charlie wilson's war 

Since the movie is based in the mid to late 1980’s, we created the Las Vegas strip, Washington DC, Afghanistan and Egypt backgrounds using digital landmarks and buildings that no longer exist. We also had to remove modern day satellite dishes and replace them with tv antennas. The cars were digitally created since it is difficult to find them in mint condition. What is hard for most people to realize is it's a period motion picture. 

We also created digital interior backgrounds for Congress based on hard to find blueprints and photos.

We had access to an actual Russian HIND MI-24 helicopter to use as reference & to survey. This was initially going to be used in practical shoots for the closeups of the pilot and his gunner as well as other sweeping shots. But an onset accident changed production plans. The 3D helicopter was then tasked for all the shots with little time left in the schedule. Because the war footage of Afghanistan was shot on VHS video tape and 8mm film, it would not hold up to film resolution. We recreated footage and added an aging process to make it look like archive file footage.

flicka

Background plate was tracked in PF Track, then a matt was made for the cliff’s edge. I created the lower canyon and mountains as well as the sky with moving clouds and river.

medium

The premise of the show is she can foresee events days before they actually happen, which is why her reaction to the jet crashing in front of her seems oddly timed. Also, the director called for the plane to be sliding upright rather than my first animation of a crash & tumble. 

Modeled, textured & animated the plane crash along with accompanying particle effects. 

metro pcs commercial

The key animator suddenly & unexpectedly quit the morning the clients were to arrive in the office. I was quickly assigned to this project to assemble what was supposed to look like 2 weeks of animation & model tests in about 4 hours. None of the other animator’s work was usable, so i had to start from scratch. They loved it and I worked 20 hour days for the next 7 straight days in order to finish the commercial.

Modeled, textured, lit and animated the dragon's tail. 

Modeled, rigged & animated the snakes. After 3 overnighters, I had help with the texturing and lighting so i could finally get some rest. 

santa clause 3

Luckily I was on set to take reference photos since the set was struck the day after filming. I used my photos to reconstruct the chimney and the frozen characters. 

We tracked & digitally created the globe room and other magical effects and props.

Modeled, textured & lit the chimney to match the practical chimney. Used blendshape animation rather than a facial rig since this was a one-off shot.  

underworld 2

We had to create all the wounds and muzzle blasts since they could not shoot blanks this close to actor’s faces. I also created the burning glove effect as the sunlight hits her hands. We also created all the helicopter effects during the crash as well as smaller effects like blood flows & drips. 

smallville

Lead animator for Smallville and Nightstalker. Tracking supervisor for Herbie Fully Loaded. 

One of two shots we were nominated for VES awards in a single season in 2005 - 

Outstanding Compositing in a Broadcast Program, Music Video or Commercial

Outstanding Created Environment in a Live Action Broadcast Program

The usual workflow was we had a week per episode, usually consisting of 4-5 3D effects shots. 2 days to model, 2 days to animate and 1-2 days to render. For the

plane shot I modeled & beauty textured the plane and we split up the task of finetuning & rendering the rest of the passes. 

For the truck jumping shot, they filmed a practical truck, but did not know how it was going to work with the shot. I took the plate & built the truck & environment from scratch since the practical camera wasn't dynamic. This way we could do our own camera move & dictate the speed of the truck as well as the cg clark. 

For the tractor throw shot, i modeled, texture & animated the tractor. the flight speed at the end was to match the practical stunt of dropping the tractor from a crane. The plate wasn't dynamic, so we extended the sky & did a camera move in post. 

futurama

Seasons 1-3. Backgrounds were usually done in 3D while the characters were hand drawn 2D. Also lots of 3D props to match the style of the hand drawn look. I modeled and animated the Bender Car to match the X-sheet timings of the characters.

Then created 3D character style guides to place them into the 3D world so that the hand drawn characters would not slide or scale incorrectly. 

keebler swarm

Modeled & animated the chips. Worked with the director to create & time the rough layout & animatic. Built the rough interior models and animated the camera through them to the director's storyboards. Worked with the director to finalize all the timings & cameras as well as the chip animation.

xbox 360

A rush project of a series of 3 commercials before the Christmas holiday. Worked 100 hour weeks for 3 weeks in order to finish on time. Animated 3 of the shots for this commercial as well as tasked with creating 3 unique closing animations to tie the series together.