Background & Professional Journey

After completing my studies in Film & Television production at NYU in 1989, I began my career in the NYC live performance industry. I started that summer as a production electrician and light board operator for the Big Apple Circus, then transitioned into design work, serving as lighting and scenic designer for theater, music, and dance productions. I was the resident designer for the King's County Shakespeare Company and resident lighting designer for The Balinese-American Fusion Dance Company. These years were foundational. Working in live performance taught me something essential that would shape my entire career: the difference between believable presence and artifice. On stage, every moment is live. The audience watches for reactions that feel true, for movements and light that respond authentically to the moment. There is no room for lag, no tolerance for the mechanical, only connection. That understanding of real-time responsiveness, of how to create believable presence in a shared space, became the guiding principle for everything I would pursue in interactive systems.

My career at the NYU Media Research Lab began with a chance encounter with a high school friend that led to an introduction to Dr. Ken Perlin, already a luminary in computer graphics and animation for his work in procedural texture synthesis. I initially joined the MRL as an artist-in-residence on the 'Immersive Environments' project, integrating interactive sensors and devices into physical spaces to create immersive narrative experiences. Simultaneously, Ken had begun applying his procedural synthesis work to movement, creating an interactive 3D ballet dancer that could be choreographed in real-time through keyboard input. This piece would be showcased at the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater in 1994. As a former film student I was fascinated by the cinematic potential of computer animation, and as an artist working in live performance, the opportunity to create something with animation's visual diversity combined with live performance's emotional immediacy was irresistible. I began work on what became the Improv Animation System, and by the end of 1995 I was working full-time as a Research Scientist at the MRL. Over five years, I presented this work at conferences and roundtable discussions worldwide, publishing articles in industry and academic publications, including the 1996 edition of Computer Graphics, the field's principal academic journal. Ken and I were awarded a patent for 'A Method and System for Scripting Interactive Animated Actors'. This work would become the foundation for everything I would pursue in the years to come.

In 1999, I formed Improv Technologies with Ken Perlin to pursue commercial applications for the technology we had developed at NYU. Over four years, we raised $8 million and grew the company to approximately 40 full-time employees working on three flagship products. Orchestrate 3D was a non-linear animation editing system integrated with existing commercial software including Maya, SoftImage, and 3D Studio Max. Catalyst was a real-time animation layering and blending system, one of the first commercially available middleware packages for the PlayStation 2. Fusebox was a peer-to-peer framework for linking artist tools and workflows across multiple disciplines and locations. The company was the rare startup that stayed true to its core mission of enabling artists, not just chasing valuations. We won a Year 2000 Innovation Award from Computer Graphics World magazine for our work. Improv shut its doors in early 2003 due to the cooling venture market following the dot-com bust. The technology and vision had not failed; rather, the capital environment for tech had become scarce. The experience taught me invaluable lessons about building products for creative professionals, managing teams through uncertainty, and the importance of holding to artistic principles even in challenging business climates.

In 2003, my family and I relocated to the Bay Area to join Sun Microsystems' newly-formed Games Technology Group. At Sun, I was responsible for developing Java-based APIs and SDKs for game developers, working at the frontier of mobile gaming, a frontier that barely existed in most people's minds at the time. I spent considerable time traveling the world, meeting with mobile operators and device manufacturers to explore the prospect of single-player and multiplayer games on handheld devices when most people still carried flip-phones and PDAs were almost exclusively business tools. The iPhone wouldn't launch until 2007. The experience gave me deep insight into the technical constraints and creative possibilities of real-time graphics on resource-limited devices, and exposed me to the ecosystem thinking required to bring new platforms to market. In many ways, this period was about learning to think systemically: how technology, business, and creativity intersect at the emergence of new platforms. I remained at Sun until 2005, when I left to join Electronic Arts.

