How would you explain your job to someone who doesn’t know VFX?

FX is responsible for a surprisingly wide variety of CG elements, including things like explosions, destruction, water and liquid simulations, skin tissue and hair for characters, magic and fantasy effects, you name it.

What does a day in the life look like?

FX work can vary quite a bit, some days you're actively building new tools to solve the challenges for a particular shot or sequence, and other days you're dialing in and tweaking the settings of those tools and iterating to get the look you're after .

What are some of your favorite projects? Why?

I loved working on Sunny, I had a ton of fun orchestrating all the dings and dents from these robots fighting and keeping track of them all the way through a long sequence for continuity.

Sunny - AppleTV+

What's something you wish people knew about what you do?

When a certain effect involves a simulation of something, it can become exponentially more difficult to cherry pick features to keep and features to change, sometimes even a small change somewhere can cause a simulation to produce drastically different results. We will try our best to MacGyver something to accommodate those requests, but it's not always an easy fix.

What is something that excites you about your career?

Houdini always has something fun and new to learn, lately I've been having fun playing with the new COPS toolset.

Are you learning anything new?

Every new FX task is like a big puzzle, and you solve those puzzles using tools and tricks you've learned on previous puzzles while adapting to new and different challenges. Every project ends up becoming pretty unique even if it's something you've done before.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I'm often found at the skatepark or at home gaming.

What's the best advice you've ever received?

Not all FX work has to be simulated, if you can solve a particular challenge without needing to run a simulation, you can usually save yourself a ton of time iterating versions and maintain more artistic control.