Steve Twist Email & Phone Number

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Vancouver, Canada Area

Overseeing studio wide pipeline/rigging decisions, including hiring and project scheduling/assignments.Responsible for the professional development of all pipeline/rigging employees, including training/mentorship and work reviews (in a constructive, non-judgemental and open environment).Communicating frequently with all department supervisors and management, to discuss and plan pipelineneeds and priorities, ensuring Atmosphere’s pipeline develops in a direction that meets the needs of all parties.Designing, developing and documenting (for both end-users and developers) studio-wide tools to maximize artist efficiency. Responsible for the overall pipeline architecture, across all departments, from ingest to delivery.Researching & developing new rigging techniques, as required by production. A personal highlight: a bespoke tentacle rig, implemented using the Maya C++ API, used to rig a giant squid creature.

Vancouver, Canada Area

Key responsibilities:Researching & developing new computer graphics technologies and techniques. Projects included: surface-space blendshapes, deformation-smoothing algorithms, RBF pose-blending, pose space deformations and custom geometric sculpting tools.Designing & developing studio-wide tools to maximize artist efficiency, including a proprietary asset-management pipeline, as well as tools to streamline the daily tasks of each department.Directing the studio’s approach to Character Rigging, determining the approach taken for each character, which techniques will be used on a given project, and developing tools to streamline the character rigging process. Evaluating new software technologies for possible use in future productions.Implementing and maintaining network-distributed software installs for all workstations. Managing all software licenses, including license server setup.Managing the setup and configuration of the render farm, workstations, network, storage, backups, and other IT infrastructure.Projects (Lead Character Rigger, Lead Pipeline, Lead R&D):Mech-X4 Season 1 (2016)Shadow Hunters (2016)The Expanse Season 1 (2015)Dark Matter Season 1 (2015)Falling Skies Season 4-5 (2014,2015)High Moon (2014)Hemlock Grove Season 2 (2014)Bitten Season 1-3 (2014-2016)

Charlottetown, Pei

Key responsibilities:Leading the development effort and project management on key products. Acting as the liaison between non-technical management (sales, CEO) and the development team. Advising management on all technical subjects. Acting as the public-friendly face of the development team when addressing clients on technical matters, including presenting technical subjects to a non-technical audience. Mentoring all developers. Ensuring coding standards are current and followed by all developers, including leading the code review process. Determining which technologies and architectural approaches to take on projects. Designing, developing & documenting RESTful API-driven products using Node.js, Express, and MongoDB/SQL databases. Designing and implementing test suites for all code. Designing scalable and redundant cloud-based infrastructure for web application deployment on Amazon Web Services. Providing cost estimates for these cloud-based infrastructures.

R.I.P.D. (2013)Life of Pi (2012)Key responsibilities:Designing, implementing and maintaining animation control and deformation systems for a variety of characters (both hero and background).Researching and developing new techniques, tools and scripts to improve workflow for the rigging department.Remapping motion capture and hand animation between multiple characters.Communicating frequently with modeling, lookdev, animation and character FX to ensure the needs of each department are met, and to help maintain a strong pipeline.

Key responsibilities:Researching specific areas of Houdini and Maya in depth.Developing detailed demonstrations and writing lesson plans.Recording professional, engaging video tutorials that teach the subject area thoroughly.Produced over 150 hours of training (both free, and commercial).Further information can be found on: http://www.3dbuzz.com, and my work has been featured on Side Effects' website: www.sidefx.com

Bournemouth University’s PAL scheme is designed to help ease first year undergraduates into university life, by giving them the ability to meet and talk with other students who’ve “been there”, and offering a friendly face to whom they can ask questions that they may not wish to ask their lecturers.Key Responsibilities:Prepare and present 2 hours a week of workshop based lectures and demonstrations covering various aspects of Maya.Hold question & answer sessions, in which the first year students present technical problems for us to try and help solve.

Master Of Science, Computer Animation And Visual Effects, Distinction

Bachelor Of Arts (Hons), Computer Visualisation And Animation, First Class