Thursday, February 16, 2006

What I Do

I can still remember the day I asked to be moved off of ReBoot and onto Beast Wars (or Beasties as it's known in Canada 'cause Canadians are far too pussy to use the word WAR on a kids show - go figure eh!). It was Mainframe's first client driven project and for the most part, no one on the production floor wanted anything to do with it. "It's a Hasbro project - why would you want to work on that?" seemed to be the sentiment on the floor. For me what I saw was an opportunity to learn from the ground up. Start at zero and see what happens.

And what did I learn? Well for starters, I luv pre-production.

Over the last 11 years I've had the privilege to play a lead role on many of the pipelines I've worked on each of which presented their own set of challenges and solutions. With Beast Wars we took the production pipeline developed on Reboot and tightened it down into a 12 week production cycle per episode. On ReBoot Season 3 we brought on shadows which for television at the time was nothing short of insane. On Barbie in the Nutcracker it was hair and cloth on a TV budget. And on the latest project, Tony Hawk in Boom Boom Sabotage, it was about defining a pipeline that could accommodate the visual language of skateboarding.

As a designer the greatest quality that I can offer to any given project is my ability to see the relationships between all the different aspects of the production process. From early concept development right through to final execution. What I bring that I believe is unique, is not only an understanding for it, but an ability to communicate it to a team and help develop an environment of trust to guide us to the finish line.

So whether you're looking for team lead or simply need a concept brief for your art department drop me a message and let's talk.

If you would like to see a sample of my work please feel free to e-mail me at twixt@shaw.ca or drop by my living room to look at some photo albums and have a drink.

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