My Story

I have been an artist all of my life, since I was a wee lad. I was always drawing horses, cartoons, fantasy characters, you name it. Then in 1977, while I was in elementary school, Star Wars hit the theaters. It changed my entire outlook on what was possible. Creating special effects for movies, animating miniature characters on film, the artwork needed to realize the filmmaker's vision, it was all so exciting. It took a few years, but I made it into the Visual Effects and Animation industry, landing a job at Sony Pictures Imageworks in 2005.

I worked on the animated films Smurfs, Hotel Transylvania 2 and Storks, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, live action fantasy films Oz The Great and Powerful and Alice In Wonderland, and big action thrillers Edge of Tomorrow, Spider-Man Homecoming and Jumanji: The Next Level. Building animated characters that could blend into fantasy worlds as well as the real world was exciting and gratifying, as well as an incredible challenge. I built the bird-like wings for Finley, the flying monkey in Oz The Great and Powerful. I sculpted hundreds of muscle shapes for the Smurfs and the digital stunt double for Spiderman, making them move believably on screen. We even fooled the Spider-Man: Homecoming director and lead actor into thinking one of our all-CG videos was real.