The Golden Compass - Rhythm & Hues

Shot One - the attack

All shots comped in ICY (R&H's proprietary compositing package).  Compositor. A unique sequence in that the work was split between houses on individual shot basis.  So, for example, anything with one of the armored bears would be Framestore in London, any environment and people comped into it would be Cinesite London, any animals other than armored bears and any spark/disintegration would be Rhythm & Hues and, sometimes, Digital Domain would do (if I remember correctly) arrows or gun shots.  I was at R&H for this show and handled all the CC, and integration of the animals in this shot.

Shot Two - girl stolen

Same as above

Shot Three - Tartar falls to the ground

Same as above with spark treatment.

Shot Four - man shoots Tartar

       Same as above with sparks, etc.

Stealth - Digital Domain

Shot One - jet cockpit

(All shots comped in nuke). Compositor. Adjusted windshield and helmet visor (as with most 3D elements at DD, these are exr files that are generally passed through as layers to nuke where we run them through template scripts that we can modify in nuke to get the final result).  BG is a single tile.  Built FG atmosphere and optics (flaring, etc.).

Shot Two - tailing E.D.I.

Compositor. Comped the plane (E.D.I.) using the technique mentioned above.  Built in atmospherics:  Flaring; condensation on lens).

Shot Three - plane emerges from hanger

Compositor.  The shot as seen here is not actually the final from the film.  This was as far as I had taken the shot prior to taking a leave of absence for my wedding and honeymoon.  The final shot is very similar with additional work being done to the man in the plane cockpit (and elsewhere I am sure) and was done by Mark Rienzo.  This was a fun one to  build in that the plane followed the usual comp routing mentioned above but the swirling smoke, guy rolling over, etc. were built from many 3D and practical elements not necessarily intended for this purpose but the final soup giving a nice overall effect.  Other than this it was your usual balance and integration type of shot.

Shot Four - four planes at night

Compositor. Followed night template setup by lead, Brian Begun for city environment -- added lighting effect to clouds for drama, the usual.

Shot Five - plane noses down

Compositor. As this was one of a few, one off, dusk-to-evening shots, I worked with lead, Rob Nederhorst and VFX Sup Bryan Grill to get the overall look of the environment.  Built 3d plane to 2d cockpit hook-up, added shake, atmospherics, etc.

Shot Six - wing touches down

Compositor. This was actually a model and looks as if it were straight forward enough but it actually was a very badly shot element that require a lot of stabilization and then new cam shake to get it to look natural.  Built 2d sparks from practical element.  Worked with rain, atmospherics and overall integration.

Shot Seven - plane crashing down runway

Compositor. Pretty much same as Shot Five mentioned above.

Garfield - Rhythm & Hues

Shot One - Garfield on sidewalk

All shots comped in ICY (R&H's proprietary compositing package).  Compositor.  Just dealing with overall color balance and integration into the scene (hey, getting a super saturated Orange cat to look like it belongs in the plate isn't as simple as it looks)

Shot Two - Garfield and Odie dance

Same as above with the addition of having to deal with keying the practical dog, Odie.

Shot Three - Garfield flies into window

Same as above with the addition of having to rebuild portions of the wall and window to help with the integration.

Flags of our Fathers - Digital Domain

Shot One - Armada

(All shots comped in nuke).  I was the main compositor on this shot but received help from another, Chia-chi Hu, in doing overall CC on many of the ships as I was assigned this shot in the final weeks of the show and it became a real bear just to get everything into the script and rendered for final before the end of the show.  All elements outside of the cabin window are synthetic.  Although the look of the exterior armada had already been realized at this point, this shot had not been touched since the beginning of the show and the lighter only worked on it for a week before having to exit.  This meant that a majority of my work (beyond the usual integration, keying, optics, nuke 3D business) was trying to brute force elements that weren't rendered properly (and from the wrong direction in fact) to match the other establishing shots. 

Shot Two - tanks landing ashore

Compositor. Integrating the CG tanks and water to match the practical ones in the plate.

Shot Three - c.u. tank coming ashore

Compositor. Same as above (only one prac tank).

Shot Four - tank hit

      Compositor. Same as above and building the explosion (practical elements) and integrating

Shot Five - the aftermath

Compositor. Essentially a matte painting incorporating the same techniques from above plus adding in the nuke 3D environment of the ocean, landscape and Mount Suribachi as well as cg soldiers, smoke, etc.

The Day After Tomorrow - Digital Domain

Shot One - New York library is flooded

(All shots comped in nuke). Compositor.  This shot was not actually the one from the film but the work done to it was minimal (basically the VFX sup took at the water shots to another house for color correction and additional fg rain).  This is an entirely cg environment which I balanced and then augmented with some practical elements.  I also did a bit of work on this using nuke's optiflow (an in-house time modification tool that did per pixel analysis).

Shot Two and three - downtown L.A. destroyed/on the t.v.