In 2005, I joined Electronic Arts's central technology group, EA Tech, as Product Manager for Animation & Physics. Over four years, I led the design and development of ANT (Animation Toolkit), transforming it from an engine custom-built for the FIFA franchise into a flexible, modular interactive animation framework that became the animation technology core of Frostbite, EA's internal game engine, now used across all of EA's studios and franchises. My role required me to travel to EA's studios around the world, meeting with game teams of diverse backgrounds working on games across genres with wildly divergent mechanics. I had to synthesize the needs and desires of all these stakeholders into a unified vision for how AAA real-time interactive animation could be produced and presented. During this period, I championed quarterly release schedules combined with an internal 'open source' strategy that enabled every team to test their games against the latest code in advance of official SDK releases. I also organized an annual animation conference bringing animators, technical animators, and animation engineers from across EA's studios together to share innovations and concerns. Following ANT's integration into Frostbite 3, I applied the tools I had built to my own use as Technical Animation Director on an unannounced third-person action title. When the project was cancelled after about a year, I left to join Relic Entertainment.

In 2010, I joined Relic Entertainment as Technical Animation Director on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, a visceral third-person action game set in Games Workshop's grimdark 41st millennium universe. As technical animation director, I was responsible for defining the animation architecture and pipeline for the game, working closely with the animation team, gameplay designers, and engine programmers to ensure that every movement felt physically grounded and emotionally authentic. This ranged from the heavy, purposeful stride of a Space Marine in powered armor to the frantic scramble of terrified cultists. The challenge of making 40K's massive, armored warriors feel human and vulnerable despite their superhuman capabilities required deep understanding of weight, momentum, and the subtle signals that communicate intent and emotion. Space Marine shipped in 2011 to critical acclaim, praised for its tight controls and visceral combat feel. The game became a commercial success and launched a franchise that continues to this day. The experience reinforced a core belief: technical mastery in service of creative vision is what separates good games from great ones. Whether human or system-based, the animator's role is to make the impossible feel inevitable.

I was brought into Microsoft as Technical Animation Director for the studio that would later become The Coalition. During my time there, in addition to leading gameplay animation development on an unannounced third-person action title, I worked on the early pre-releases of Unreal Engine 4. I was responsible for providing input on key features that would become part of the UE4 foundation, including State Machine Conduits. We implemented these at Microsoft and they were later integrated into the UE core engine. This period of technical innovation also led to work with Jerry Edsall on player avatar movement systems, resulting in a patent for Player Avatar Movement Assistance in a Virtual Environment. During my tenure, I also served on an advisory board for the Xbox One prior to its release, ensuring the hardware was properly optimized for real-time animation. I remained at Microsoft until 2014, when the studio was announced to be taking over the Gears of War franchise. At that point, I decided I didn't need to work on another action-shooter with huge guys in armor fighting aliens in armor with chainsaws. The other franchise I'd just shipped was Space Marine, after all. It was time to chart a new course.

In 2020, I co-founded Shocap Entertainment as Creative Director to create and launch commercial live XR events and performances that merge cutting-edge immersive technology with compelling storytelling. The flagship project, Carry Me Home: A Live & Virtual Journey Into the Creative Mind of Singer-Songwriter Didier Stowe, represented a ambitious fusion of live performance, motion capture, and extended reality. The project was funded through an Epic Mega Grant, recognizing its innovative approach to immersive entertainment. In 2024, Carry Me Home won the Numix Prize for best XR Experience, validating our vision that technology can create profound emotional connections through shared, immersive storytelling. Shocap Entertainment embodies the culmination of my career's core mission: using real-time systems and interactive technology not as ends in themselves, but as vessels for authentic human connection and artistic expression. Whether through live XR events or future immersive experiences, Shocap explores how advanced technology can expand the boundaries of what live performance can be.

In February 2014, I founded Lifelike & Believable as a way to reach and engage with a wider variety of developers and projects. This was not unlike the role I had with EA's internal studios during my tenure there, but at an industry-wide level. The goal was to democratize access to deep expertise in real-time animation systems, working with studios of all sizes to help them build believable, responsive characters and bring their creative visions to life. Founding Lifelike & Believable also afforded me the flexibility to start Pepper's Ghost New Media & Performing Arts Collective, producing live performances featuring real-time animation. In 2020, I co-founded Shocap Entertainment as a complementary creative venture, exploring the convergence of immersive XR technology with live performance and storytelling. This was the original vision that had led me to leave theater and join NYU's Media Research Lab nearly thirty years before. In many ways, this represents the full circle of my career: the principles I learned in live performance, the tools I helped create through research and industry work, and the collaborations I've built across disciplines, all now channeled into singular missions. I want to prove that technology and artistry aren't separate domains, but complementary forces that, when properly aligned, can expand what it means to tell stories and create presence in the modern age.