I hope one day we get to work together. I always enjoy Mark Coleran’s viewpoints on our industry and Erik van der Wilden and Michael Waldron of nailgun* are always awesome to hang with.

William Lebeda wrapped up the 3 day event with an awesomely inspiration talk about creativity. I do not say that because he is my Creative Director and my friend, but because it truly made me feel great and inspired.

Thank you Becky and Elaine! You put on a great event.

http://motion.motion.tv/

I acted as CG/VFX Supervisor on this project as well as handling all lighting, texturing and environment re-projections via nuke.

The background plate is a filmed lock off of the party. It was projected onto geometry in nuke and 3d camera move was created. I cut out torches and positioned them as 3d cards to get parallax shift on the projected back plate.

Additional Compositing: Jon Wolfe
Animation & Modeling: Jon Block, Kevin Clarke
Mosquito Swarm FX: Mike Navarro

The Legendary Pictures Logo was a huge effort and lots of hours of work. It took 4 of us just over 3 weeks to complete this logo animation in stereoscopic 3d. I was the 3d supervisor and handled all lighting, texturing and compositing in Maya and Nuke. If it weren’t for Nuke’s integrated stereoscopic workflow and tools, we could have never completed this job on time.

Creative Direction by William Lebeda.
Additional animation, effects and particle work completed by Jon Block, Mike Navarro and Billy Maloney.

On Friday I flew up to Oakland and spoke to a standing room only audience of around a couple hundred students at Ex’pression College for Digital Arts. I was invited to fly up from Hollywood and give a talk about Motion Graphics design and 3d Animation.

I talked about who and what Picture Mill is and does and explained how we developed design concepts, type face choices, story boards, animatics, and of course the finished piece of a project. I then broke down a few of our real world projects, talking about the unique methods used to design and animate the Nickelodeon Movies logo which appears at the beginning of all their films, combining different techniques such as CG, live action, 3d and 2d. I also showed the title sequence for the film Legion and discussed the design and production process behind it. Alice in Wonderland stereoscopic trailer graphic design and stereoscopic trailer design and animation concepts for Tron Legacy.

I wrapped up the talk and with my thoughts on trends, concept driven design, and how the lines are blurring between motion graphics, high-end 3d, and visual effects.

Earlier in the morning I stopped in at Pixar to see my friend Tracy Church who is working on a new film called “Brave”. Pixar makes amazing films and they have an equally amazing facility. Its really beautiful.  John Lasseter was there and his office is like a toy store. There is even an over sized Luxo Jr. desk lamp and ball in front of the building. (Luxo Jr. was the first cg animated short film produced by Pixar in 1986).

Overall it was a great day and I met some really talented kids who are very enthusiastic.

Thank you Milli, Peter, Carolyn, Molli, Lisa and Spencer from Expression!

Legion is a film about God losing faith in humankind and sending his legion of angels to bring on the Apocalypse. I worked with David Clayton (Picture Mill) to design this simple yet powerful and elegant title. A lot of detail was put into texture painting the surface to look like an old and weathered gold surface. The etching is an “angelic” language that also makes its appearance on the Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) in the form of tattoos all over his body.

I handled this project solo.
Animation in Maya, rendering in Mental Ray, composited in Nuke.

I was delighted to participate in the Motion Conference this week in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Yes, New Mexico! Any unlikely place for a motion graphics and visual effects conference but considering how ABQ has a wealth of creative artists and amazing landscapes, why not!  Plus its production and post production business is booming. Sony Imageworks even has a facility.

I was part of the panel called “The Art of VFX Supervision”. I had the privilege of hanging out with Andrew Orloff (Zoic Studios), Rod Basham (Imaginary Forces) and Lee Roderick.  Also my old friend from yU+co. Synderela Peng and the great Karin Fong from Imaginary Forces.  William Lebeda (Picture Mill) flew out with me to talk about Feature Film Title design and we both presented a keynote on designing graphics for trailers.

Jamie Caliri, known for his amazing stop motion work on pieces like the title for Lemony Snicket and the Emmy winning title of United States of Tara, hung out with us as well as the tallented Mark Coleran.

It was a great experience and we met some talented people. I had a chance to visit Santa Fe which is a beautiful town with amazing galleries.

Drag Me To Hell main title sequence designed and produced by Picture Mill.  I created 3 visual effects shots with a photo real fly that makes additional appearances later in the film. Model provided by Tippet Studios. Animation, rigging, shaders/textures, lighting completed by myself. John Wolfe composited these 3 shots and finished the whole sequence in After Effects.

5D The Immersive Design Conference is the platform for exploring the present and future of immersive design, and its impact on all aspects of the creative media space.
I completed all aspects of production, including animation design, lighting, rendering and compositing using Maya, Mental Ray and After Effects.  Rich Scurry acted as Art Director for this project.