About

I lead the work and still do the work

Twenty-two years building digital characters — hair, cloth, creature effects and the simulation that makes them behave — at Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks and LAIKA.

I supervised a department of forty at Imageworks, with two leads and two managers reporting. Pixar created its Groom Lead role for this work; I was the first. I’ve been nominated for a VES award and I co-authored a SIGGRAPH talk on hair simulation.

What I’ve spent the last decade on is less visible than any of that: getting two departments who didn’t want to speak to each other to build for one another instead. That turned out to be a teaching problem, and it responded to teaching.

Studios

  • Pixar Animation Studios

    Groom Lead

    2015 – present

  • Industrial Light & Magic

    Senior Character TD

    2015

  • Sony Pictures Imageworks

    Simulation Supervisor

    2005 – 2014

  • LAIKA

    Junior Technical Director

    2003 – 2005

Recognition

  • SIGGRAPH 2019 Talks

    Co-author, “Holding the Shape in Hair Simulation.” ACM, DOI 10.1145/3306307.3328166

  • VES Award Nomination, 2023

    Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature — Turning Red, “Panda Mei.” 21st Annual VES Awards

  • Groom Lead, Pixar Animation Studios

    Role created for this work — the first at the studio

Teaching

  • Designed and taught technical curriculum at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Pixar — multiple sessions at each, five to sixteen participants, live and recorded.
  • Classes deliberately combined character and simulation artists, so the cross-department contact was the intervention rather than a side effect.
  • Recordings authored at Sony Imageworks were still in use there years after I'd left.
  • Art Docent lead for an elementary school art program — volunteer, every other month.

Building

  • About four years working with AI, starting with image generation in 2022.
  • Three years in ComfyUI running local models and training LoRAs.
  • Heavy n8n workflow automation; just over a year on Claude Code.
  • Shipped: CG tools, video submission tools, web applications, games, home automation, a personal finance system.

Elsewhere