Adam Benson

Work History

• 

  Technical Director, CG & Pipeline Supervisor

  The Aaron Sims Company

  September 2016 - April 2020

  Burbank, California

  I supervise the animation and FX teams, developed our Shotgun Pipeline, integrating software and building tools for artists and administrators. Character and technical rigging. Cloth, fluid and other dynamic simulations. Crowd simulations. lighting, rendering and procedural materials development. Python programming for shotgun and tools for Maya, Nuke, Photoshop and others. Maintain artists systems and tasks, keep artists on time and within shot parameters. Work as the studio's "problem solver", doesn't matter what the issue, I find the solution.
• 

  Character Technical Director

  The Third Floor

  July 2016 - September 2016

  Los Angeles, California

  Rigged characters and props, created pipeline animation tools for Golaem Crowd, and created crowd simulations. Also modeled and textured props and environments and wrote shaders for viewport 2.0
• 

  Nuke Compositor

  Wildlife

  May 2016 - June 2016

  Made tweaks and adjustments to an online Chevy commercial, and did layout, lighting, texture work and animation for an OnStar commercial.
• 

  Maya Generalist

  Mousetrappe

  April 2016 - May 2016

  Recreated the Hoth Battle scene from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for a large scale projection project for Disney World Florida. Created a series of Maya tools for rebuilding materials on matching geometries for large scale projects using Python.
• 

  Nuke Compositor

  Gradient Effects

  March 2016 - April 2016

  Compositing work on The Last Ship (season 3), Fear the Walking Dead (season 2) and Stranger Things.
• 

  Maya Generalist

  Sassoon Film Design

  November 2015 - April 2016

  Created dynamic simulations for clothing replacement on live action actors, created dynamic "smash" simulations for large fuel tanks, that had to smash to the ground and send debris and parts flying everywhere.

• CG Supervisor - Maya, Nuke & Pipeline

  Masters FX

  August 2015 - February 2016

  Lead a team doing both 3D and 2D work. Functioned as lead artist and CG Sup for some of the tougher shots. Used Maya to create animations and renders for compositing and 3d Projections in Nuke. Created CG Environments, head wounds, vomit effects, and blood splatters. Created a series of pipeline tools using Python in both Maya and Nuke. Pipeline tools included automatic scene creation from existing assets, or version up scene maintenance for inherited shots. Created automatic Slate creation system for each shot, including Artists Names, TRT and version/clip names. Also created tools for organizing and placing footage into large scale "Monitor Shots" using an EDL, and tools for exporting from Maya and Importing into Nuke FBX scene elements and associated footages.
  Oversaw the final output of the fully and partially CG shots
• 

  Maya Cloth Artist

  Prologue Films

  July 2015 - July 2015

  Venice, CA

  Ran a number of cloth simulations on the video game "Destiny". All work was done using Maya nCloth.
• 

  Lead 3D Artist

  Syndrome Studio

  August 2014 - April 2015

  Greater Los Angeles Area

  Created a large array of complex visual effects, character rigs, animations, pipeline tools, crowd simulations and many, many other things. Also setup their render farm. Became their lead and go to guy on many projects.

• Sr. Compositor

  Millenium Films

  May 2014 - June 2014

  Shreveport, Louisiana Area

  Worked on a series of shots for The Expendables 3. Worked as a Nuke Compositor
• 

  Nuke Compositor, Maya Artist

  Greenhaus GFX

  January 2014 - May 2014

  Culver City, CA

  Did a number of composites for The Purge: Anarchy. Assisted in 3D creation of titles for Guardians of the Galaxy, Maleficent and others.
• 

  CG Supervisor

  Hoax Films

  March 2013 - April 2013

  Greater Los Angeles Area

  Worked as a lighting and rendering TD and Supervisor on an animation series, "The LeBrons". I worked on lighting the environments and setup rendering for them. I also helped junior artists solve technical problems, and created a number of pipeline tools using both MEL and Python. The tools I created had a range of functions from complex scene rebuilding and setup, Light Rig duplication, to camera tools for the artists. Some of my work included solving more complex Nuke Compositing problems, such as setting up 3D Projection environments for artists, and solving matte and depth issues for artists.
• 

