Studio Era

A BFA in Computer Art from SUNY Buffalo (2000), then the early NYC motion graphics scene and independent studio work. By the mid-2010s it had moved out of post-production into physical space — installations at Hush in Brooklyn. Viacom and Framestore VR followed (their own entries), then Meta.

Each chapter ended pulled toward the next bleeding edge — motion into CG, post-production into physical space, installations into AR.

Came up through After Effects and motion graphics at small NYC design shops, then Stardust, Buck, Imaginary Forces, Trollback, and Nathan Love. Taught myself the CG pipeline — Maya, Cinema 4D, Nuke — on Fanta and Adidas spots at night while doing motion graphics by day. Junior designer to compositor to 3D generalist to creative director in about a decade.

What pulled me through that decade was Psyop. I tracked them down in the early 2000s after Company Flow’s “End to End Burners” — a music video mixing CG, live action, graffiti, and the New York subway like nothing I’d seen. Five or six years at adjacent shops building toward a spot on their crew. Eventually got there.

Ran an independent shop for three years. Verizon Fios for McCann was the longest engagement and the cash cow. Puma NikeID — a custom asset-generation system for shoe customization — was the first platform I built: parametric design, client-facing tooling, automated rendering pipelines. A small Spark AR before Spark AR.

The shop closed in 2012 when the Verizon work wound down. A brief stint back at Psyop on Mountain Dew and Fanta spots followed.

FIG. 08 · Verizon Fios · storefront SET render for McCann

FIG. 09 · Verizon RedPen · pitch reel

Lead Animation and Experiential Designer at Hush in Brooklyn. The shop didn’t separate the screen from the room — projects mixed projection, fabrication, motion graphics, and software as the brief called for. Under Armour activations, a Niketown installation for the Super Bowl, an iPad/Unity app where users could deconstruct a 3D car layer by layer.

After more than a decade in post-production, the move into physical space mattered most for what came after. Once you’ve watched a stranger’s body figure out a gesture you designed, you can’t go back to designing for an editor.

FIG. 12 · Hush social · activations reel

FIG. 13 · Holorama Optical Theatre · Pepper’s-ghost technique applied to a bowling-alley scene · the optical pattern Past Present and Future would later use at scale

Director, Screen Content at Viacom’s Times Square HQ. Four projects: the Screens dynamic playback system, the Past Present and Future room, the Outrage Machine billboards, and the MTV Open Your Eyes Tilt Brush show at the White House.

Full Viacom case study →

Creative Director at Framestore VR Studio and Framestore Labs. One year. VR/AR pitches: location-based games, motion simulators, educational AR, conversational AI for sports stadiums, Hyundai experiential work. Mostly pitches — some shipped, some didn’t.

Framestore pitch portfolio →

Three months after presenting a 90-slide career portfolio at the Facebook campus in May 2017, I started at Meta as Art Director on Messenger AR. The deck argued one thing: this person keeps moving to the bleeding edge, and he’s done it four times. The argument worked.