development

AWS - Amazon Deadline Cloud & Nimble Studio

Frontend, Infrastructure, Testing and Monitoring Development

Collaborating with the product, UX, and management teams, our frontend team delivered a user-friendly onboarding experience that enables setup and monitoring of Deadline render servers in the cloud. This included designing, deploying, and maintaining a secure, scalable service admin console and artist-monitor application. We also built and supported a full CI/CD pipeline, metrics, alarms, dashboards, end-to-end tests, and canaries.

We balanced AWS design and security guidelines with customer needs, working closely with Product and UX to design, execute, and refine the final product—guided by Figma mocks and design documentation.

https://aws.amazon.com/deadline-cloud/
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/amazon-nimble-studio-build-a-creative-studio-in-the-cloud/

RGB Notes & Nimble Collective

Animation Review Software

With the help of the team that I organized, we designed and built browser-based video review SAAS featuring advanced sketch-over and key-framing tools. The implementation leveraged the browser’s Audio, Video, and Canvas APIs.

▶️ RGB Notes promotional video
Amazon Nimble Studio Offers Animators a Home in the Cloud
Nimble Collective extends enterprise class animation platform acquisition RGB Notes

Blue Sky Studios

After evaluating the team's toolset and workflows, I proposed and executed scalable, stable tool and UI designs by delivering:

Future-proof artist utilities that adapt to production specific conventions
Responsive UI/UX that enables faster, more expressive creativity for the artist
Input validation and helpful error messaging to guide artists toward success
Clear user and technical documentation

Some of the most notable tools include:

Tween	Set in-between keys via a real-time pose tween slider with undo support
Transposer	Record, edit, and reapply character animation in world space
SimpleSnap	Record, edit, and reapply world-space animation of selected objects
ShapeFixer	Add and manipulate animator-created blendshapes on rig-deformed characters

Rhythm & Hues Studios

Animation Development Team

This team consisted of several senior animators to oversee and improve the workflows, rigs, and tools animators rely on to produce high-quality content quickly. We collaborated with stakeholders (modeling, rigging, technical anim, lighting, vfx & anim directors) to ensure artists could both consume and deliver consistent, predictable assets. By overseeing all concurrent productions, we consolidated solutions that worked globally and avoided one-off fixes.

Character/Rig Development

I coordinated with upstream and downstream animation stakeholders to ensure rigs met animators" performance needs. I also established rig UX guidelines, scalable design principles, quality standards, and production-wide tools and workflows.

Life of Pi - Facial rig supervision on Tiger, Hyena, Zebra, and Orangutan
Alvin and the Chipmunks - Facial rig supervision on Alvin, Simon, and Theodore
Marmaduke - Surfing, posable ocean-wave rig supervision & animation

Animation Tool Development

While a lead animator at Rhythm & Hues, I also developed and supported 20+ widely used scripted tools for Voodoo, their award-winning proprietary animation software. Some of the most notable tools include:

C.O.G.	Record, edit, and reapply character animation between world and local space
Snap	Record, edit, and reapply a single object"s world-space animation
Tweener	Set in-between keys for selected controls
Buddies	Establish temporary, animatable spatial relationships between objects
Control Tower	Quickly select, edit, display, and run commands across multiple characters
Path Tools	Build and edit complex character paths easily