Your “About Me” page isn’t really about you. It should be renamed the “Can I create enough trust to overcome objections” page. Write from that angle.
I have been a visual artist for as long as I could remember and got numerous awards and recognitions when still a small child for my artistic accomplishment using traditional media. I became interested in 3-D animation when i first saw Tron in the 1980s and got my first 3-D program for a home computer in 1992. I Majored in Animation at the prestigious Rhode Island school of design, which I attended on scholarship based in part on the fact that I already had 3-D CGI in my admissions portfolio in 1994. I performed all production tasks when I created the schools first ever 3-D animated degree project in 1998. I Helped to cofound the pioneering MMO game developer Turbine Games (which was acquired for $150 million and rebranded as Warner Brothers Games Boston in 2008) in my dorm room, and was responsible for most of the 3-D art and animation for the demo, which launched the company to get VC money and eventually a publishing deal with Microsoft. I continued to work at Turbine in Boston after graduating from RISD, shipping 2 of the first ever 3d MMO games as lead artist, creating in game, and also pre-rendered cinematics and promotional art. I then moved to leading developer Valve in Seattle for a number of years working as lead artist on an unpublished Xbox title. I was responsible for leading the in-game character modeling, textures, and cinematic animation as well as contributing to all production roles.
After the project at valve was canceled I went onto work at another start up, but the title I was hired to work on was also canceled and the company failed. At that point I decided I wanted to leave the video game industry and a lucky break saw me move to Vietnam, where I was the one man 3-D department at pixelsGarden, a busy post house. There I worked with an Art Director and compositor with Hollywood experience and got a crash course in creating 3d for live action and motion graphics compositing for short form projects, as well as onset VFX supervision and extensive 3d product lighting and rendering experience. During a year I worked on 20 TV commercials for the Vietnamese market performing all 3-D tasks in styles ranging from motion graphics to cartoon shaded to photo real.
Returning to America in 2003 and now armed with some basic knowledge of advertising and short form content production I tried my hand at entrepreneurship once again, starting a Seattle based remote-first boutique focused on 3d asset creation, animation and VFX for short form web videos and tv advertising spots. I chose Seattle because I liked living there, and I figured everything could be done remotely now over the Internet. At first it worked out. I assembled and lead remote teams of freelancers on a project by project basis and also performed onset VFX supervision. I worked as a vendor with agencies including JWT, draftFCB, and interbrand, on advertising and websites for major brands, such as Sprite, Motorola, Macys, and Doritos, and 3d VFX for music videos of dozens of up and coming bands, including LCD Soundsystem. I also supplied 3d assets used in television shows that aired on the Discovery Channel, including ice Road truckers, and as the hosts in several hundred episodes of an Emmy Award winning animated TV shown on Fox Business of all places .
The 2008 recession hit. Ad agencies stopped hiring me to be a remote vendor, but there was still strong demand to work in house as a freelance 3-D artist so I flipped a coin between NYC and LA, and landed on the east. The rest is history.
Over the next decade I was brought on by leading post houses, including Imaginary Forces, Psyop, Hornet, Brand New School, and The Mill to work as a 3d generalist in their New York offices on advertising spots for major brands, such as Honda, Sony, Microsoft, and Nike. I also did occasional freelance work in-house directly for agencies, including Organic, Accenture, and Hogarth worldwide. Ever the entrepreneur I also reunited with some now-NYC based veterans of turbine games and helped start up a boutique studio focused on 3d VFX and animation for experiential content, known as Dirt Empire., which has gone on to create immersive work for such clients as Amazon, HP, and the New York Times as well as live concert visuals for Beyoncé, Weezer, and more. I helped contribute to executive and creative decisions, although formally the studio was run as a collective with no job titles.
Despite this level of success buying a home in the parts of New York City that I wanted to live in remained elusive in and in 2018 I moved to Baltimore where I now have a fixed address, at least for now. I am still close enough to New York City that I can easily get there even within the same day if need arises, and have done so on several occasions.
Now that I no longer am fully immersed in New York I find that I have been getting much more freelance work from companies based in Los Angeles, working on content as opposed to commercials. I moved to LA for six months in 2022 to work on episodes and 3d asset creation for the animated TV shows Disenchantment and Futurama. I have also worked as a remote freelance generalist with LA based studios on the live action Hollywood VFX movie “Strays”, A Beauty and the Beast special for Disney, episodes of Batwoman on the CW, the titles for Spiderwick Chronicles on Roku, and a Harry Potter experiential project that toured the world. During 2024 I have increasingly been getting work using the new artificial intelligence programs to create images, including beta testing for Meta, and worked with clients outside of the traditional hubs of New York City and Los Angeles as a remote lead 3d artist on experiential and advertising projects, due to the slow industry work from the 2024 strike, the recession, and whatever other factors are at play.
And that brings us more or less up to the present.