Heather Abels
Lead Matte Painter / 20 yrs
Clarksville, TN
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Work History
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Matte Painter
Rodeo FX
October 2016 - November 2016
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Set Extension Artist
Walt Disney Animation Studios
February 2014 - July 2015Burbank, CA
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Matte Painting Department Supervisor
Rhythm & Hues Studios
February 2012 - February 2014El Segundo, CA• Responsible for bidding and cost/time projection.
• Hiring, training and managing a department of over twenty people (painters and TDs)
• Balancing the production needs of 6 simultaneous feature film projects with the resources available.
• Creation of matte painting shotwork as well as troubleshooting other artist technical and pipeline issues.
• Created and staffed a new Matte Technical Director position to assist artists in shot production.
• Interfaced with other production departments to help integrate matte painting into the studio.
• Implemented a new color pipeline and matte painting workflow to maintain a high dynamic range in paintwork and asset integration into other departments.
• Developed and implemented new workflows for the matte painting department to expand our deliverables to include more environment work and lighting/reflection passes.
• Created the departments training curriculum and created a series of training videos for new hire and international self guided education.
-X-Men: Days of Future Past - Matte Painter / Dept. Supervisor
-Winters Tale - Matte Dept. Supervisor / Matte Painter
-Machete Kills - Matte Painter
-Black Sky - Matte Dept. Supervisor
-Percy Jackson 2 - Matte Dept. Supervisor / Matte Painter
-The Seventh Son - Matte Dept. Supervisor / Matte Painter
-300: Rise of an Empire - Matte Dept. Supervisor / Matte Painter
-RIPD - Matte Dept. Supervisor / Matte Painter
-Django - Matte Dept. Supervisor / Matte Painter
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Lead Matte Painter
Rhythm & Hues Studios
September 2011 - July 2012El Segundo, CA• Helped lead the Matte Painting team create over 110 custom skies for Life of Pi
• Debugged any technical issues from the over 173+ projection setups for the department.
• Developed an entirely new color pipeline for the matte painting department to maintain energy conservation of images while painting in photoshop so environments could be used to dynamically light the Life of Pi oceans.
• Developed a new way to deliver over 89 skies with deep layers to compositing for added cloud movement and realism
• Painting and projection setup for 3D stereo matte paintings.
-Life of Pi - Lead Matte Painter
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Matte Painter
Rhythm & Hues Studios
December 2009 - September 2011El Segundo, CA-Big Miracle - Matte Painter
-Yogi Bear - Matte Painter
-Charlie St. Cloud - Matte Painter
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Matte Painter
Wētā FX
September 2009 - November 2009-Avatar - Matte Painter
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Matte Painter
Prime Focus World
August 2009 - September 2009-New Moon - Matte Painter
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Matte Painter
Rhythm & Hues Studios
November 2008 - April 2009-Land of the Lost - Matte Painter
-Night at the Museum 2 - Matte Painter
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Matte Painter/Texture Painter
The Orphanage
January 2008 - November 2008titles:
-Don't Mess with the Zohan
-The Spirit
-various commercials
-Redcliff 2
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Matte Painter
Matte World Digital
August 2007 - November 2007titles:
-The Golden Compass
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Texture Artist
Giant Killer Robots
July 2006 - September 2006San Francisco Bay Area-Spider-Man 3 - Texture Artist
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Visual Effects Artist
Matte World Digital
January 2006 - June 2006Novato, CA-Zodiac - Assistant Matte Painter
-Invincible - Rotoscoping Artist
Education
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MFA in Animation and Visual Effects
Academy of Art University
2004 - 2007 -
BS in Engineering Technology in Animation, Illustration, and Multimedi
East Tennessee State University
1998 - 2002