I’m an artist, a dreamer, a technologist, and a young professional. I make movies because they inspire me — the way we tell stories is the way we ignite imagination and empathy. In movies, as in stories, we explore the best and the worst of reality and humanity while we stretch the definitions of both, and I can think of nothing as compelling to spend my time on. All these lofty ideas I love, and perhaps also I never got over a fascination with tinkering and creating visual magic, from the littlest spark to the most unlikely spectacle we can think up.
Well Hi
sure nice to meet you
I'm a Nerd
I like learning how things work. I like building new stuff out of old stuff. I like worlds that don't exist and defining things that spring out of pure imagination. I like puzzles and digging five levels deep into a mysterious problem to find a single elegant switch that needs flipping to fix everything. Sometimes I like it when the switch is right on top, too.
I'm a Pragmatic Problem Solver.
At work I am usually called a Technical Director, but that's not terribly descriptive. It's a term borrowed from the stage and movie industries. In those contexts, it's a person who is in charge of getting the set built and the effects executed correctly, responsible for the entire technical setup of a show. In my context, in the oh-so-digital visual effects and animation industries, it is like that - but with software.
TDs, as we are affectionately known, are the duct-tape of a feature animation pipeline. We bridge gaps. Commonly this means gaps between tools and artists, artists and developers, studio and third-party technology, and between multiple department toolsets. We are the swiss-army-knife developers, and we use whatever tools we can scrounge or make to keep a show running for an artist or department.
The nature and speed of TD work lends itself to fast solutions and band-aid style fixes, but since we see the underbelly of every poorly written tool and module, many of us care passionately about maintainability, especially when it comes to code that speaks for itself.
I've also been the Technical Producer at a large, multisite church - keeping the lights on, the services running smoothly, and the visual aspects of weekend experiences moving forward. It's a different mix of hard skills - less code, more ladders and a wide range of people and goals - but very similar needs for quick thinking, creative solutions, and practical decisions.
I'm a Communicator and a Teacher
One of the hardest challenges creative industries face today is that people are very simple and impossibly complicated. In particular, artists and engineers seem like they see different worlds - one cold, calculating, and complex, while the other is fuzzy and elastic and moldable. That makes for a lot of sparks flying when they try to collaborate, and many teams that could do great things if they could only understand each other.
This is me
I really am glad you’re here. Also on this page: my dog, Theodosia
I enjoy both. I can't help but see the similarities between the technical and the creatives. Artists and engineers all have this in common: they look at the world and see the way things could be, and they try to make it so. The mediums and methods are vastly, vitally different, but they have the same core wonder and optimism. I like to show artists new tools and strategies and enlighten engineers about how artists work and think. It's pretty fun.
When I’ve been lucky, I’ve helped design and teach classes for other TDs, artists, and both.