Filmography 1999 to 2012

This is a run through of my most memorable projects in various genres over the years. I've dropped in some facts about their development. If you want to read them all in historical order start from the bottom of the University page to get everything in context. There are links to videos where ever possible and many of them have pages dedicated to each project.

Devils, Angels & Dating

2006 to 2012 - Character based CG Short Film

I developed a short computer generated film called 'Devils, Angels and Dating' purely for the love of animated filmmaking. The goal of the art and tech in this project was to produce a film that's so unique and beautiful in every frame that it would catch the attention of any internet browser and make them... More...

Red vs Blue

2011 - CG Animated Series - Working for Rooster Teeth as a Filmmaker / Animator / Generalist

Red vs Blue is a spin off comedy web series created in and around the Halo game universe. Much of the footage is captured from the game itself with voices added, and that's how it started. But nine seasons later it's developed into a hybrid CG animated / game captured series. I joined Rooster Teeth in August and found that they use every trick in the book to get the footage to the screen. It was very refreshing, that we could use whatever tool was best for the job. It felt a lot like a games development house in its culture, but in many ways it was also a bit of a wild card and they would make short films and commercials all the time.

They've attracted a huge cult following over the years. I wasn't really there long enough to do anything amazing, but I dove in and helped out with all kinds of tasks. Essentially helping them to reach their DVD deadline. The most curious thing about their pipeline was the use of Poser as their primary 3D software. We quickly found that it was going to be faster to adapt the pipeline to use Maya and I helped out in that process as well... although it did mean that not only did we have a season to finish in a month but we had to create an all new pipeline. There were a lot of corners cut, but the work got done.

You can see several episodes containing my work at the Rooster Teeth website from about Episode 11 onwards.

Happiness Factory: World of Coke 2

2011 - Coke CG Animated Short Film - Working for Psyop LA as a Senior Animator

After spending a couple of years working on confidential projects it’s refreshing to have worked on something I can talk about again. I’m writing this after returning to Austin, after spending a couple of months in Los Angeles. I got the call to work at Psyop and when I found it was going to be on Happiness Factory I couldn’t have been… happier. Ironically another job option came up at the same time (why do they always come along at the same time?) ... more...

We Need a Hit

2008 to 2009 - CGI Feature Film - Working remotely for Walsh Family Media as a Character Animator

I did some part time work on this budget CGI film featuring the Cool Bean characters. It was an interesting challenge working from home, but very familiar territory in every other respect and involves some interesting characters and strong cartoony animation. Here's their website.

Churchill Insurance: Roy Walker

2008 - Live Action & CGI Commercial - Working for Glassworks as a Senior Animator

At a time when Glasswork's in-house animator was busy on another project I was brought in as a Freelancer to handle half of the new batch of Churchill adverts. Only two and a half weeks, this one. I setup the shots and animated the Churchill dog for two adverts. There was actually a total of four to do but Alastair handled the other two. Setting up the cameras was a manual affair of lining things up crudely based on some rough numbers we had from the shoot. Not everything fit as it was supposed to though and more...

Vodafone: Texts UNLTD

2008 - Live Action & CGI Commercial - Working for Passion Pictures as a Senior Animator

Back to Passion Pictures and I did the Previs on this advert for Vodafone involving shot setup and more uniquely... a lot of Dominos! Julian was handling the tech side of the Dominos as I gave him feedback to get the tools to work. Working closely with the Directors from the Mixtape Club, who came over from New York for this, I tried out lots of shot and Domino setups, figuring out how the Live Action elements would fit into the shots while making key phrases read as the Dominos get more and more ambitious.

It was a simple yet fun project and I really enjoyed working with Michelle, Chris and Jesse from the Mixtape Club. There are a few other versions out there, with different edits and endings. I just saw one on the TV with my spinning phone ending!

Harmonix: Rock Band 2

2008 - Animated CGI Commercial - Working for Passion Pictures as a Senior Animator

I started at Passion Pictures and I was working on a really cool project which gave me plenty of room to flex my film making and animation skills. I'm a huge fan of the various styles of Passion Pictures portfolio and a few of my friends from MPC made the move too for various other projects, so it was fun. The first Rock Band cinematic was very... more...

Narnia: Prince Caspian

2008 - VFX based Feature Film - working for MPC as a Senior Character Animator

Animating on Prince Caspian, I met lots of great people while I settled into life in London. I got the chance to work on characters combining live action and animation, as well as full CG characters. Everything from Tigers, Leopards, Cheetahs, Minotaurs and Fauns to Centaurs. Here's a sneak peak behind the scenes.

Animation Showreel 2008

2008 - CGI Animation demoreel

This reel features samples of recent work from various projects currently in the public domain.

Parkour Acrobatic FreeRun

2007 to 2008 - CGI Animation - Personal Project

I'd wanted to do something acrobatic like this since my University years but when Disney's Tarzan came out I opted not to do it as I figured it would be seen as a rip off, since then Spiderman has also achieved similar feats. Well I felt it was time to have a go anyway to add a little variety to my reel. The character model and texturing was done by my friend Jamie and I rigged it using Setup Machine 2. I've also sculpted a series of facial expressions and incorporated them into the rig with... More...

