2021 was a year of big change for me. When I look at it through the lenses of "what went well?" and "what didn't go well?" here are the results I encountered:

Writing: (well) wrote a short film. Posted project recap pages on this site.
(not well) did not journal consistently

Art: (well) created a short film in the Unreal Engine Fellowship program, made a colored pencil portrait of children using newly-learned techniques
(not well) did not make much personal art on my own

Business: (well) had a very busy year leading a previs and a postvis team on a feature film, helped a friend on his short film as a visual effects supervisor, and made a colored pencil portrait commission
(not well) did not take on any other artistic side projects

Friends and Family: (well) saw my parents over the summer, worked with them to locate a new home nearby, and worked with them during the move, saw friends one last time before moving
(not well) due to Covid, did not spend much face time with friends

Spiritual: (well) our move put my life more in line with my values
(not well) not much other work done in this category

Health: (well) kept a healthy weight, even during the fall and winter holidays, got the Covid vaccination and booster shots and did not contract Covid
(not well) should do more weights and cardio next year, need to see doctors in person now that

Learning: (well) learned a lot about virtual production through the Unreal Fellowship
(not well) did not read enough books!

Financial: (well) Continued to grow and invest, and move on to owning real estate
(not well) would have liked to have more on the down payment

This is a long-overdue post, but I wanted to mention here that I am a v6 Summer graduate of the Unreal Virtual Production Fellowship! As part of Team Williams, I had an incredible time meeting and working with people from all over the world, and learning from the incredible team at Epic (see the end credits for the full list!), to tell as memorable and personal a story I could with all the resources at my disposal. The film is here for you to enjoy (project page with full writeup coming soon!):

I am excited to announce that I will be spending my August dedicated to the Unreal Fellowship! It is both an honor and a thrill to have this chance to learn this exciting new technology and workflow based on the famous realtime game engine behind Fortnite--straight from the pros. Expect this site to be quiet for a bit, but once I have completed the term, I will be sure to post all my making-of content on a project page in the Work section.

There is now a new project page for The Devil Show, a tongue-in-cheek, independent short film made with some friends at the Studio 3.14 agency in Boston. It was great working as VFX Supervisor because it allowed me to see a project through a new lens and be aware of a different portion of the VFX production pipeline. The team made commendable work, and it was enjoyable experience.

There are now articles online discussing the work that MPC and Technicolor did for Cruella's visual effects. I am very excited to see pieces like this featuring the work our company did, and to be quoted discussing their work.

From the article MPC Film Deliver Bold and Rebellious VFX for Cruella:

Joining Forces with Technicolor Post-Vis

Technicolor’s Post Visualization team joined forces with MPC Film on Cruella, working on 15 sequences within the film. Utilizing character assets created by its Character Lab team in Montreal, the team’s work largely consisted of animating CG dogs and compositing them into plates with a variety of complexity and lighting. Working alongside them was the Art Department; Senior Concept Artist Ivan Khomenko and Art Director Leandre Lagrange fleshed out the environments and key story moments, envisioning Cruella’s world in 1970’s London with the creation of concept frames for the VFX team.

“Cruella was an enormous and exciting collaboration for our team of thirteen visualization artists,” said Technicolor Post-Vis Supervisor Josh Lange. “Operating from Technicolor's Pre-Production department at the MPC office in Culver City, Los Angeles, we joined up with MPC's wide network to utilize assets created by final VFX teams at the offices in Montreal and London.

With this foundation, we animated scenes with complicated quadruped body mechanics, drama, intensity, subtlety, and even broad comedy. VFX Supervisor Max Wood guided us along the way, as we completed bluescreen-heavy shots and explored ways to design a pivotal surprise moment in the third act.”

This was the team’s first production affected by the COVID pandemic, but they quickly pivoted to fully remote working conditions, where post-vis artists seamlessly continued their work until early Autumn of 2020, followed by the VFX team wrapping in Spring of 2021.

“Looking back at the efforts of our team and MPC/Technicolor as a whole, I am tremendously proud of our exceptional artists and what they achieved under such unusual conditions on this project,” concluded Lange.

For more information about my time on the film, visit my Cruella project page.

After fourteen months of lockdown without seeing a movie in theaters, my family and I went out to the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood for the first time in ages, and saw Disney's Cruella--the film that I spent a year working on as Postvisualization Supervisor. I thought it came out tremendously well. You can read about some of my experience working on it by visiting the film's project page here.

The video for my latest advertising project is now on YouTube. I was the Previs Supervisor for our team of six at MPC/Technicolor. It was my second time working on a Shawn Levy project. My full writeup for the project can be found here. Happy Holidays!

As of October 23, the horror-comedy creature feature 'Love and Monsters' is now available to stream at home! You can read my project page for it here. I hope you get the chance to enjoy the film.

Demo reels were already completed for subsets of my animation work (previs, animation, advertising, etc.) but this weekend I made a new "all-around" reel with highlights from each field. Best of all, it's password-free!