Cinema is the foundation of everything I do. I don’t think of myself as an “artist” in the traditional sense, but rather a collaborator, working with a team in an effort to create new techniques, methods or systems for solving difficult problems. As a visual effects artist and filmmaker, I have made films, written scripts, and created visual effects for feature films, games, and broadcast for more than twenty-five years.
After earning my degree in Cinema from San Francisco State University in 1992, I went to work for nearly a decade at Industrial Light & Magic, where I helped create 2D and 3D effects for movies such as Twister, The Mummy, Star Wars: The Special Edition(s) and 101 Dalmatians. A full list of my credits can be found on IMDb.
Over the course of my career, I have also worked for Warner Brothers, Tippett Studio, Weta Digital and MPC on numerous feature films including King Kong, Matrix: Revolutions, Hellboy, Constantine, and The Watchmen.
I served as Visual Effects Supervisor for the American artist, Matthew Barneyʼs Cremaster Cycle, De Lama Lamina, and Drawing Restraint 9 staring Bjork. I'm the director of the feature documentary film I Die Daily on the making of the Cremaster Cycle.
I am an active member of the Visual Effects Society (VES), creator and host of the podcast 8111 (Eighty-one Eleven), and co-host, producer, and editor of FX Guide's VFX Show podcast, both available for free online. I also serve as a member of ACM-SIGGRAPH, the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. I am the co-creator of the VCU 3D Mapping Color Software which you can read more about here.
I've had the good fortune to have worked with several leading artists and filmmakers including; George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Peter Jackson, the Wachowskis, Guillermo Del Toro, Matthew Barney, Madonna, Bjork, Richard Serra, Keith Edmier, Stephen Sommers, Robert Zemeckis, Barry Levinson, Francis Lawrence, & Zach Snyder.
Today I live on the East Coast and work as a visual effects supervisor, director, DP, and professor.
CG Garage host Chris Nichols (Chaos Group Labs) and I had a fun chat about my background and career at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles back in July 2019. Give a listen below.