Compositor. the first portion of this shot is not actually in the movie but an element I had to build entirely within nuke to display in the t.v. at the end of the shot (which was the shot actually in the film).  This was my first experience with 3D in nuke (but I had been a 3D digital artists previously so the concept wasn't alien by any means).  A fun shot.  Done in the final weeks of the show, my composite lead David Lauer gave myself and matte painter free reign to build this one.  We worked with Integration to get our camera and simplified buildings and ground plane and built a 3D matte painting in nuke.  This shot was then taken by me and color corrected and tweaked to look as if it were being broadcast on the old CRT television.  Aside from the logo (a still) all television elements were built and animated in 2D.  Done in a relatively short amount of time (a little more than a week) I really like this one because it was made from scratch and worked out so well (relatively speaking).

X2: X-Men United - Cinesite Hollywood

Shot One, Two and Three

(All shots comped in shake). Compositor. Worked under VFX Sup Steven Rosenbaum (and Mike Fink) on the "cerebro sequence", these three shots being good examples of the type of work I did in sum on the sequence.  Essentially pulling a key, integrating the 3D environment and particle people effect.  Did some look development on the last shot for the "nightcrawler reveal" (this is just the first part of a much larger shot.

Shot Four, Five, Six and Seven

Compositor. Worked on modifying Cyclops' opti-blast effect for the bright room to match the look already established for the much darker generator sequence.  Did rig removal for the people being pulled back and rebuilt portions of the wall (and some shadow work) for the blasted back effect

Shot Three - Eight

Compositor.  One of several opti-blast shots where the look was established (for the most part between compositor Chris Lance and VFX Sup Steven Rosenbaum but I contributed a little bit to the overall look through this comp as well).

Die Another Day - Cinesite London

Shot One

(All shots comped in shake). Compositor. This is a combination of a 3d ice shelf, ice burgs and water and 2D practical dust and fullers earth which I used to build the overall vapor cloud effect.

Shot Two

Compositor. Worked under the direction of "Ice Wave" sequence supervisors, Dottie Starling and David Rey (meow) for the overall look and direction.  Added a lot of 2d optics and cheated a little bit of a handheld in addition to my normal comping duties to get the final result.

Shot Three

Compositor. Key, CC, general integration and, if my memory serves, some rebuilding of the car roof to get the timing of the sun roof working appropriately.

Misc Composites - Sony Imageworks, Digital Domain

Shot One - Starship Troopers - Sony Pictures Imageworks

(Composited in Alias/Wavefront's "Composer"). Compositor. This is actually the second half of a larger shot.  The first half of the shot was composited by Jason Dadswell (with a small portion in the middle composited by Serge Sretschinsky).  because of the scale of the whole shot and the number of elements this shot was broken up, my responsibilities were the compositing of all of the 3D elements and their treatment with a lot of work going into tracking and comping in practical fire elements and their interactive glows in and onto the model ships.

Shot Two - Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End - Digital Domain

Compositor working in Nuke.  Much in the model of DD's typical workflow this was the overall integration of all 3D elements, sometimes working with the individual layers to get the desired effect (the spec on the underside of the ship for example) as well as the incorporation of various 2D practical elements (mist, water, etc.) to help fill-out the shot.

Shot Three - My Super-Ex Girlfriend - Digital Domain

Compositor working in Nuke. Typical DD composite with the exception of working with the pan and tile (nuke 3D environment - originally built by sequence lead, Jason Selfe) and getting it and the CG van to match-up with the existing van and store front (quite a bit of work as the scene camera and practical shot never lined up

properly).

3D and supervisory experience (with comp as well) 1994 to 2002

Contact - Sony Pictures Imageworks

Shot One

Both 3D Digital Artist (in Prisms [might have been Houdini at this point - I can't remember] and Dynamation) and Compositor (in Composer).  I did not do the final shot seen here.  I was an artist on the beach sequence (this sequence) under the direction of DFX Sup Steven Rosenbaum, Sequence Sup Ron Brinkman and CG Supervisors Sam Richards (3D) and Bart Giovanetti (2D).  My inital work (seen here in the environment) was to work in Prisms under the direction of Sam Richards in stitching together what was to become the first Pan and Tile environment in motion pictures (as far as I know), the brainchild of Sam and Ken Ralston.  Sam setup the cameras and then it was my job to take the original vista vision tiles and decide which to use and which to exclude, blend them, do special color and motion treatments (the ocean flows backwards, the palm fronds move twice as slow, etc.) and then stitch them together in 3D.  Once this was done I moved on to the position of Digital Artist (particles done in Dynamation for one shot not seen here) and Compositor (doing usual comp duties with the exception that, because we ran out of time, in some cases having to export the precomped BGs and matte channels that we pulled to be finally put together in the High Speed Composite suites (Infernos or Flames, I can't remember - again this was 12 years ago).

