Ali Ismail

Andy Van Straten

Senior Creature TD

Most recently a Senior Creatures TD at Industrial Light and Magic, doing creature simulation and earning a credit on Jurassic World. Previously worked for several years at Weta Digital mainly doing RnD for the creatures department. I also worked on a couple of films in between - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; The Hobbit II: The Desolation of Smaug and The Adventures of TinTin.

Animation Mentor

Established in 2005, Animation Mentor is the original, online animation school. Our students learn directly from working industry professionals – more instructors from major studios than any other school – and get the one on one time they need to prepare for a successful career in the Animation Industry. Animation Mentor students learn using our proprietary online campus, exclusive feedback tools and real-world production pipeline. Animation Mentor has an alumni community of over 5,000 students in over 105 countries, now working in world-class studios like Pixar, DreamWorks, Industrial Light & Magic, Laika, WETA and many more. - See more at: http://www.animationmentor.com/about/#sthash.arXg08qi.dpuf

Arsen Margaryan

Bob Wallace

Bob Wallace is a character modeler specializing in a whimsical, cartoony style and has been in the industry for more than 15 years. From his humble beginnings in the the Midwest as a yard ornament sculptor, he always dreamed breaking into animation, and has since had the pleasure of working on everything from licensed video game titles, to animated television pilots, to major motion pictures. Bob prides himself on being able to create characters in 3d and in clay that capture all the essence and life contained in the 2d image. A child at heart, he really just wants to make more toys to play with.

Carl Culberson

My name is Carl aka Darkseal. I head up Darkseal Studios. My character design is currently focused on a Zbrush to Maya to Poser pipeline for commercial content. In other words I create 3d models and rig them in Poser for public sale and private commissions. Most of my videos will be focused on Zbrush, Poser, and Photoshop techniques to use and improve 3d modeling and rendering practices.

Carlo Sansonetti

Senior In Game Cinematic Tech Artist

Carlo Sansonetti has more than 15 years of experience as Rigger in the Games, TV Animation and VFX industry and he has worked in studios like Lucasfilm Animation, Annie Award's winning studio Heavy Iron, and currently he holds the position of Senior Machinima Technical Artist at Blizzard Entertainment. Carlo is also an award winning director. His short film The Auction won first prices in several film festivals around in the US and around the world.

CGCircuit

CGCircuit is a web platform that allows artists, designer, programmers, photographers and directors to market their knowledge by creating video tutorials and sell them across the globe. With CGCircuit CG and Traditional Artists alike have a place to learn as well as share their knowledge with their peers. We facilitate and incentivize instructors to sell their self created tutorials for a price of their choosing. Contributing instructors not only receive the revenue from their sold tutorials, they receive increased exposure among their peers. The community of users can then purchase and watch these lessons making them part of their learning library.

Chad Vernon

Character TD

Chad is currently a Character TD at Visceral Games of Electronic Arts. Previously, he was a co-founder of the digital creature studio, Creature Art and Mechanics where he developed technology to drive photoreal human performances. Before starting CAMd, Chad was a Creature Pipeline TD at Digital Domain where he created facial and deformation technologies to drive creatures in Jack the Giant Slayer. Before Digital Domain, Chad was a Creature TD at Disney's ImageMovers Digital where he developed facial and deformation tools for Mars Needs Moms and A Christmas Carol. Chad has a B.A.S in Animation and Visual Effects from Ex'pression College for Digital Arts and a B.S. in Computer Science from UC Santa Barbara.

Chayan Vinayak

Technical Artist

I have been working as a Technical-Artist for the gaming industry for over 8 years. I have been fortunate enough to work on several world-renowned games such as Star-wars Commander, Madden, NCAA, Club-Penguin etc. where I contributed by creating art asset pipelines, tools, writing game-play code, optimizing art assets, troubleshooting and solving problems with that I learnt several tips and tricks. I have authored two online courses on one of the most difficult subjects to break down and explain using visual style to make it simple for everyone to understand. - Maya Python API and - Shader Development. I have directed and edited a documentary on meditation - "The Science and Spirituality of Meditation" which you can watch on iTunes and Amazon.

Christopher Bonura

Junior Concept Artist

Christopher Bonura is originally from northern New Jersey where he grew up on a diet of monsters and muscle cars. Upon High school graduation he moved to San Francisco to pursue his passion for films. It was there that he attained a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 3D Modeling/Illustration at the Academy of Art University. Shortly after graduating he became a concept artist at a small game company. Since that time he has worked his way up into his current role as a Junior Concept Artist at Industrial light & Magic. Some of his most recent work includes Thor, Star Trek Into Darkness and Transformers: Age of Extinction. He feels fortunate to be where he is today as a person and an artist. Along his endeavors he has met many other great artists within the industry and looks forward to what the future holds for him.

