Studio Era

A BFA in Computer Art from SUNY Buffalo (2000), then into the early years of the NYC motion graphics scene and independent studio work. By the mid-2010s the work 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 through Stardust, Buck, Imaginary Forces, Trollback, and Nathan Love. Taught myself the CG pipeline — Maya, Cinema 4D, Nuke — on Fanta and Adidas spots in the evenings while doing motion graphics by day. Junior designer to compositor to 3D generalist to creative director, over about a decade.

The work that pulled me through that decade was Psyop. Tracked them down in the early 2000s after seeing Company Flow’s “End to End Burners” — a music video that mixed CG, live action, graffiti, and the New York subway in a way I’d never seen before. Spent five or six years working 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-running engagement and the cash cow. Puma NikeID — a custom asset generation system for shoe customization — was the first piece of platform work I ever built: parametric design, client-facing tooling, automated rendering pipelines. Looking back, 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’s appeal was that it didn’t separate the screen from the room — projects mixed projection, fabrication, motion graphics, and software in whatever combination 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 for location-based games, motion simulators, educational AR, conversational AI experiences for sports stadiums, and Hyundai experiential work. Most deliverables were 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.