Toyota Auris - More Room for Life

2008 - Live Action Advert - working for The Moving Picture Company as a Senior Animator

I spent a week pre-visualising how the little people would work in the car's interior space. The results may look quite simple but it was surprisingly tricky finding natural ways to make each scenario work. Here's a shorter version and here's a higher quality version.

Renault Megane Sport

2008 - CGI TV Advert - working for The Moving Picture Company as a Senior Animator

A last minute move to London, started with about three weeks working on this 'Pod Racer' style advert at MPC. It was a fast schedule and the advert was on air five weeks after I started on it, which is a really fast turn around the team can be very proud of. There's nothing particularly complex in the animation but the results were good, and the people I worked with were great. I did most the work on the spark plug and wheel shots moving through the corridors. You can read the MPC write up here.

Singapore Navy - Be Somebody

2007 - CGI TV Advert - working for Ark VFX as the Senior Animator

This Television advert for the Singapore Navy was an interesting piece of work. The brief was; the buildings come to life and head out to sea to engage in battle with office themed projectiles, we then cut back to a man waking up in his office before we see the tag lines. We bounced a number of ideas around and... More...

The Adorable Man in the Mirror

2007 / 2008 - 3D CG Character Animation

I decided to have a go at the newly re-furbished ‘11 Second Club’ Animation Competition, where you are given one month to animate a character to a sound sample. Here is a brief diary of my progress, a few other notes and videos at various stages in the process. More...

Ark VFX Showreels 2007

2007 - Visual Effects Demoreel - working for Ark VFX in England as the Senior Animator and Editor

I edited together two new showreels for Ark VFX, one short Teaser Reel and one longer Professional Reel. The main idea behind these was to show the breadth of Ark's portfolio whilst leaning it more in the direction of the character animation work they'd done but hadn't shown much of up to this point.

First I put together the longer video paying close attention to keeping sequences of shots (related to each other) close together within the edit so that they made sense to the viewer. They were then split into smaller chunks and sprinkled in key places in the edit to effectively provide 'sub-plots' that weave together.

The second edit was much shorter and had to be cut purely for the spectacle value in a way that only gave you enough of a glimpse to tease you into finding out more... or watching the longer video.

When you watch these videos I suggest you right click on the link and save it to your computer for the best playback and a seamless download.

The Club

2007 - CGI HD Cinematics for a PS3 game - working for Ark VFX in England as the Senior Animator

I arrived just as this project was nearing completion so all I did was help where I was needed for a couple of months until it was all done. It was a mixture of scene setup with mocap performances. Mocap fixing, and full hand animated replacement where the mocap wasn't providing the necessary performance. I also animated a lot of hands and faces since the mocap doesn't provide that. Then there was lighting and rendering, and a bit of editing and titles work. For more information go to the Official Website. In the mean time there's a good sample of the work in this trailer.

Animation Demoreel 2007

2007 - CGI Animation demoreel

This reel features Dogs on a Seesaw and some samples of my work on Happy Feet. It also shows highlights from my cinematic/FMV work on Kameo and my personal projects Panda Pander, In case I don't see ya and What did I just say?.

Dogs on a Seesaw

2007 - CGI Animation - Personal Project

I started this pet project with the intension of doing some four legged animation, with a jump and some balance/weight issues to address. It began with the dog jumping onto a seesaw with a weight on the other side reacting to the seesaw tilting. Then it occurred to me that the dog’s action wasn’t as interesting as what the weight was doing as it flew up, bounced and rocked around. So I thought it would be even more interesting to... more...

Sir Billi the Vet

2006 to 2007 - CG animated feature film - working for Glasgow Animation in Scotland as the Animation Supervisor & Lead Character Animator

I spent six months in Glasgow, initially as a Senior Character Animator but quickly taking over as the Animation Supervisor on this CG feature film featuring the voices of Sean Connery, Alan Cumming, Gail Porter, Ruby Wax, Richard Briers, Miriam Margolyes.

At first there were a number of interesting character animation shots to do and I took a back seat to my usual role while I learned the pipeline and evaluated the film's character rigs. It wasn't long before there were some staff changes and suddenly lots of slack to be taken up in other departments which revealed new opportunities for development in the pipeline. In time I took over as the Animation Supervisor and once we were moved into our new animation room things started to really get going, with a small but dedicated department of animators and a number of outsourced studios in numerous locations supporting and subsidising our work.

We got into a good routine of weekly group animation critiquing sessions, on top of the usual one on ones I would do dozens of times per day. Doug and I would also go over the dailies for one of the external animation studios to give them feedback and guidance. We were just getting going when personal circumstances dictated that I had to move to another area, and I leave them in the capable hands of my friend Roberto. I wish them the best of luck and look forward to seeing the finished film soon.