  FX Artist

  Hydrogen Whiskey Studios

  January 2013 - January 2013

  Santa Monica, CA

  Worked on a series of post effects.
• 

  3DS Max Character Modeler & FX Artist

  Tigar Hare Studios

  July 2012 - August 2012

  Greater Los Angeles Area

  Modeled 2 out of 3 cinematic characters for "Cloudberry Kingdom", which included rigging the characters using CAT, laying out the UVs and doing some of the texture work.
  My other duties included creating the more complex special effects for the cinematics, fire and torches, oceans, jet packs, crumbling, smoking charred remains, cloth simulations, et cetera. For these, Particle Flow, FumeFX and Rayfire were primarily used.
• 

  Maya Generalist

  Flight 33 Productions

  October 2011 - April 2012

  Sherman Oaks, California

  Worked on several fast paced shows as a Maya Generalist. It required an ability to re-use existing elements, and create new elements, and compile them into unique new shots. It also covered almost all elements in the Maya pipeline. Including Particle, cloth and Fluid simulations. Everything was rendered using Mental Ray into layers compatible with AfterEffects.
• 

  Compositor

  Prime Focus World

  October 2010 - May 2011

  Hollywood, CA

  Working as view-d stereo compositor using fusion.

• CG Animation Supervisor

  Morningstar Entertainment

  March 2010 - October 2010

  Worked as Maya and Nuke CG Supervisor. Created shots and managed the animation team.

• 3D VFX Production

  Sleep Deprived Productions

  May 2005 - March 2010

  Sleep Deprived Productions is owned and operated by Adam Benson as his visual effects.

• Engineer, Studio Muscian

  Trampled Fruit Records

  August 2007 - February 2009

  I own and run a Project Recording Studio which brings in local bands to records albums, demos, EPs and singles. This studio is the culmination of a lifetime spent in music and recording.

• VFX

  Brothers Ink

  2009 - 2009

  Created a series of visual effects involving stab wounds, gun shots, knife throwing and blood puddling in live action footage. Required me to track the original plates, create the 3D models, including their shading and texturing. I animated the elements into the plates, lit them and rendered them out and then composited the shots back together for final delivery to the client.

• Sound Engineer

  Ave Maria

  2009 - 2009

  Ran on site sound mixing and boom operation where necessary. It often involved multiple, complex mic setups to get the shots.

• Sound Mixer/Boom Swinger

  Elementary Cool

  July 2008 - July 2008

  Ran the sound mix and boom operator for the film "Elementary Cool"

• Editor

  Show-N-Tell Video Productions

  April 2006 - July 2008

  In charge of editing videos, doing effects work and composites, running sound during productions, and acting as Technical Director during live, multi-camera events.
  Worked closely with clients. Had general creative control over post production. Worked with Final Cut Pro, Combustion, DVD Studio Pro, Photoshop and Motion software. Worked with Sony F-900 CineAlta, EX-1, and DSR-500 cameras, HDW-2000 HDCam Deck, PDW-2800 BetaCam Deck, PRV-LX-1 Realtime DVD Deck, and a LARGE assortment of other equipment to numerous to name here.

• VFX Artist

  Moment of Clarity

  2008 - 2008

  Worked as a compositor on a series of visual effects shots involving a television set that plays in on itself, but with varying plates within it.

• Visual Effects Artist

  Fate Awakening - IfFactor Productions

  2007 - 2008

  Create 3D Models for visual effects. This includes the modeling, texturing, lighting, rendering and compositing for the finished product.

• Editor

  Locked Horns Productions

  January 2006 - June 2006

  Worked as editor for the film "The Long Shot". Directed by Paul DeNigris.
• 

  Motion Capture Technician

  Rainbow Studios

  May 2005 - April 2006

  Worked in the Motion Capture studio as a technician on the Video Game "Smackdown VS Raw 2008". Helped suit up the actors, calibrate, aim, focus and maintain the camera system. Ran shoots during shoot weeks, which included system calibrations twice a day, setting up actors from their T-Pose and Range of Motions, and then shooting the sessions. During non-shoot weeks, worked on tracking the data and finalizing it for the animators.

• Sound

  Villikon Chronicals

  2006 - 2006

  Worked as the on stage mixer and sound engineer