Cinematic Director

It's hard to boil all the work it took to produce 4 hours of Cinematics down into a short demo reel. I tried to strike a balance between showing a variety of scenes, showing some of the systems work that I helped develop, and also allowing a couple performances a bit of time to breath.

For all of the above, I directed:

• - on stage talent with a Performance Director
• - blocking and choreography of every scene
• - DOP using a virtual camera (VCAM) setup
• - an editor to achieve timing and camera lock
• - in house team through the Layout and Assembly of each scene
• - internal and external teams through animation cleanup and polish
• - collaboration with VFX, Audio and Lighting teams
• - integration into runtime and bug fixing

I'm incredibly proud of what my team was able to accomplish.

Associate Cinematic Director

This is a sample of some of the scenes in Far Cry 6 that I helped direct.  During the planning of these scenes, I tightly coordinated with the Mission Designers to ensure a smooth flow from gameplay to cinematic moments.  I directed our staff storyboard artist to establish the through-line of the scenes and began to flesh out the blocking of the scenes.  I worked with our inhouse artists to ensure all props and sets were created in 3D and fabricated practically on the Shoot floor. 

On the shoot floor, I worked with the Performance Director to help guide the scene to meet the needs of the story and the technical needs of the pipeline. I coordinated with the shoot technician team to ensure realtime playback was prepared with proper in-world offsets so that locations displayed as intended during the shoot.

In post production, this scene went through the editorial based pipeline that I helped develop at Ubisoft that helps to define the cameras and edit of the scene prior to expending any animation effort on the scene.

Cinematic Lead Reel

This is a collection of the cinematic content I directed as Lead Cinematic Animator on Mass Effect 3 DLC, Dragon Age Inquisition, and Mass Effect Andromeda.
The Cinematic Animation team at BioWare is responsible for the highest quality "Gold" Cinematic Scenes. As the Lead, I directed a team of animators, story board artists, and outsourcing partners to deliver and implement the finished scenes into the game.

On all of the above scenes, my responsibilities included:
- working directly with the storyboard artist
- guiding a team of animators through the pre-visualization of key sequences
- working with the Tech Art team to create the required rigs and tools
- directing Motion Capture sessions
- directing animation, from Motion Capture to key-frame
- directing external partners
- final implementation and debugging of our cinematic content

Mocap and Animation Reel

This is a small collection of the work I have done utilizing motion capture and hand keyed animation. The scenes were created using 3DS Max, PuppetShop, CAT and Maya

- Breach Intro (0:04 - 00:24) - Previsualization, camera layout and animation, mocap layout and cleanup, hand and face animation
- Kai Leng on the car (00:25 - 00:38) - Previsualization, camera layout and animation, mocap layout and animation
- The Tempest Stalls (00:39 - 00:45) - Previsualization, camera layout and animation, vehicle animation
- Miranda and Illusive Man (00:46 - 00:53) - Previsualization, camera layout and animation, mocap layout and animation
- Dragon Attack (00:54 - 00:59) - Previsualization, camera layout and animation, creature Key-framing.
- Nomad Hot Drop (00:59 - 01:08) - Previsualization, camera layout and animation, vehicle animation
- Grey Wardens Charge (01:09 - 01:14) - Previsualization, camera layout and animation, mocap layout and cleanup, final animation
- Mages vs Templars battle (01:15 - 01:23) - Previsualization, camera layout and animation mocap layout and cleanup, final animation
- Normandy Under Attack (01:23 - 01:35) - Camera layout and animation, mocap layout and cleanup, final animation
- Run towards battle (01:36 - 01:45) - Previsualization, camera animation and polish, mocap cleanup, final animation
- Cerberus vs Scientists (01:45 - 01:55) - Camera animation and polish, mocap cleanup, final animation
- Scared child (01:55 - 01:57) - All animation on the boy (motion capture was thrown away)
- Tour of the Tempest (01:58 - 2:13) - Previsualization, camera layout and animation, mocap layout and animation
- Picking up the pieces (02:14 - 02:18) - Camera layout and animation, mocap layout and cleanup, hand and face animation, set and prop animation
- Evacuating on the Normandy (02:19 - 02:35) - Previsualization, camera animation and polish, mocap cleanup, hand and face animation

PreVis and Layout Reel

Here is a small collection of some of the Layout and PreVisualization that I created for the Mass Effect and Dragon Age and Dead Rising franchises.

All of the Animatics were created in 3DS Max or Maya using blank rigs and simple level geometry. I would then block in rough pose-to-pose animation (or occasionally old motion capture footage from our library) to get a feel for action, timing, and edit of each scene. This process is very quick and allows for frequent iteration until the scene is ready to be passed along to Motion Capture and Animation.

Compositing Reel

 This is a small collection of some of the After Effects work I did on Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Mass Effect 3. My responsibilities included :
- communicate my vision with the Art Director and then work closely with the Concept Artist and Cinematic Director in order to conceptualize and execute the 'living tapestry' look that was created for Dragon Age's narrative sequences
- export, light, and render assets out of Unreal, 3DS Max, and Maya
- seamlessly merge pre-rendered elements from Unreal with Matte Painting elements out of 3DS Max and Photoshop
- extensive use of After Effects' plugin suite such as TrapCode to augment the lighting and special effects capabilities of Unreal
- color-tune each sequence to ensure flow between in-engine and pre-rendered sequences