Damon Connolly

I have a wide range of skills. I originally saw it as a "jack of all trades, master of none", but decided that with healthy passion and interest, rather than just seeing it as a "job", you can become a master of all trades. I started music first, in a band when i was 15, but left when I noticed I was doing all of the composing. I've composed a lot of music since then, and during that, I studied programming (C++, python), and 3D art (later specialising in environment art). I wholeheartedly believe my master of all trades approach has served me well. My experience in programming has taught me to optimize my 3D environments to high standard, and write plugins to streamline the process. Similarly, my artistic studies in painting/3D art have helped me a lot when composing to a scene or video clip.

Daniel Ramirez

Lead Character Artist

Darrin Lile

Darrin Lile is an animator, writer, and full-time faculty member in the Media Arts and Animation Program at The Art Institute of Wisconsin. He teaches courses in computer animation including Principles of 3D Modeling, Materials and Lighting, Advanced Lighting and Texturing, and Advanced Modeling and Animation. He received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Film and Media Studies from the University of Kansas and is a Blender Foundation Certified Trainer.

David Lisbe

Animator

David Lisbe spent much of his childhood animating on Post-it notes and simple 2D computer animation programs. When he grew up he decided to cultivate his love and talent for animation at Ringling College of Art + Design where he graduated with honors and earned critical acclaim for his senior film, Heavenly Appeals. He was then hired by Reel FX Creative Studios where he worked on Open Season 3 and Looney Tunes Rabid Rider. He's since been a recurring member of the Sony Pictures Imageworks team, animating on Arthur Christmas, Hotel Translvania, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, Smurfs 2 and Oz: The Great and Powerful. He's also spent time at commercial and video game studios animating a variety of short, fun projects. Currently he is animating on Reel FX's awesome, upcoming feature, Book of Life!

Fabrizio Bortolussi

Digital artist, Texture painter

Fabrizio Bortolussi is classically trained in fine art and sculpture, specializing in horror and creatures. He started watching films, mostly horror, for most of his adult life. Transforming clay creatures and sculptures since the tender age of four would eventually lead him to the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (Italy). Fabrizio got his start doing commercials and shooting small films for the italian television. Soon he moved to Tokyo where he worked as the lead creature designer/art director for Production IG. Eventually he did prosthetic-FX and make-up for horryfing deformed monsters and zombies in the abandoned hospital attraction inside the Fuji-Q Park in Japan and worked as a make-up FX artist on several japanese splatter and horror films such as Tokyo Gore Police, Grotesque etc. Launching his freelancer career and working for Origami Digital, based in Hollywood, film would soon follow. Fabrizio found himself working with Neil Blomkamp at Peter Jackson’s Wingnut Film as concept designer on “District 9”, when the project was still at it’s early stage of development designing the main alien using Weta Workshop’s 2D sketches. He has then worked on other feature films and videogames with companies such as Mirada, Namco, Sony, Townshend Proeductions, Bethesda and more. Fabrizio now works as an outsourcing freelance film maker, concept/creature designer, exhibiting artist, and writer with a broad range of clients. His services include: film making, art direction, concept art, concept design, illustration, digital sculpting, digital texture painting, traditional sculpting, environment composition, make-up FX, prosthetics-FX, storytelling and storyboarding. Fabrizio currently lives in Italy.

Farid Bouchakour

Florian Girardot

Gary Myers

Principal/Lead Animator

Gary Myers has worked professionally in animation for the past 18+ years. He's been drawing for as long as he can remember. As a young artist, he was part of the Herb Ryman Living Masters Program (Ryman Arts), Rowland Animation, and studied under Glen Vilppu and Walt Stanchfield, among others. Post-college he worked on many of Disney's traditionally animated features and he currently resides as a lead animator at Heavy Iron Studios in Los Angeles making video games of all sorts.

Geordie Martinez

Creature Trainer / Creature TD / Massive TD

Geordie is Crowds Tech Lead and a CreatureTD at Industrial Light & Magic. For 5 years he was the ILM Creature Trainer where he trained new Creature TDs. He has been working in VFX, animation and science animation for over 10 years at studios such as ILM, ImageMovers Digital, Giant Killer Robots, PalmaVFX and Stylus Visuals. He is a graduate of San Francisco State University Cinema Dept, Gnomon School of Visual Effects and AnimationMentor.

