Jesse Carlson Biography

Jesse Carlson

Position:
Lead for Character Rigging
Company:
Motion Theory

My name is Jesse Carlson and I work as the Lead for Character Rigging and Effects Departments at Motion Theory, where I just finished doing the hair and cloth work on HP's Fergie "hands" ad. I am currently working on a spot for McCain chips, as well as doing general facility level pipeline work.

Also, for nearly 4 years now, I've been teaching a class in advanced character animation and setup/rigging practices at CSU, Fullerton. Graduating seniors take characters and stories they've been working on over the course of their college career, and rig the character to use it in a dialog test at the end of the semester.

I worked at Walt Disney Animation Studios as a Technical Animator. For 10 months, I worked on Disney's latest full length feature animated film, "Bolt". My primary responsibilities included hair and cloth simulations for all hero characters, as well as dealing with all contact issues and animation cleanup duties.

I also worked at Sony Pictures Imageworks as an Associate Technical Animator for 2 years on various projects such as "Monster House", "Spider-Man 3" and "Beowulf". I was the closest thing to a generalist in the whole facility. I worked on everything in the Digital Character Group's pipeline, from model publishes, rig updates, PSD work, animation clean up, camera blocking and many other things.

I started as a Junior Technical Animator at Rhythm & Hues Studios. For 8 months, I worked on the first "Chronicles of Narnia" film, doing hair and cloth animation, as well as some minor rigging work. I worked on Aslan's first talking shots, and several of the large scale battle sequences at the end of the film.

Interview with Jesse Carlson

A typical day varies for me, depending on what tasks I have to do and where we are at in the stage of production on any feature film or commercial that I might be working on at the time. Typically, I get in, and do any quick work that I need to get done. Normally, whatever department you are in will have a "daily" meeting in the morning, shortly after the work day has started. It's normal to check out any work you might have been doing the night before, and get feedback from your supervisor as far as what needs to be changed or addressed before the shot that you are working on can be approved. It can range from big changes to the scene, down to the minutest changes that might be needed to make a shot really "sing". Sometimes though, dailies can be as simple as checking in with the group you work with, so that everyone knows what is going on, what the goals might be for the day, and any other things that need to be communicated to the group. If I have artists working for me, then I'll review their work, and I'll show it to my supervisors, if I feel confident it's at a satisfactory level to present. For the rest of the day, we busily work away making any changes that have been called out, and there is often another set of more informal, desktop reviews that are conducted in the afternoon.

Work continues to the end of the day, and depending on the needs of the production, you might get to leave on time, or you may end up staying late, well into the night, just to get up and come back and do it all again in the morning.

Lead TD/FX Artist Description:

This is a highly technical senior artist that will lead technology, simulation and dynamics efforts. The successful candidate will have great programming/scripting abilities, and should be able to creatively develop flexible FX solutions to the most difficult problems, both photo-real and artistic. This individual should be able to coordinate a team of FX artists and/or generalists for heavy FX/particle/simulation work.

Experience in a similar role required.
-from http://www.motiontheory.com/contact/#sub

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