About

I’m currently freelancing (and looking for full time employment) as a Lead Technical Artist / Lighting Artist / 3D Generalist. I’m very experienced at pushing the Quest 2 to its full potential. I’ve innovated many techniques that allow for very rich visual results that are very performant, in order to deliver a level of quality that is uncommon on the platform.

I’ve lead teams for various VR, AR, Virtual Production, and Video Advertising projects. Delivering experiences on PC VR, Meta Quest, Magic Leap, and experimental AR platforms, for clients including Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Gatorade, M&M’s, TheMill, Magic Leap, and others.

I have 15 years experience as a Lighting Artist with prerendered video, baked realtime, and dynamic realtime, in Unity, Unreal, Maya, and Blender.

I have also created many 3d and 2d motion graphics projects over the years.

Most Recently I freelanced for several months at Buck, where I worked on several VR experiences for high profile clients. I built upon my prior VR experience, and built new tools to aid the teams in order to create some of the best visuals available on the platform. I developed a level optimization tool that allowed our Maya artists to not worry about all the details of modeling optimization, that could completely optimize an environment with either realistic or stylized assets, and would only take a few hours to get a level the most optimized state possible for the Quest platform. I also developed workflows for the Maya artists to efficiently deliver high quality content that would work well on the platform.

Prior to returning to Freelance work, I spent 2 years at Mighty Coconut working as Lead Technical Artist. Working on Walkabout Mini Golf, I was the primary lighting/fx/shader artist, graphics pipeline technician, and Blender tool coder, since the game’s 7th course, Bogey’s Bonanza, through the 17th course, Upside Town. My goal is to bring to life the ambitious creative designs of our concept artists, without compromise. With the target platform of Meta Quest 2, I had to develop extensive graphics systems to circumvent the extremely restrictive nature of mobile VR. I developed methods to improve performance while displaying a rich visual result that approximates computationally expensive graphical elements, in a lightweight, mobile friendly way. Later on I oversaw a small team, teaching them the techniques I developed and create tools for them to use, while I continued to contribute as our primary shader and fx artist. I had also coordinated often with our coders on creating new systems, and helped diagnose and solve engine performance bottlenecks, as well as help guide our modelers on how to create highly optimized geometry.

Prior to my employment with Mighty Coconut, I freelanced for several years at The Mill’s Emerging Technologies division, as a Tech Art Lead for various VR/AR and Virtual Production projects with a small group of talented people, using Unity and Unreal Engine, as well as a variety of creation tools. Most of these jobs are NDA for life, but the clients I can mention are Magic Leap (AR), Gatorade (VR “Beat the Blitz” game), M&M’s (Live Virtual Production), and a trailer for Apple Arcade’s Beyond a Steel Sky (Virtual Production). I also worked on an interactive demo for an unnamed AR lens prototype, a cinematic VR experience for a large, unnamed tech company, and a live virtual production for an unnamed influencer.

Prior to that, I did pretty much everything you could think of related to 3D animation and motion graphics. I just love to learn new things and want to achieve an expert level in every software and every part of the pipeline.

A brief history:

2007: Graduated with a BFA in Animation from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

2008 - 2019: Freelanced in the animation industry in NYC, as a 3D Generalist, specializing in 3D Modeling, Texturing, Look Dev, Lighting, Rendering, and Composite, mostly on national television spots for various large brands, at a variety of NYC animation studios.

2012: As a side project, myself and Henning Koczy developed our first game, Starbounder. It was inspired by a classic shareware game Sky Roads, and released for iOS and Android (currently unavailable for download).

2018 - 2021: Freelanced as Lead Technical Artist at The Mill’s Emerging Technologies division on various interactive projects (AR/VR/VirtualProduction).

2021 - 2023: Employed as Lead Technical Artist at Mighty Coconut, working on Walkabout Mini Golf, VR game for Meta Quest and PC VR.

2023 (March - July) : Freelanced as Lead Technical Artist at Buck on several VR experiences for Meta Quest 2.