About Me

As an employee and a person, I value human connection and personal responsibility. To me, if I'm going to spend all day doing something, I want to be good at it. I am a straight-forward communicator, and I will do my best to help the people I can help even when it means doing the less desirable jobs.
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My digital and traditional art has focuses on movement, expression, and experiences, and how they help us connect with one another. Nowadays, I work on achieving this through designing 3D rigs for expressive movement.

I want to bring personality and life to moments like the idle  animations in video games that help us connect to the characters and their identities. Communication is largely visual, and to be seen by others is part of what connects us all.

2024 African Wolf-Deer Creature

  • Spring IKs keep rig lighter than using set driven keys

  • The paw control allows for both leg movement and foot movement to keep things clean and simplified

  • The head is controlled with both an aim constraint and an FK controller for ease of use.

2024 Flying Rabbit Creature

  • Manually done joint orientation ensures natural pivot of wing

  • Careful skinning of feathers allows them to collapse and expand in an exaggerated motion while maintaining integrity

  • Ear and back Spline curves are skinned to control joints to allow for more natural rotation opposed to the translation of clusters

2024 Martial Artist

  • The in-scene IK to FK slider makes for intuitive animating

  • The legs have an IK to FK blend, but the arms do not, as the legs put weight on the floor below them

  • Fully functional foot controls give the ability to rotate from the toe, ball, ankle, and heel of the foot in FK, along with a simplified version for IK.

2024 Horse

  • Separate leg and hoof controls allow for independent placement of hoof. This is helpful for poses such as landing from a jump, wherein the weight pushes the ankle downward and backward of the hoof.

  • Anatomically correct skeleton allows for two neck controls so that it can flex the top and bottom of the neck depending on where it is in the walk cycle.

  • The back control adds automatic neck flexion. When the back leg steps under and the abs engage, the top of the head moves slightly over the chin as it does in real life.

2024 Facial Rig

  • Single chain IKs help create more natural movement by using rotation instead of translation. This also allows the controllers to stay over the skin they’re deforming

  • Blend shapes were used for gross motor movement, while the controls focused on the finer details

  • Careful topology allows edge loops to follow the planes of the face naturally

2023 Rigging Reel

  • Globally scalable rigs with a clean and straightforward hierarchy ready for export and import

  • Demonstrated knowledge of all the IKs including the Spring IK with unique attributes created with stretchy splines, constraints, groups, and deformers

  • Triple chain skeletal systems for node based IK to FK blending with a world space control slider and auto hiding controls

I like to learn by doing. When I come across problems in a rig, I define the problem, potential causes, potential fixes, and work-arounds. For example, while making my IK to FK switch on the martial artist below, the blend attribute value wasn't weighting the driver skeletons dynamically, so it worked as a switch with popping joints instead of a blend. First, I figure out where the problem is exactly by:

How I Identify and Fix Problems

  • I followed the original tutorial I learned with, and had the same problem.

  • The Joints all had the same values and frozen rotations even after applying the IK solver.

  • I noticed that the conversion node that used to pop up in the node editor when doing a blend colors IK to FK Switch was absent. I deduced that the newer version of Maya is probably causing the problem.

  • I found that the rotations blended while the translations did not.

from there, I evaluate the time and functionality needs of the project. I decided it was faster to find a work-around for this particular project. So, I noted that I should look into this later, and investigate the Pair Blend Node. For this project, however, the translate function wasn't necessary, so I cut it out and moved on.

Technical Skills

    • Autodesk Maya

    • Adobe Première Pro

    • Adobe After Effects

    • Python

    • Z Brush

    • Adobe Photoshop

    • Adobe Audition

    • Python in direct Application to Maya Scripting

    • MEL

    • C#

    • CSS

    • Unity

Unity | Github

Artstation | LinkedIn

Contact Me

I can’t wait to hear from you!