David Blumenfeld Email & Phone Number

Los Angeles, California, United States

I oversaw all 3D artists, supervisors, and related department heads while providing general management, project bidding, facilitating and coordinating communication, and administering technical oversight of the CG department across eight global locations of the studio. I was also responsible for cross-departmental research and development, including implementation of innovative processes and procedures, deployment and procurement of related hardware and software systems, expansion of technical capabilities and workflows, and the overall company 3D strategy and execution.

Sherman Oaks, California

I oversaw the daily operations and strategic vision of all 3D CG for all four North American FuseFX locations (LA, BC, NY, and GA) while also providing integration and shared pipeline implementation for our international subsidiaries (FolksFX in Montreal, Toronto, Saguenay, and Bogota, along with Rising Sun Pictures in Adelaide and Brisbane Australia). My responsibilities spanned managerial, technical, artistic, and organizational planning and execution, including hiring and recruitment, internal training and development, company-wide verbal and written communication, disciplinary action, strategic vision and partnerships, vendor and client outreach, and research and development. During my tenure, I helped pioneer new motion capture-driven crowd system technology, architected and oversaw the development of a cutting-edge application agnostic database-driven pipeline, refactored the computer graphics division into a fully departmentalized specialist driven environment, and championed a team oriented multi-disciplinary workforce built around a foundation of diversity and inclusion. I transitioned the company into new software including Maya, Clarisse, Redshift, and other specialized toolsets, and was responsible for researching, recommending, and approving capital expenditures for new hardware and software, along with drawing on my considerable experience to help guide the future needs and strategic direction of the department and company as we grew and partnered with others through mergers and acquisitions. I helped manage the use of the AWS EC2 for cloud rendering on multiple shows and provided solutions for improving workflows and turnaround time to meet constantly growing demands. During my time here, I was nominated for a Creative Arts Emmy Award for my artistic and supervisory contributions to Deadwood - The Movie, and I was instrumental in the overall success of FuseFX's global industry leading role in episodic and streaming visual effects content creation.

Sherman Oaks, California

I was responsible for managing a team of 50+ CG artists and supervisors in the creation of award winning visual effects for episodic television, feature film, commercial, and special venue/location based entertainment, as well as guiding the future development of the multi-facility pipeline systems.

Sherman Oaks, California

I was responsible for supervising the creation of CG visual effects for various live action and fully digital projects.

Santa Monica, California

I was responsible for heading up and supervising the studio's bi-coastal computer graphics division, as well as providing on-set visual effects supervision for numerous commercial projects, overseeing the entire process through completion of delivered materials. I oversaw a team of 3D and 2D artists and designers, and was involved with staffing and managing these departments. I was responsible for bidding work with clients as well as developing and designing concepts and treatments for myself to direct, as well as for outside directors and agency creatives. I was also in charge of the technical development for the CG department, which encompassed the facility pipeline (a large part of which I designed and implemented) as well as project-specific research and development for the various technical challenges posed by the multitude of productions. During my tenure, I completed over two hundred and fifty different projects in this role for clients large and small with a significant number of well established advertising agencies, including Goody Silverstein and Partners, BBDO, Chiat Day, Mullen, Arnold, Hill Holiday, 72 & Sunny, Leo Burnett, Saachi & Saachi, Wieden+Kennedy, Deutsch, Young and Rubicam, and many others.

Santa Monica, California

Culver City, California

As the character pipeline lead on Beowulf, my primary function was to supervise the design, development, and implementation of a completely new front-end pipeline, for which I was responsible for up to seventeen software developers and technical directors on my team. Part of the challenge involved implementing and maintaining a new system for a show which was larger in scope of work and physical size of data than had ever been done at this studio up until that time, all while training the artists on its usage while completing an entirely CG motion picture production. Of the over seventy toolsets which we created, the core items included a fully featured Maya-based file-referencing management system, a database shot lineup tracking/editing framework, a scene build and data update system, a robust C++ library-based animation/data block I/O transfer toolset and file format, a new render management system, a Maya/Mental Ray based z-depth rendering/automated compositing system, two multi-tier data publishing systems, and a new streaming vertex offset geometry data cache deformer and I/O system. As a layout TD on Open Season, my primary function was to develop toolsets for the layout department, including various MEL-based utilities, Perl scripts, and C-Shell scripts.

