I am a Maya character technical director with 15 years of rigging experience in high end commercials, VFX and feature animation environments.
Currently I am working at Cinesite in London. However, I have worked as far out as Portland, Oregon, USA.
I am originally from the UK, with a British passport, and have spent the foundation of my career in Soho, London.
I specialize in leading character rigging departments, as well as rigging R&D and pipeline development.
My goal has always been to be as optimal as possible while at the same time keeping the quality of the deformations accurate and believable. The usability of the rigs have also been an extremely important aspect of my work too.
One of my most favorite aspects of rigging has always been the underlying math and also collaborating with the animators.
Experience:
Company: Cinesite
Location: London, United Kingdom
Time Period: June 2022 - Present
Title: Senior Character Technical Director
-Development of VFX facial rigging system.
-Rig module, pipeline development.
-Creature rigging.
Company: MPC
Location: London, United Kingdom
Time Period: May 2017 - June 2022
Title: Senior Character Technical Director
-Leading rigging at MPC Advertising in London.
-Python Development.
Company: LAIKA, LLC
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
Time Period: January 2016 - May 2017
Title: RP CG Character Rigger TD
-Facial rigging on foreground characters for Laika's 5th film 'Missing Link' (2019)
-Problem Solving
-Python Development.
Company: Method Studios
Location: London, United Kingdom
Time Period: January 2015 - January 2016
Title: Lead Character Technical Director
Senior Character TD (Rigging) for the Film VFX Division of Method Studios London.
Projects include: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Terminator Genisys (2015).
-Modular rigging pipeline development.
-Responsible for building, binding and sustaining rigs.
-Creating fully automated character rig builds.
-Using python with PyQt/PySide to create tools and GUIs for the generalist TDs and layout.
-Designing and developing new rig modules.
-Optimizing rigs for fast animation previewing.
-Developing tools to automate simulations using Ndynamics.
-Design, development and implementation of a Rigging Asset Manager.
-Accounting for requests from other departments and the VFX supervisor.
-Handling tasks across multiple projects at the same time.
-Maintaining continuity throughout all assets.
-Hiring and training.
Company: Framestore
Location: London, United Kingdom
Time Period: November 2010 - January 2015
Title: Lead Rigger
Primary lead rigger for the entire commercials department of London-based visual effects company. Worked on projects such as British Animation Award winning: Coca-Cola ‘Siege’ and the more recently aired Freesat ‘Sheldon’ for which I received a VES award nomination.
Projects include: Coca-Cola “Siege”, Andrex “Puppy World” “It's the Little Things” “Hakle” “Bamboozled” “Rollercoaster”, Specsavers “Koala”, Kellogg's Crunchy Nut “Dinosaur”, Highland Spring “Mole”, ”Believe” directed by Alfonso Cuaron, Channel 4 “Spaceman”, O2 “Discovery”, Audi “Power Walking”, Freesat “Sheldon”, Three Mobile “The Big Fish”, Carfax “Fox Den”, Kellogg's Crunchy Nut ”Snake”, Arla “Farm”, Audi 'Leap of Faith', Lipton 'Be More Tea'.
-Leading the commercials rigging department.
-Hiring and training new members of the rigging team.
-Responsible for the building, binding and sustaining character rigs for the commercials department.
-Creating proprietary Framestore scripted utilities and modules.
-Creating fully scripted character pipelines using Framestore’s proprietary scripted utilities and modules.
-Using python with PyQt/PySide to create tools and GUIs for the animators, TDs and riggers.
-Designing and development of new rig modules.
-Optimizing rigs for fast animation previewing.
-Mocap data conversion and implementation for large scale crowd scenes.
-Muscle set up.
-Time management and guidance for the entire rigging team.
-Creating Photoreal characters using references.
-Collaborating with animators to better aid the animation workflow.
Company: Squint/Opera
Location: London, United Kingdom
Time Period: April 2008 - June 2009
Title: Maya Generalist
-Communicated directly with clients to ensure needs were met and expectations were exceeded.
-Rigged, modelled, textured and animated characters.
-Created Ncloth simulations for dynamically animated assets.
-Rendered and composited passes using Mental Ray/Vray and Nuke.
Honors & Awards:
VES Award for Outstanding Performance of an Animated Character in a Commercial, Broadcast Program,or Video Game (Nomination)
Issuer: Visual Effects Society
Date: February 2015
Occupation: Lead Rigger at Framestore
I received a VES certificate of nomination for my work on 'Sheldon' the snail for the Freesat commercial. My work was nominated alongside Dragon from Game of Thrones, Monty the Penguin from the John Lewis Christmas commercial and SSE "Maya" the orangutan.
Link to Freesat 'Sheldon':
http://www.framestore.com/work/freesat-sheldon
Link to VES Nominations:
https://www.visualeffectssociety.com/post/ves-awards-nominations-announced
Publications:
Title: Framestore: Animal Rigging
Publication: 3D World Magazine
Date : July 1st 2013
I was interviewed by Mark Ramshaw from 3D World Magazine as part of his "CG Animal Techniques" article in 2013. The article was featuring a number of the studios responsible for creating a new breed of computer-generated beasts.
