The Little Mermaid: Ursula's Lair
ADG Senior Illustrator, Disney, 2019
Production Designer: John Myhre
Camera flythroughs and still images for Ursula's Lair in The Little Mermaid live action film. Responsible for the design and build of everything shown except for the Ariel and Ursula models. I utilized Maya's real-time capabilities on the project and dropped the existing environment into Unreal Engine a year later. This 3D environment was passed off to previs and VFX and screenshots were used for paintovers.
The Lion King 2: Mufasa (Prequel)
ADG Senior Illustrator, Disney, 2021-2022
Production Designer: Mark Friedberg
This was a Virtual Production intensive 15 month show in which I designed and built 6 gigantic sets from scratch in Unreal Engine. My work was reviewed almost daily in VR and on Zoom, remotely from each of our homes throughout the Covid19 pandemic. Upon beginning each set I was provided with corresponding storyboards, loose ground plans, Art Department location research, 2D paintings if there were any, and plant/tree/animal/sky assets (from either MPC or online purchases as there was not nearly enough time to model them myself).
I had to keep these sets meticulously organized + optimized so as to not break the VR or cutting edge pipeline. Once director approved they were internalized by VFX artists on a stage and Previs added animation. The sets were then rigged to physical cameras so that the Director and DP could manually shoot the film on stage. Because these sets are quite foliage-heavy, detail shadows had to be turned off to review in VR, grass distances were culled a bit harder, otherwise they all ran at a relatively acceptable framerate.
Northern Border Set (~2 square miles)
Riverbank Set: Okavango Delta, Botswana (~9 square miles)
Milele Montage Set (~100 square miles)
This was an already established set built by Joy Lea and I was tasked to build hero'd up vignette areas 30 miles out from where she was working. Within these areas I am responsible for environment build/design, layout, lighting, cameras, and flythroughs. *Not responsible for water fx or skies
Mountains of the Moon Set: Ridge Descent to Milele Overlook (~12,000 square miles)
Responsible for everything shown: environment build/design, layout, lighting, cameras, and flythroughs. Model + texture resolution had to be crunched because it's such a massive and fx heavy set, details were established with paintovers.
*Not responsible for cloud animation FX, distant mountains built by Joy Lea for another set
Tropical Beach Unreal Exercise
2023
An environment I chipped away at during the strikes. I primarily used this one to familiarize myself with Unreal 5, the built-in water plugin, smart materials, and Ultra Dynamic Sky + weather systems. Various assets from Megascans and MAWI.
Medieval Village Unreal Exercise
2023
A quick 5 day exercise I did in Unreal Engine to familiarize myself with more weather systems and how they interact with materials, light, and landscapes. I hand painted and sculpted the terrain, then arranged a bunch of models I already had in my personal library. A lot of material work was done to learn how to get the snow to accumulate.
Samaritan
ADG Senior Illustrator, MGM, 2020
Production Designers: Christopher Glass, Greg Berry
Camera flythroughs and still images from Unreal environments created for the Samaritan live action film. These sets are an equal collaboration between myself, Joy Lea, and Yuri Bartoli. Beyond the design aspects our work was used to plan set builds at OFS Atlanta (indoor sound stage + backlot conversion), set dressing changeover, VFX extensions, and general shooting information to aid in Covid19 protocols (this film was shot in fall 2020). We also utilized photogrammetry scans and Google Earth 3D data to closely match existing areas in Atlanta and Philadelphia that were being shot on-location.
Four Sets: Power Station Roof (Vicinity Energy Philadelphia) + OFS Backlot conversion ground level, Elevated Train Downtown (stage build), Back Room and Warehouse Exterior, City Hall (Underground Atlanta)
Desert Unreal "Sketch"
2023
A very quick exercise limiting myself to few days using Unreal Engine. I wanted this to be indicative of what I'm able to quickly cobble together to get a conversation started faster. I generated the base terrain using Gaea, hand painted and sculpted the landscape material, then threw together a bunch of 3D assets I already had on hand.
Please reach out to see more examples of my work!