Ross deYoung

Work History

• 

  Sr. VFX Artist

  Ascendant Studios

  August 2021 - September 2023

  WFH

  Combat, Environment, Cinematic VFX
• 

  Senior Artist

  Crystal Dynamics

  February 2020 - July 2021

• FX Engineer / Founder

  Unrealistic Ink

  March 2019 - February 2020

  Portland, Oregon Area

  Servicing world wide VFX needs with both real-time and pre-rendered content.

• Senior FX Artist

  TinyCo, a Jam City Company

  May 2017 - November 2018

  San Francisco Bay Area

  I worked closely with the Animation Director to help develop the look and style of the VFX for the hit moible game Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. I also developed tools and techniques to facilitate testing, demoing, and implementing FX. Effectively, I built the Particle FX pipeline from the ground up and helped expand the shaderFX tool set, like adding a flow map shader.
• 

  FX TD

  Blue Sky Studios

  June 2015 - April 2016

  Helping bring the latest Blue Sky Studios Feature to life

  
• 

  VFX Artist

  Crystal Dynamics

  September 2014 - May 2015

  Redwood City

  RBD simulations from Houdini into the Tomb Raider engine.
  Developed a tool to streamline the process from Houdini to game engine that anyone could use.

  
• 

  Digtial Artist III

  Digital Domain

  August 2012 - October 2012

  Venice, California

  Iron Man 3
  Survive the "Storm". Much like Tony Stark, my "mansion" was destroyed in the making of Iron Man 3 and much like Iron Man 4, my story is about rebuilding from the rubble of dreams left smoldering in a pile of ashes in a place I once called my home.
• 

  VFX Artist

  Mirada Studios

  March 2012 - July 2012

  Los Angeles California

  Chase Credit Card, Pilot for the Munsters, Pacific Rim Proof of Concept,
  Work with the Houdini Leads to develop and refine new and established effects animation techniques.
• 

  Houdini Technical Director

  Fuel VFX

  April 2011 - February 2012

  Sydney, Australia

  Prometheus
  Develop fluid simulations to fit the look of the art department style frames. To debug and optimize renders on a skeleton infrastructure. I was able to get renders from over 5 minutes a frame down to under 3 seconds per frame.

  
• 

  FX Technical Director

  Sony Pictures Imageworks

  October 2010 - April 2011

  Albuquerque, New Mexico Area

  Green Lantern
  Learning to work in a satellite office was a job unto itself. I worked on over 200 shots for Green Lantern, unheard of in visual effects post production; impossible without Houdini by SideFX Software. By far the most ambitious project I have worked on to date!

  
• 

  Senior Technical Director

  Rising Sun Pictures

  February 2010 - September 2010

  Adelaide, Australia

  Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, The Dragon's Pearl
  Building the Horcrux by any means necessary, adding dust where needed.

  

  
• 

  FX Technical Director

  Sony Pictures Imageworks

  January 2009 - June 2009

  Culver City, California

  Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
  I worked on much of the spaghetti tornado shots generating a procedural dust "skirt" complete with on the fly rigid body dynamics using the, at the time, new Houdini ODE dynamics system. Rat Bird feathers, dust, sparks, crowds and many various integrating fx.

  
• 

  Technical Director

  Sony Pictures Imageworks

  August 2007 - November 2007

  Culver City, Ca

  Beowulf
  After an exhausting run and a few fallen artists, Sony needed a few fresh artists to come in and finish the job. After 2 days of training I was up and running in Sony's Pipeline that normally required 2 weeks of training. I finaled 11 shots in less than a month and several more in the second month. I used Houdini and proprietary software to create integrating FX, such as rock debris, dust, rain, snow, hoof prints and foot prints.

  
• 

  Technical Director

  The Orphanage

  June 2006 - July 2007

  The Presidio, San Francisco, California

  Die Hard 4, Fantastic Four 2, The Last Mimzy
  Worked directly with the Houdini Supervisor to elaborate and refine several new and existing in house tools such as procedural shattering, dynamic animation, and VEX solutions for both geometry and shaders, cross platform integration from Houdini to Maya and back, and many other procedural fx rendering through Mantra.

  

  
• 

  Digital Artist III

  Digital Domain

  March 2006 - July 2006

  Venice, California

  Used established techniques and software (Storm, aka: Voxel Bitch) to help debug and render the super massive vortex finale.

  
• 

  Viz RT Graphic Artist

  Reality Check Studios

  July 2005 - December 2005

  Hollywood, California

  I began at RC as a freelancer developing the liquid sim for Coca Cola. After a successful 2 weeks I was then asked to become a staff employee developing real time graphic solutions for on air sports broadcast.