Santa Monica, California

I taught two upper division courses: Advanced Rigging and Animation - This course was broken down into two major components. The first portion was devoted to teaching the major set of tools that Maya has for deforming, constructing, and animating models in order to replicate a wide range of motions and behaviors. The second portion of the class was devoted to the animation process, including timing, framing, story development, color and lighting, and effective use of dialogue and sound. MEL Scripting - This course was tailored to provide Maya users with the knowledge and tools necessary to create MEL tools, ranging from simple shelf buttons and scripts to complicated, full-featured embedded programs complete with graphical user interfaces. Students learned basic programming architecture and workflow, but more importantly, spent a great deal of time actually producing scripts and shortcuts inside Maya for their own use.

Venice, California

As lead character and pipeline technical director on Stealth, my primary function was to supervise the development and implementation of a unified system for the front end Maya pipeline, named CoPilot. This tool had five core functions: 1. A relative-path enabled file referencing system with various levels of load, update, and swap control. 2. A model and rig version release system. 3. An animation rendering and data publishing mechanism. 4. A graphical rig-control animation interface. 5. An embedded suite of utilities, tools, and scripts for previz, modeling, rigging, integration, animation, color and lighting, and rendering. In addition to this system, I was responsible for supervising the development of all the animation rigs, including airplanes, vehicles, human pilots, weapons, cameras, and props. In addition to leading three technical directors, a modeler, and a character setup artist in this process, I was also the interim animation supervisor for the beginning portion of the show. I was responsible for training eleven animators on the techniques to be used in the film as well as supervising seven while approving animation for production and director review. As a character TD on The Day After Tomorrow, I was responsible for co-developing the crowd system and creation kit for the character department of the project. This included setup work on a level-of-detail rig that could accept retargeted motion capture data as well as keyframed offset animation which was applied to various shapes and sizes of human character meshes. I developed advanced systems for populating scenes with upwards of 100,000 crowd characters in addition to dynamically assigning selective and random clips to characters based on particular events in the scene (such as impact/collision from walls of water and tornadoes). On all other projects, I was responsible for rigging, software development, animation, dynamics and fx, lighting, and rendering for other film and commercial projects.

Burbank, California

On Kangaroo Jack, I was part of the team responsible for the development of the fur, muscle, and skin systems for the kangaroo characters and cloth simulations for the jacket. I assisted in the clean-up animation of shots in the dream sequence and wrote tools to assist in shot cleanup and character finaling. On Mickey's Philharmagic, I was responsible for the development of various pipeline tools, including format conversion, rendering, automated scene setup, element release, rigging utilities, and file optimization. I also performed cleanup animation for layout and character finaling. I was promoted to a Character Technical Director from assistant level during this project. On all other projects, I was responsible for the setup of Maya scenes for animators, file conversion, utility development, allocation and management of disk space, troubleshooting of rigging and animation issues, and general artist support.

Playa Del Rey, California

I was responsible for developing the concept, design, and execution of animated CG sequences and elements for feature film trailers, television broadcasts, video sales reels, and other related projects.

Woodland Hills, California

I was responsible for creating specialized layouts incorporating artwork and typography within Illustrator, Photoshop, and QuarkXPress for coupon book mailers with distribution of over 200,000 copies.

Van Nuys, California

I was responsible for photo retouching, creation of graphical elements, and page layout for various music training publications utilizing Illustrator, Photoshop, and QuarkXPress. I also assisted with typesetting duties and general design and copy-proofing work including pre-flight checking.

Van Nuys, California

I owned and operated a small visual effects post production company, where our primary work involved music video titling and graphics, trailer editing, compositing, and television/commercial graphics.

B.S., Business Administration - Management

Diploma