Objective:

To work in a creative environment where my 2D and 3D animation experience can be applied to creative problem solving, particularly the design and creation of 3D characters.

Skillset:

As a classically trained animator, I learned how to transform characters in a volume through time using pencils and paper. As a Key in 2D animation, I'd virtually re-model the character in Key poses, correcting proportions and enforcing a given style. While my 2D and 3D animation skills are strong, I'm drawn more to design, modeling, texturing and rigging, than to crafting motion sets for games.

My models are iteratively refined between Maya and ZBrush. I've returned to Softimage, using XSI to integrate models, textures, and rigging for export to game engines. I've created characters in Symbolics, Prisms, Alias PowerAnimator, Softimage, and Mirai. ZBrush is making my meshes and rigs even more efficient, augmenting vertex-slinging with displacement and normal maps. I've recently built 2 overclocked SLI boxes, pushing framerates while comparing the standards and tools for asset creation in Unreal (UT3, Bioshock) Sandbox (Crysis), and Source (HL2, Portal).

Experience:

2007-present City College of San Francisco
Student

Completing Associates Degree to pursue teaching credentials and a major in cinema/animation at San Francisco State University.

Taught Hard and Organic Modeling, Materials and Lighting, and Character Modeling for one of the first Degree programs for Game Art and Design. I'm a box modeler, so it surprises some students that low polygon modeling is the way to go, even for highly detailed modeling.

Contributed to design phase (in pencils and 3D) for various enemies I modelled and rigged; animated sophisticated particle effects in XML on proprietary FX engine for Death Jr. for PSP. For unpublished Mucha Lucha PS2 title, modeled, rigged, mapped and textured 3D characters.

Animation Instruction
Taught courses in traditional 2D assistant animation, game development, character set-up and animation, polygonal and subdivision surface modeling.

Curriculum Development
Worked with Patricia Johnson and Kevin Cain to create a course in character design, modeling and set-up. I taught polygonal and subdivision surface modeling techniques for the first time at the school using Mirai and Maya. Students, previously familiar only with NURBS, overcame their objections to polygons when they were taught the versatility of polygonal modeling, texturing, and UV editing using Maya.

Thesis Preparation
Prepared students for the proposal of their thesis projects and reviewed them; students wrote, designed, storyboarded and prepared an animatic for their short films.

Art Experience
Introduced polygonal and subdivision surface modeling techniques to high school students using freeware modeling tools and Maya.

Designed and created 2D and 3D animated characters for independent project development and freelance projects in Mirai, Softimage|XSI, and Maya:

• Character modeling for Mythica at Liquid Development
• Character and environment design for Ultima Online at Liquid Development
• Modeled characters from Zap Comix and L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz books
• Modeled for Xaos Inc. shot for Small Soldiers trailer
• Modeled and animated lethally-armed rubber-hose pig for Red Sky Interactive’s
• 1998 Demo CD (winner, Gold Pencil Award)
• Animated CG dream sequence for award-winning short film Modern Life
• Modeled Protozoa’s Duke2000.com prototype of Doonesbury character Duke.
• Authored foreword and modeling/animation tutorials for Doug Kelly’s top-selling
• book, Character Animation In Depth, published by Coriolis.
• Techical reviewer for Softimage|XSI Character Animation f/x & Design, for author
• Chris Maraffi and Coriolis.
• Panelist at SIGGRAPH ’97 debating merits of performance capture

• Created real-time, Anime-style talking heads with lip-synch and game-driven
• emotions for Robotek 64 Crystal Dreams, unpublished N64 cartridge game
• Modeled and rigged weighted shape blended parameterized targets.
• Trained animators in procedures and workflow using Softimage.

• Prototyped character development for Magic, The Gathering arcade game.
• Designed, modeled, lit, and animated player and non-player character sprites
• using Alias 6.0 on SGI.

Modeled, textured and animated characters for prototype Virtual Reality attraction Aladdin’s Magic Carpet Ride, premiering in EPCOT and at SIGGRAPH. Using Side Effects Prisms, in a joint development project with SGI, animated Iago the Parrot, the Magic Carpet, and Rasoul the palace guard.

Designed and modeled characters for 3D animated children’s film.

Keyed animation supervised by Andreas Deja in Beauty and the Beast and The Prince and the Pauper. Supervised and trained assistants.

• Modeled environments for first 3D computer animated ride film, Universal Studios’
• Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera using Symbolics (the ancestor of today’s Mirai).
• Modeled blend shapes for various performance-captured talking heads based on
• original “Mike the Talking Head” demo for SGI, including the face of Cain in
• Robocop II.
• Modeled environments, faces and monsters for the ride film Journey to the Fourth
• Dimension, including work that became the cover image for Beyond the Mind’s Eye.