Selected work
Four problems, and what I decided
Each of these states the constraint rather than hiding it. Constraints are the evidence — remove them and there’s no way to tell whether a decision was any good.
- Leadership
Character & simulation
Two departments, one wall
A hero groom took twelve to sixteen weeks to build and win creative approval, then arrived downstream in a state simulation couldn't use — costing roughly twelve more weeks. The fix wasn't a tool.
Downstream rework per lead character: ~12 weeks → ~2. Characters in serious schedule jeopardy: 4–5 per film → about 1.
- Judgment
A recurring failure, and what it taught me
The toolset nobody could use
Across four studios I've watched the same tool project fail the same way. The rooms had engineering authority and domain authority. What they never had was design authority.
The operating principle behind everything else on this site: input is not design, and someone has to be accountable for the whole.
- Stakeholders
Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
Delivering under two approval chains
Lead groom and simulation on a Warner Bros. production serviced by Imageworks — where notes arrived from an internal review chain and an external client, and both had to be satisfied without a second build.
Lead character work delivered through both without a rebuild — and a working understanding of how creative notes behave when the client sits outside the building.
- Technical
Four years in, and the part that surprised me
Building my own tools
I went in early on generative AI and went in wrong — two months of enthusiastic slop before I stopped. What changed it was building software instead of generating images.
Shipped CG tools, workflow automation, web applications, games, home automation and a personal finance system. And a settled view on where this helps and where it doesn't.