Hai Phan

Senior Character Artist

My name is Hai Phan, and I specialize in character art for game development. This generally includes everything from concept and design work, to the actual production of 3d models and textures. I went to art school at SCAD, and then did 3d modeling for a naval subcontractor before I finally made the jump into games. I was at ArenaNet working on the Guild Wars series for nearly 5 years, mostly designing and making armor. I left to work at Trion Worlds where I was a lead and senior character artist for Rift. I am currently a senior character artist at Blizzard Entertainment.

Haji Gadirov

FX Artist

My name is Haji Gadirov i am FX Artist. I am currently working as fx artist at MPC, i've been in this industry for 5 years now. I made a lot of tutorials about 3dsmax and now i switched to Houdini, i think it's a great tool.

Hani Mohammadi

Hossam Aldin Alaliwi

I am vfx artist and i have mastes degree in mechanical design engineering, I was accepted as FX TD at Double Negative 'LONDON'. I am using my educational knowledge in CG, I feel that it is very easy to control the simulation behavior or the particles motion or create some procedural rig or modeling, just it need to good begin and the good understand of Houdini’s nodes work. I think that the vfx artist must have enough information about math & physics, not just common 3D knowledge,at this time he will deserve the name VFX ARTIST :) .

Jahirul Amin

I am a 3d Trainer at Double Negative, London. I have 3 years' teaching experience in 3D Computer Animation at the NCCA (National Centre for Computer Animation) while also contributing regular tutorials and articles to 3D Artist magazine and 3D Total.com. Observation and dissection of real-world examples underpin, inform and give great strength to my work.

Jeremy Raven

FX ATD

Jeremy graduated as a fine arts student originally and worked in the graphic design industry for many years until he found his way into 3D animation. Self taught for over 10 years, he has focused his time and energy in FX using Maya fluids, nCloth, nParticles, Blastcode, SOuP and Realflow. "What appeals to me the most about 3D animation is the huge potential for creativity as well as opportunity to learn how to programme. I get huge satisfaction from the technical challenge a package like Maya has to offer, its quite astounding the amount of effort that has gone into build a piece of software like that" What he would like to share on CGCircuit is his in-depth knowledge of the workings of SOuP for Maya. It can be quite daunting to get started with SOuP but once you do it actually becomes a lot fo fun.

Jeremy Ernst

Gears of War 2, Gears of War 3, Infinity Blade, Infinity Blade II, Gears of War:Judgment

Hi! My name is Jeremy and I work currently at Epic Games, Inc as a Lead Character TD. I build rigs, write animation pipeline tools and various other technical tasks. I've had the great opportunity to work on some pretty awesome games so far in my career. I started out at Monolith working on the Condemned series. I then moved to Epic and have worked on the Gears of War series along with many other projects like the Infinity Blade games, and our various GDC demos, I most recently worked on Gears of War: Judgment. Our newest game, Fortnite, is what is occupying my time now!

Joe Breeden

Associate Professor of Computer Graphics

An artist and writer at heart, I strangely began my career as an Information Technology LAN/WAN director. While I loved that line of work my passion was in the arts. I was given the opportunity to break into CG as an educator when my alma mater called me about creating a CG program at the university. I soon became certified by Alias and eventually Autodesk as one of very few Maya ACI (Autodesk Certified Instructors) in the United States. I have been a full time professor of computer graphics and game art design for going on twelve years and am often contracted by companies and other education entities to train on any number of Maya or related software. I primarily teach Modeling, Dynamics, Animation, Rendering, and Texturing courses at the university. I have also contracted to do everything from animated logo's and special effects to game art design and assets. I have also published stories for graphic novels such as Josh Howard's Dead@17. I live and breathe CG and love to share my knowledge with anyone willing to learn!

Kurt Papstein

Character/Concept Artist

Working in the movie and games industry since 2007, Kurt has enjoyed the opportunities to sculpt and design monsters and creatures. In addition to creating cool characters and things, Kurt has also spent some time in the classroom teaching students with Laguna College of Art and Design, as well as Phoenix Atelier online.

Landis Fields

Freelance - Google, Nike, Pepsi, Nissan, FOX, Warner Bros, Virgin Media..

Landis Fields is a ground breaking Artist in the Visual Effects, Feature Animation, Television, Film, and Video Game industry. Having specialized in multiple phases of production throughout his career, his enthusiastic attitude and troubleshooting abilities have defined his role as a Generalist within the various tiers of Visual Entertainment and Interactive Media. With a thorough understanding of the entire film making process, his portfolio ranges anywhere from Super Bowl Commercials to Star Wars. Landis discovered 3D during his enlistment in the military while serving as an F16 Avionics Specialist in the Untied States Air Force. Landis cares deeply about education and has shared his knowledge with the rest of the community through numerous books, magazines, and as an international CG Instructor for the LucasFilm Jedi Master Program. Outside of Visual Development and training others, Landis continues to push the limits on personal projects along side his wife Anna.

