I’ve spent over twenty years in visual effects and animation, first as an FX artist and then as a pipeline engineer. I’ve worked my way through Pixar, DreamWorks, and Iloura as a shot artist. Somewhere along the way found that I loved building the tools that help other artists do their best work even more than doing the work itself. These days I lead a pipeline development team, where I focus on Houdini tooling and USD-based workflows.
Pipeline #
Coming from an artistic background, the friction points in a pipeline tend to be pretty familiar, and that shapes where my priorities land.
Most of my pipeline work has been Houdini-centric: building departments around USD at Scanline, Luma Pictures, and Iloura, with a focus on keeping the underlying complexity out of the artist’s way. Alongside the pipeline work I’ve built a lot of HDAs over the years: tools for solving difficult shots, improving day-to-day workflows, and hitting creative targets that would otherwise be out of reach.
The parts of the job I find most rewarding tend to sit between the technical and the human side. I love hosting training seminars, mentoring TDs, writing documentation that people will actually read. I think good pipeline work is as much about communication as it is about code, and I try to write software the same way: clearly, with the next person in mind.
As an Artist #
Before moving into pipeline full-time, I spent years as an FX artist at Pixar, DreamWorks Animation, and Iloura, working on a wide range of films and television. I’ve led FX teams on projects like Thor: Love and Thunder, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Game of Thrones: Battle of the Bastards, How to Train Your Dragon, and The Incredibles, among many others.
That experience shapes how I approach every pipeline problem. I know what a deadline feels like from the other side of the tools.
Full credits available on IMDb.
Contact #
Questions? Feedback? Pop me an email.
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