Go to the official website for more details on the movie.

Animation Demoreel

2006 - Animation demoreel containing CG and 2D animation

This video has a small selection of my best character animation work from a variety of projects currently in the public domain.

What did I just say?

2006 / 2008 - CG lip-synced performance piece

I used one of the 10 second club dialogue samples to start this off... it's actually 13 seconds though. Unfortunately the competition was struggling to keep on top of things at the time so the judging wasn't very timely, so this wasn't entered and I just did it for the practice. I did a few live-action reference shoots, to get me started, and sliced together my favourite parts. This was a really good pacer, as just when you find yourself getting too close to the animation and focusing on issues that are too small, you can take a step back and remind yourself of the bigger issues by studying the reference footage. The mouth on this rig turned out to be a bit of a pain (it opens too wide), and the eyebrows look like a giant caterpillar but I struggled on. I did most of the work on a very slow computer so I had to really focus on the principles of the animation without easily being able to see it playback in real-time. It's still a great rig, for a freebie, and I'd love to thank the people that made it.

In case I don't see ya...

2006 - CG lip-sync piece

This short piece of lip-sync work was just something simple and fun to fill a little free time. It's not very complicated just a head... talking. It's a line from one of my favourite movies, 'The Truman Show'.

Happy Feet

2006 - Warner Brothers CG animated feature film - working for Animal Logic in Sydney as a Technical Animator

I was lucky enough to have an all expenses paid stay in Sydney Australia for four months working on Happy Feet for Animal Logic. It's about singing and dancing penguins and in case you haven’t heard about it… it’s the one that won the Oscar!

After a couple of weeks learning XSI I started an Audition piece along with all the other animators, to learn how this production wanted us to do things... more...

Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise

2006 - Microsoft XBox 360 game - working for Rare in England as a Senior Animator

I spent a month or so working on in-game animations for this game. I’d been busy with numerous departments whilst I was writing up pitch documents for a dozen game ideas and I decided I wanted to find something focused to do while I was waiting for these projects to work their way through the management pipeline. I was stretched thin, so I volunteered my time on the new Asset Creation Team that was currently creating animations for new characters.

I spent most of my time working on a cute little cartoon Robin character which made a nice change from the more serious things I’d been animating for years. It was really bouncy and squashed beautifully even though the geometry wasn’t all that sophisticated. The design was very round so it was like animating a ball with personality. I moved on to another project after this, but it was the last proper piece of animation I did for Rare before finally saying my good-byes after seven and a half years.

I later discovered that my animation was used in Viva Piñata 2 rather than in the expansion packs that were intended for the first game.

This is actually a teaser trailer for Viva Piñata (from Rare) with some great animation, it doesn't actually contain any of my work, but it gives you an idea of what the project is all about. This has spawned an entire franchise now with an animated TV series and a spin off game. Have a look at the Official Website for more details.

Perfect Dark Zero

2005 & 2006 - Microsoft XBox 360 first person shooter - working for Rare in England

I didn't work on this game directly. My contributions were only promotional videos and a company logo... more ...

Cleanin' up the town - Showreel

2005 - Demo reel containing CG animation

This showreel highlights a small portion of my work leading up to September 2005... more...

Kameo: Elements of Power

2002 to 2005 (Some videos in 2006) - Microsoft XBox 360 action/adventure game - working for Rare in England as the Lead Animator

Over the three years I worked on Kameo I did a huge number of cutscenes along with my other responsibilities. Many of them changed dramatically as the game developed to fit the changing story and gameplay. The best of the cinematics ... are here. There is also a selection of my animatics at the bottom of the page for sequences that might not have made it into production (or were largely worked on by other animators). For examples of lighting and rendering have a look at the Stills Gallery. I did a lot of editing for trailers over the years too so check out those at the Trailers page... more ...

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts

2002 - Microsoft XBox 360 game - working for Rare in England

I spent a couple of months working on this game (it's still in development). I did a number of pre-production related tasks on this one including ideas development, concept artwork, character designs and pre-visualisation. The video link below does not contain any of my animation, it's simply a teaser for the project and it doesn't give much away. You will be able to find out more about the title at XBox.com and at the Official Website.

Starfox Adventures

1999 to 2002 - Nintendo Gamecube action/adventure game - working for Rare in England - Position: Senior Animator

Although I did a number of tasks over the years on this one, I was predominantly responsible for the real-time cut-scenes. There are about two to three hours of the stuff in this game! I spent an awful amount of time with the characters of this world, bringing them to life. I didn't really have much of a clue what to do with them when I started, but one of the things I remember doing was ... more ...

Lost without trace

2001 - Live action with special effects - Pop video

This was a test project really. I had a yearning to work on something different that I could turn around reasonably quickly and just have some fun on without too much planning. It turned out that my friend Dave was taking his band, Red Trap; as they were known then, to various gigs to play their growing play-list. So I offered to make them a pop video, which ... more ...