About…

This is a blog about technical art, particularly Maya, Python, and Unity. With lots of obscurantist references thrown in for my own amusement.

About the Author

I fell in love with computer animation in the Dark Ages, in more ways than one: I dropped out of a Ph.D. program in ancient history to start rendering 3D scenes on the Brown University mainframe back in the wee early 1990’s. I went pro in 1993, doing animations for a variety of commercial and television projects.

My first game job was building mechs and environments for FASA’s MechCommander in 1995.

mech commander half-life counter-strike team fortress socom halo 3 state of decay state of decay 2

In the subsequent decades(!) I’ve been very lucky to fall in with some great projects. I was an artist and animator on Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic, Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike at Valve. I gradually moved from production art to focusing on tools and pipelines, first as the artist-in-residence for the Granny animation system, then as the technical art manager at Zipper Interactive (SOCOM 3 and SOCOM M.A.G.). I was technical art director at Bungie (Halo 3 and Halo ODST).

I’m currently the technical art director for Undead Labs (State of Decay).

I wrote the Pixel Pusher art column for Game Developer magazine from 2003 until the magazine ceased publishing in 2013. I’m one the authors of Production Pipeline Fundamentals for Film and Games from Focal Press.