I am a lead artist on the hard surface team for environments. We build the human worlds on Pandora. I am currently in New Zealand, where I am part of the brain bar, helping Jim with immediate problem solving, to get him what he needs to shoot cameras both in preparation for live action, and next year, for our all CG sequences. I also am acting as the Environment liaison, working with local artists and our team back in LA to make sure that changes made during cameras are propagated back into our simulcam files. My challenge in this role is problem solving with an interdisciplinary team, without a road map, on a fluid path. But that's also the fun.
Q&A
First job in film?
I've worked in commercials and games, but this is my first film!
Most memorable thing from seeing Avatar in theatres?
I think it was the small moments, that built the world out in ways that seemed mined from my subconscious depths, but were completely new. The design of the atokirina (woodsprites), kenten (fan lizards), loreyu (the spiral plants that retract when Jake touches it revealing the hammerheads) and the way they moved, the translucent, dragonfly wing, alula of the ikran. By basing it on something familiar, but then going wild but refined with their designs, it almost seemed taken from our own forgotten or yet to be dreamt, dreams.
What's a fun fact about yourself?
I have spoken (or at least asked at least one innocuous question) to two presidents (Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama) and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
