About Me
Lighting Pipeline Supervisor and Technical Director with over 10 years of experience designing and deploying scalable animation pipelines. Known for creative problem-solving, rapid adaptability, and relentless optimism, I thrive on deconstructing complex problems and engineering the tools needed to solve them.
Experience
DreamWorks Animation
Nov 2017 - Present
Lighting & Compositing Supervisor
Aug 2026 - Present
- Leading the creative and technical direction of Lighting, Compositing, and FX for an unannounced DreamWorks Television series, establishing the visual language and maintaining quality across production.
- Partnering closely with executive producers, creative executives, directors, art director, and other leadership to translate the show’s artistic vision into compelling final imagery.
- Developing lighting strategies, workflows, and visual standards that balance creative ambition with the realities of an episodic production schedule.
- Leveraging a strong technical and pipeline background to identify opportunities for automation, tooling, and workflow improvements that allow artists to spend more time focused on creative work.
- Collaborating with production and technical teams to anticipate bottlenecks, solve complex production challenges, and keep the show running efficiently.
- Working with internal teams and partner studios to communicate creative expectations, review work, and maintain a consistent visual bar throughout production.
Lighting & Compositing Department Supervisor
Jun 2022 - Aug 2026
- Oversaw technical architecture and pipeline strategy for Lighting & Compositing across all DreamWorks Television productions.
- Managed a diverse in-house team of lighting artists and TDs on day-to-day tasks and long-term R&D projects.
Lead Lighting & Compositing TD
Feb 2019 - Jun 2022
- Trained, onboarded, and mentored new Lighting Artists and TDs.
- Traveled to partner studios around the world to train them on our pipeline and lighting workflows.
Lighting & Compositing TD
Nov 2017 - Feb 2019
- Designed and developed Python-based software and tools deployed to thousands of artists globally, utilizing PyQt/PySide, USD, Rez, Git, SG, OCIO, OIIO, and more.
- Utilized my deep knowledge of DCCs such as Maya, Houdini, Nuke, Unreal Engine, and Photoshop to realize new and creative workflows.
- Collaborated with the Editorial and Post teams to ensure smooth media ingest and final-picture workflows, including ACES, WCG, HDR, OpenEXR, and related technologies.
- Juggled many tasks across multiple active productions, proactively solving problems before they arose and triaging issues as they were reported.
- Engineered robust object-oriented Python libraries that significantly reduced development iteration time and increased efficiency.
Doodle Picture Studios
Lighting Technical Artist
Aug 2015 - Aug 2017
- Lighting, rendering, and compositing for LEGO projects including story animations, product features, and key visuals.
- Look development, sequence and shot lighting with Maya, Redshift, and Fusion.
- Designed creative solutions for problems that arose in production such as memory limitations, volumetric rendering issues, and caching workflows.
Awards
DreamWorks Animation
- DreamWorks Technology Champion Award (2026) for TV Lighting & Pipeline. "Awarded to an individual who, through their ideas and actions, has significantly enhanced and advanced the DreamWorks cultural values within our technical community."
- DreamWorks TechCon Team Initiative Award (2024) for my work developing the first DreamWorks TV Game Engine Pipeline for series production on Be@rbrick
- Advancing the DWATV Animation Pipeline (2019) award for my creation of the Lighting Handoff Tool which automated the Animation to Lighting handoff.
Education
Cogswell College
BA Digital Arts and Animation
2011 - 2015
- Worked on student film projects including Trouble Brewing.
- Lead a team of artists on MediaWorks projects where we pitched and delivered short video projects for real world clients.
