What is This Place?
This site is my personal site. I am Chad and I use this site to blog, to post programming and cg resources, and to share projects that I have created or am currently working on. You can think of me as a technically oriented 3d artist. I like making 3d. I like to program. I like to program 3d.
In the Beginning…
I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. After high school I went to college at the University of California, Santa Barbara where I majored in computer science. UCSB is a great place for burritos (mmmm…Freebirds) and halloween parties. While at UCSB I had some fun jobs which included working at the campus bookstore, catering, being a butler for a billionaire (true story), and working as a web development intern. When I had about 6 months of college left, I was deciding whether I should pursue more computer science or head in a different direction. After thinking long and hard about what I wanted to do as a career, I decided to pursue a job in the 3d industry. I’ve always been interested in visual effects since Jurassic Park and I’ve always loved games. I wanted to help make these awesome visuals!
After graduating from UCSB in June 2005, I started attending Ex’pression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville, CA. Why did I choose Ex’pression? I took a tour of the facilities in February 2005 and it looked like an fun place to spend a couple of years learning 3d. It’s also in the heart of the Bay Area so it’s surrounded by top notch studios and game companies.
ImageMovers Digital
Six months before graduating, I was lucky enough to be hired by the new Robert Zemeckis/Disney venture Imagemovers Digital. IMD was nice enough to let me finish school and in October 2007, I graduated Ex’pression and immediately began work as a Character TD working on IMD’s first feature film, A Christmas Carol. After A Christmas Carol, I moved on to IMD’s second and last feature film, Mars Needs Moms. During the production of Mars Needs Moms, Disney decided to close down ImageMovers Digital once production had ended on Mars Needs Moms, citing that “IMD no longer fits into our business model.” During the production of Mars Needs Moms, I also started working on what was supposed to be IMD’s third film, Yellow Submarine, a remake of the old Beatles film. Once Disney decided to shut down IMD, we made a Yellow Submarine look-development test instead. I left IMD on October 29, 2010, three years to the day of my start date.
Digital Domain
After leaving IMD, I began work at Digital Domain’s new San Francisco office as a Rigging Pipeline TD in November 2010. At Digital Domain, I was tasked with creating creature shape and deformation tools in order to support large creature shows. The first of these films was Jack the Giant Killer. During the development and production of Jack the Giant Killer, I wrote the facial rigging system used in the film as well as various other deformation and rigging pipeline tools. I left Digital Domain on March 30, 2012.
What’s That You Do?
My job has many different titles. It can be known as Character Setup TD (technical director), Character Setup Artist, Rigger, Puppet Artist, Technical Artist, etc.. It’s all pretty much the same thing. The most literal role of a character setup artist is to take a 3d model of something and allow it to move and deform correctly. Whether it’s a digital human being, a cartoon character, a robot, a monster, an animal, a car, or a machine, it is the responsibility of the character setup artist to enable all of these assets to move believably. Isn’t that what a 3d animator does? No. A 3d animator uses the controls, also known as a rig or puppet, that we character setup artists create in order to move the character or asset. But there’s more to being a rigger than making animation controls. We also need to make sure everything moves correctly. When an animator raises a character’s arm, it is our job to make sure the rig responds in an anatomically believable way. If a robot has many moving parts, such as a transformer robot, it is the job of the character setup artist to make sure that all those parts play nicely with each other as the robot moves. If animators were bicycle racers like Lance Armstrong, then character setup TD’s build their bikes, patch their wounds, and gave them water during the race.
Many character setup artists however do more than just rig assets. When a character setup artist has a broad technical background, they often develop many tools and solve many problems that arise whether they are specific to a character rig or not. Character setup artists also may streamline the production pipeline by creating tools to fix inefficiencies and/or developing tools to enable other artists to achieve a better result. Specifically, since I have a good programming and math background, I create a lot of custom tools that allow rigs to fit within a determined production pipeline. When someone comes to me and says, “I wish I could do this with Maya,” it’s usually my job to create that tool. In large scale productions, there are often dozens if not hundreds of assets to rig. So it is also part of my job to design and maintain tools to be able to create all these assets quickly and efficiently.
So what do I do as a Character Setup TD in feature film? I use a lot of math and programming to develop tools that allow modelers, riggers, animators, and many other artists to do their jobs quickly and more efficiently. I write tools to support the creation of dozens of rigs within the specified bid time. I develop solutions to inefficiencies and I work with other departments to design and plan new technology that we would like to incorporate in future and/or current projects. If a character needs to do something that is non-standard in a certain shot or sequence, I am often requested to help develop a solution to achieve the desired result. And when I’m not developing tools, I actually rig some characters.
Both Sides of the Brain
Some of my interests include making 3d effects and animation, playing piano, programming, going to the gym, drawing, sculpting, soundtrack music, eatting, and gorillas (yes…gorillas). When I’m not making CG wonders, I like being with my family and friends. I’m fortunate enough to be able to use both sides of my brain and combine my computer science skills with my art skills, both of which I really enjoy.