Leo G.

Environment Artist

My path into CG art is atypical when compared to most people in this industry. I started out as a game modder on the Rainbow Six games back in the day. I first taught myself how to create maps, which left me hungry to know more, so I took it further and I taught myself modeling, texturing, animation, rigging, sculpting, lighting, rendering, shading/surfacing, scripting, compositing, special effects, particle systems, and I still teach myself new things to this day- I am constantly learning new tools, software, engines, skill sets, and techniques. I am completely self taught and didn't go to any art or game design school to learn this trade. After modding games like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Unreal Tournament, and Farcry for several years, I went professional and started doing this for a living. During my career I have taught other passionate CG artists and students my techniques and methods, I've founded start-up companies, worked on advertising campaigns, architectural visualizations, product visualizations, video games (X360, PS3, PC) and a bunch of other cool stuff in between. I love what I do, and I'm very passionate about games and game art. I consider myself a hardcore gamer, who happens to know how to create games. I play a lot of console and PC games, and enjoy playing games like Mass Effect, Call of Duty, Gears of War, Payday, and Skyrim to name a few. Presently I work in the AAA games industry, working on next-gen games for PC and consoles. I'm very versatile, so I float back and forth between being an environment artist and fx artist.

Luxion KeyShot

Mario Capellari

Sequence Supervisor, Lighting TD

Mario has over 25 years of experience in the VFX industry and currently holds the position of Lead Lighting Director at Lika. With a technical background as Senior TD at ILM and a fine artistic eye as Lead Lighting Director at Disney, he actively contributed to the creation of some of the most impressive works in the VFX industry such as Star Wars: Episode I, The Mummy Returns, Jurassic Park 3, Men In Black 2, The Hulk, Peter Pan, Van Helsing, Star Wars: Episode III, Harry Potter 3, Pirates 2 and many more.

Mark Pope

Mark Pope is the Founder and CEO of www.jollygoodjobs.com, a search engine for jobs in video games. He has been a professional video game programmer since 1996, shipping games on PC, and consoles.

Mark Trego

Want to learn a new skill? Over 350,000 students worldwide are currently taking courses from Stone River eLearning, and there's a reason for that. We strive to provide our students with the best quality and best selection of online courses to choose from, all at affordable prices. Our course catalog is constantly growing to meet your needs.

Marty Davis

Matthew Skonicki

Matt has worn many hats in different industries. He started out working as a cinematics character artist at Warner Brothers/Netherrealm working on a dozen game titles including "John Woo's Stranglehold" and the Mortal Kombat series. He then left and began teaching Visual Effects at Columbia College Chicago and Tribeca Flashpoint College. Along with teaching part-time, Matt works as a freelance nuke compositor and has done numerous online training videos via Digital Tutors and Eat3d.com while VFX supervising feature films such as "Thrill Ride", "Chicago Rot", and "Head Games". ​ Matt recently finished compositing work on three Capital One TV spots starring Samuel L. Jackson and director Spike Lee.

Mimic 3D Studios

Since 2010, Mimic 3D has coached on a one-one basis many artists. Artists new to the world of pixels transformed to a whole new level of advancement. Now with an ever growing intent of grooming artist all around the World and online, we want you in on Experiencing Quality 3D Training with us today.

Nico Sanghrajka

Senior Creature TD

Originally from Germany I studied film and media at the Filmacademy Baden-Wuerttemberg with and emphasis in computer graphics and animation, where I graduated in 2006. Following my graduation I had a short stint at Chris Creatures in Berlin where I rigged a photo realistic pig on my first feature film. At the end of 2006 I moved to London in the UK and joined Framestore to work on "The Tale of Desperaux" for a year and a half. Between summer 2008 and 2014 I worked at Dreamworks PDI in Northern California on a bunch of movies: Megamind, Madagascar 3, Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3, Peabody and Sherman,... just to name a few. In summer of 2014 I moved back to London and joined MPC for 9 months to work on the rigs for Disneys Junglebook as a Lead Rigger. Coming back to the US and San Francisco in spring of 2015 I joined Atomic Fiction in the Oakland as Rigging Supervisor and worked on Deadpool, Star Trek Beyond, Pirates of the Caribbeans 5 and a few smaller projects. In spring of 2016 I started working at ILM in San Francisco to work on Transformers 5 - The last knight.