Anaconda - Sony Pictures Imageworks

Shot One

I served as both a 3D and 2D artist on this show as well as acting as the on-set Integration (camera and character match-move) supervisor for all shots done at Imageworks (at the time, Imageworks had just expanded rapidly and did not have an official Integration department -- as I had done some work at Dreamquest of this type and had on-set experience as well they asked me to head this task for the show even though it was not my specialty.  Duties required being on-set to take all measurements of the set, camera and actors as needed and then build those portions of the set in PowerAnimator for the animators to work with.  Ultimately Rodney Iwashina was brought on and assisted me in the task of match-moving all of the shots (more often than not the animators were asked to handle the character roto although I helped  on that with the shot following this one). One unique opportunity on this show (and at Imageworks) was to use the in-house command line compositor, imagemake, which was predecessor to Shake.

Shot Two

Same as above and I ultimately comped this one (in Composer) as well.  I also added some Dynamation spray to the blend in with the water spray (done by another TD, Mike Travers) off the snake itself.

Shot Three

Same as shot one.

Duck Dodgers in the 3rd Dimension - Dreamquest Images

Shot One - spaceship landing

I modeled, textured, animated and lit this shot in Alias PowerAnimator and composited it in Composer.  This shot was for a 3D ride film for Warner Brothers.  I was provided artwork by the production and then modeled, textured, lit and composited to match.  A custom tune shader had been written for Alias by a TD at Warner Digital which we used for the project to get the cel effect.

Primal Fear - Dreamquest Images

Shot One, Two and Three - 3D church extension

I built the camera, match-moved, modeled and lit the church 2nd story and above in Alias Power Animator.  This was a four shot show which was left to myself and a single 2D artist (John Murrah who handled all texture, roto and comping duties), and under the direction of VFX Sup Rob Burton,  to do three 3D matte paintings building the 2nd story and above of the church in the bg.  Working from the Production Designer's blue prints he used to build the single story facade on set, I built the church then used what scene data we had (nothing more than the blue prints and camera lens length) to match move the model in place.  Mapping on the textures created by John, I lit the church based on the plates and then John completed the final shot.  One of my favorite shows because it was just myself and one other artist and the shots turned out so successful (for the time) in such a short amount of time.

X-Men - Encore Video

Shot One - Mystique kicks Wolverine

C.G. Supervisor and artist.  While acting as the 3D C.G. Supervisor for we received this single shot as a 911 and managed to turn it around in a single day.  I worked with a modeler who fabricated the torso in Marai. Then I assisted him in rigging, animating and lighting the torso to match in Maya before comping in Shake.

Roswell (tv) - Encore Video

Shot One - zooming in on alien cells

C.G. Supervisor and artist.  This shot is typical of the type of work that I would do for Roswell, Alley McBeal or one of the other episodics that Encore Video handled at the time.  I assisted digital artist Ray Pettit in building the shader and lighting for the individual cel and organisms inside, wrote some expressions to clone one into a few which would cycle the procedural texture and animation and then built a simple practical system that would randomly propagate these cells into a multitude through out the scene.  Our total delivery time (which was typical for most of the television shots that we would get) was somewhere between 2 to 3 days.  In this case I comped the shot in Shake but, in most cases, we would deliver all 3D elements to our inferno suites to be composited.

Satan's School for Girls (tv mow) - Encore Video

Shot One and two - exploding stained-glass window

C.G. Supervisor and artist.  Besides our usual episodics, we would often get one-off movies-of-the-week which would require visual effects on a similar schedule and budget.  In this case I again worked with artist Raymond Pettit, assisting him in building the rigid body dynamics seen in each shot from a pre-scored window that he textured from the original plate.  All of this work was done in Maya.  The final composite was done in the inferno suite by another artist (if I remember correctly because it does look like my camera shake...  could be I comped this one in the Flint or Shake but it's hard to remember).

Satan's School for Girls (tv mow) - Encore Video

Shot One and two - exploding stained-glass window

C.G. Supervisor and artist.  Besides our usual episodics, we would often get one-off movies-of-the-week which would require visual effects on a similar schedule and budget.  In this case I again worked with artist Raymond Pettit, assisting him in building the rigid body dynamics seen in each shot from a pre-scored window that he textured from the original plate.  All of this work was done in Maya.  The final composite was done in the inferno suite by another artist (if I remember correctly because it does look like my camera shake...  could be I comped this one in the Flint or Shake but it's hard to remember).

Geppetto (tv mow) - Encore Video

Shot One and two - exploding stained-glass window

C.G. Supervisor (on and off-set) and artist.  This show was a little more involved than our typical tv mow.  Encore and (at that time) R!OT digital were assigned the vfx duties for all the Blue Fairy sequences with R!OT handling the compositing in their Inferno suites and my 3d department handling all CG rendered elements.  I served as an artist in developing the particle system in Maya for the Blue Fairy Dust effects.  As a part of this I was required to be on-set to get all reference and camera data that we needed to rebuild the environment and characters (much the same as I did on Anaconda).  For the final look of the effect I worked with VFX Supervisor Eric Mises Rosenfeld and an inferno artist at R!OT to develop the final "recipe" for both 3D and 2D to realize the effect throughout the show.