In 2022 I was an in-house 3D modeler at Creative Character Engineering. Working from concept art, I created and 3D printed parts for TV and film costumes. Starting with rough test prints, I worked with notes from the costume designer to refine the designs and ultimately printed a high quality hero print to make a master mold from. Every part was a balance between capturing the desired look and practical functionality.

Other projects still under NDA include the upcoming DC Comics Blue Beetle movie, New arms for Doom Patrol’s Cyborg and updated suits for the Disney series Villains Of Valley View.

Also, a few examples of my 3D modeling skills. The Robot and the Beaver were created for 3D printing. For more of my modeling work please view the “Thaddeus Ravensblood” and the “Earth Number One” clips on my animation page.

To make the most of my time during the Quarantine I taught myself Blender starting with this animated version of The Dana Gould Hour podcast theme song.

I designed this piece as if it was stop-motion animation inspired by classic “big headed” caricature title sequences like “Here’s Lucy”.

All models designed, built and textured from scratch. I also created all of the lighting, animation and post production composting.

For my second quarantine project I wanted to challenge myself to create a longer piece. I was asked by the music project Bloomfield Machine to choose a song of theirs to interpret visually. This song inspired me to animate a lonely trash can’s fantasy about living a more exciting life.

The idea of using a trash can as the character was to see if I could give energy, personality and emotion to an inanimate object dancing without it having a face or a body with limbs.

I designed and created all of the models for this piece challenging myself to use as much procedural materials as possible. The only imported imagery used in the materials are in the opening and closing scene, the graffiti and in the trash contained in the cans. The rest is all built using procedural nodes.

For the last 8 months I’ve been developing an upcoming web series about a lonely janitor robot on a thousand year journey who has become sentient after 800 years. He decides to take charge of the situation and start hosting a talk show where he’ll be interviewing the human colonists still frozen in their cryopods.

The design of the show is inspired by sci-fi illustrations of the 60’s and 70’s

In order to achieve a project of this scale as a solo project I created modular sets and details for the ship interior that could be configured into an endless variety of rooms.

The ship exterior is the largest model I’ve ever built in CG. The ship is almost a mile long built at 1:1 scale to the characters and interiors to facilitate being able to pull out from the character looking out a window for the ending. The design of the ship is my original design inspired by the work of one of my art heroes Chris Foss.

The show has been designed to around the idea that entire episodes could be made around already created and rendered 3D assets with the guest comedian’s faces placed on the cryopod monitors from captured Zoom call footage.

For our host robot, Cal, I have created an extensive library of still poses and linking animations to be able to create new fully animated and rendered 3D character’s performance quickly and easily for each episode entirely in the editing process with no need to render any new footage.

This project is very close to being ready to create the first episode so I don’t want to put the finished animation online yet. If you are interested in seeing the opening, closing and other animations please let me know and I can send links!

MORE was the first stop-motion film ever produced that was entirely shot and released in the 15/70 IMAX film format.

As the Production Designer, I designed and built the sets, props, custom mechanical animation rigs and a miniature dimmable lighting kit for practical lights.

Partial awards list-
Academy Award nominee, 1999 Sundance Film Festival Jury award for best short film, South by Southwest Best animated short, USA Film Festival, Dallas Grand jury prize, Cannes Film Festival Critics week selection, Awards at World Fest Houston, Aspen Shorts fest, USA film festival, Toronto International short film festival

These are a few highlights of my work designing and building for the film and theme park industries.

Hong Kong Disneyland - Toy Story Float - I designed, built and installed all of the electrical systems to control the drive, audio and animation from the driver’s cabin.

Disneyland Paris - The Peter Pan clock is one of many props that I worked on. Other props included ornate mechanical displays for main street shops, buckets for Big Thunder Mountain, and a weatherproof recreation of a 1900s newsstand.

Ninja Turtles the Next Mutation - I designed and built animatronic heads for six main characters puppeteered remotely using a custom made system that communicated via microwave frequency modems to avoid radio interference on set.

Chiodo Bros’ Alien X-Mas - I designed an built a number of miniature carts for the Christmas Town square as well as other props for this Netflix stop-motion movie.

Yes Day - Netflix Movie and Reese’s Super Bowl Commercial -I worked with Rick Lazzarini’s Character Shop to build prop robotically assisted legs , an animatronic alien puppet and a “head up the butt” suit.

Ghost Ride Productions Talking Skull - This was a product that I designed and prototyped for a Halloween haunt equipment company. The unit had a programmable show driving the head rotation, tilt and eye motion. The jaw was driven by an audio input. I created the master version, molds of key components and documentation so the company could reliably manufacture as many as they needed.

Willard title sequence - I lead a team that designed, built and dressed a number of sets to represent portions of an old cluttered basement.

I created the artwork and layouts for the DVD releases of all of the Disney/Marvel/Netflix series including Daredevil Seasons 1 and 2, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist.

Below that are samples of some of my personal favorite side projects including podcast, CD, and T-shirt designs.

The first two projects were created with 3DS Max in very short time frames for an online Halloween "advent calendar" Gothtober.com
2017 entry “The Terror Tunnel”
2018 entry “Thaddeus Ravensblood and The Altar of Haxros”

The “Earth Number One” video was made for The Rubinoos using 3DS Max.

The last clip are some samples of my work with After Effects.

The first two images are some of the work I did modeling and rendering architectural visualizations using 3DS Max in house for architecture firm Lee, Burkhardt, Liu Inc.

The rest are examples of design, pre-viz and shop drawings of sets.