Oscar Dominguez

I am a freelance motion graphics artist and 3D generalist. My journey into computer graphics started when I was very young, thanks to my father; a really inquisitive man. He bought me my first computer and since then it has been an amazing journey. The first machine I put my hands on was a Kaypro computer. Those were the good old days when all you did was read through the manuals and stare at amber or green monochrome monitors watching lines of code pour the screen. After that I got my hands on an Amiga computer with the Video Toaster and from then the adventure has gotten much more exciting. My main tools are Cinema4D, 3DSMax, VRay, Mari, Photoshop, After Effects and Nuke.

Penny De Byl

Current Position:

Professor Penny de Byl is the author of the best selling Unity instructional books; Holistic Game Development and Holistic Mobile Game Development. Penny has been teaching at universities in Australia and Europe since 1993. During her time as a teacher, Penny has won numerous awards for her teaching including the Australian Government's Office of Learning and Teaching Excellence in Teaching and the Unity Mobile Game Curriculum competition. Her areas of expertise include game development, computer graphics and artificial intelligence.

Peter Hartwig

Head of 3D

Peter is a 3d and comp td, currently working at Ghost vfx in Copenhagen. Before working here, he has been working in different commercial and film post houses, both as staff and freelance, working on features such as Harry Potter 3, Charlie and the chocolate factory, Antichrist, Uskyld and Kontiki amongst many others. When not busy being at work, being a dad and husband, developing software, rewatching Spy Game etc, he likes coming up with odd solutions to odd problems.

Phillip Reeves

Rosa Farre

Manager

As a pioneer in the field of computer graphics in Spain, Ms. Farre brought her expertise at the international award winning company Animatica in Barcelona, where she was responsible for the production of numerous commercials, film-based and stereoscopic projects. ​Since moving to the US in 1991, Rosa continued developing her skills and expertise. She first joined up with Limelite Video in New York, and then moved on to Metrolight Studios in Los Angeles, an Academy award winning facility, where she developed technical pipelines, designed software solutions, and supervised production teams. Later on, she joined Sony Imageworks where she took on the role of look supervisor for the feature film “Starship Troopers”.​ ​During this time, she was asked to hold several internal training workshops that sparked her interest in academics. ​As one of the partners at ElektraShock, she is responsible for developing technical pipelines and supervising the entire production process. The company focuses on computer animation and visual effects production with emphasis in the use of motion capture technologies and real time animation techniques for interactive, broadcast and film based projects.

Saber Jlassi

Senior Technical director

My name is Saber Jlassi and i'm a California based VFX artist currently working as a Senior technical director at Blizzard Animation (formerly known as Blizzard cinematics). My current job consists of writing tools and scripts to improve the Lighting, FX and Compositing pipeline, in addition to collaborating with the Production to solve challenging tasks. Prior to this, i have worked as a Senior Lighting TD at Framestore and as a Generalist TD at MPC in london.

Shaun Keenan

Shaun Keenan (Fusedgore) is a self taught CG artist. His specialty is Modeling, Rigging, Sculpting, Texturing and Rendering. Shaun has over 7 years of experience in Character Modeling, Character Rigging, Sculpting and Texturing. Primarily a character Modeler, Shaun strives to help as he can with any project people are trying to finish. Many of Shaun's work can be seen at the following links. If you have any questions, Shaun is willing to try and answer those questions by email. Email | Portfolio | Facebook | Deviantart Page. fusedgore.cgsociety.org/gallery/1048312/

Steven Knipping

Hey! Check out my demo reel here: https://vimeo.com/161576184 I'm a senior rigid body destruction and FX TD at Industrial Light & Magic, and have recently worked on films including Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avengers: Age of Ultron, World of Warcraft, and Tomorrowland. Currently working on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Out of the Shadows! My areas of expertise mainly focus on Houdini-based FX, especially rigid body destruction, particles, and smoke. I have also done a lot of pipeline coding, simulation programming, shader writing, lighting, and even... modeling! Other industry roles included FX positions at Atomic Fiction and The Mill (NYC), and a few years doing hair and cloth at PDI/Dreamworks Animation. Before all that I was a student, ultimately earning an MSE in Computer Graphics from the University of Pennsylvania. I also do lots of metal casting, archery, and of course.... board games.

Thomas DesJardins

Lighting Artist

I am a lifelong multi-talented artist who works freelance in the CG, Film and Animation Industries.

Timothy Morebu

Sharing is who I am, and teaching is where I am at my best, because I've been on both sides of that equation, and getting to deliver useful training is my meaningful way to be a part of the creative community.

Tom Mooney

I teach game design at Lifeway College, Digital Media in Auckland, New Zealand. I've written a book on the UDK, published in 2012 by PACKT: "UDK Game Design Cookbook".