Resume

I am a visual effects animator with a background in software engineering and graphics programming. I have worked in feature film animation for the past eight years, previously at Dreamworks Animation and now at Blue Sky Studios. I currently live in New York City.

Please check out my demo reel and resume below, most recently updated January 2011. You may also download my resume in nicely-formatted pdf or word doc versions.

Demo Reel

Please view my Shot List for detailed descriptions of each clip in this reel.

You may also download my reel in quicktime format here.

Work Experience

Blue Sky Studios 2008–present Effects Technical Director, Sequence Lead

Created visual effects for the animated feature films Ice Age 4, Rio, Ice Age 3 and related marketing. Typical shot work involved particle, fluid and rigid body simulation, shader development and development of effects pipelines. Sequence lead responsibilities included interacting with other departments as effects representative, overseeing effects shot work on a sequence, resource management, and development of reusable effects systems.

PDI/Dreamworks 2004–2007 Visual Effects Animator

Created visual effects for the animated feature films Madagascar 2, Shrek the Third, Over The Hedge, Madagascar, and related television and print marketing. Typical shot work involved shader development, particle and fluid simulation, crowd simulation, rendering, compositing, basic modeling, and development of reusable effects systems and pipelines.

PDI/Dreamworks 2002–2004 Technical Director—Lighting and Effects Departments

Provided technical and pipeline support for lighting and effects teams on the feature films Madagascar and Shrek 2. Responsibilities included pipeline development, shader writing, render optimization and debugging, resource management, and some effects shot work. Larger projects included design of randomized shader networks for crowd surfacing, and implementation of lighting pipelines for PDI’s global illumination and hair volume shadowing systems.

Industrial Light and Magic Summer 2000 Research and Development Technical Director (Intern)

Designed and implemented productivity-enhancing plugins for Alias|Wavefront’s Maya software, to be used internally at ILM. Extensive use of Maya, the Maya API and OpenGL.

i-mind Education Systems Summer 1999 Software Engineer

Participated in initial design of the company’s Internet-based educational software application. Feasibility tested and implemented a pre-beta prototype of this product.

Technical Skills

Programming experience in C, C++, Python, Perl, OpenGL, MEL, VEX, Java, Unix shell scripting. Knowledge of Maya, Houdini, Shake, Nuke, RenderMan, AfterEffects, Processing.
Extensive experience with rendering, shader writing, compositing, physical simulation. Strong knowledge of computer graphics rendering theory, techniques and programming with particular emphasis on film and video games.
Worked under Linux/Unix(IRIX, AIX, Solaris), Windows, MacOS

Education

Brown Universitygraduated May 2002B.A. with Honors in Computer Science
  • Honors Thesis—studying and implementing physically-correct Global Illumination rendering architectures, including an implementation of the Metropolis Light Transport algorithm.
  • UTRA Fellowship—studying spacetime constraint-based animation techniques.