Michael Michael

Michael Michael

Senior FX Artist / Senior Software Developer / 24 yrs

Emeryville, CA

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Effects Artist

Soul (2020)

Visual Effects Artist

Onward (2020)

Visual Effects Artist

Incredibles 2 (2018)

Visual Effects Supervisor

Coco (2017)

Visual Effects Artist

Finding Dory (2016)

Effects Technical Lead

The Good Dinosaur (2015)

Effects Supervisor

The Blue Umbrella (2013)

FX Technical Lead

Brave (2012)

FX Technical Lead

Lava (2011)

Production Engineer

Toy Story 3 (2010)

Simulation And Effects Artist

Dug's Special Mission (2009)

Engineer

Up (2009)

Effects Artist

Harrison Montgomery (2008)

Production Engineering

WALL·E (2008)

FX Artist

Cars (2006)

Technical Director

Finding Nemo (2003)

When I was sixteen, I saved up all my money and bought a computer from a hobby store, so I could teach myself how to make digital pictures. Looking back at my fashion sense and social sensibilities, someone should have recommended I buy a car instead, but I was instantly hooked on making pixels with computer programs.

I really enjoy wrangling math to make art and connecting artists with math all for the purpose of making movies. With my passion and some luck, I put myself through college working at sgi and Alias|Wavefront making tools for artists. With even more luck and the La Nina winds, I joined Pixar 20 years ago. Starting with Monsters Inc all the way through our current slate, I have been there making movies, building tools, and leading groups of both artistic and technical people. It has been a fantastic adventure. I have seen my work in a movie theater, visited art schools all over the country to talk about Pixar, and even figured out the answers to some hard graphics problems.

Outside of Pixar, I enjoy collaborating with customers that need help with hard visual problems. I worked with Home Planet to create a real-time solar system model based on Nasa ephemeral data. With PopSocket, we created a GPU image manipulation tool that can do advanced image processing and simulation. Loop is another passion project where we created a social framework to make collaborative videos. I really enjoy working with creative people who have a passion for how the world experiences art and communication.

I am constantly looking for new things to learn and new ways to apply technology to art. Lately, I have been focused on improving communication and collaboration using cloud technologies. If you are passionate about art, technology and trying to figure it out together, give me a shout.
Work History
  • Chief Technology Officer of Research and Development

    Technicolor Creative Studios

    November 2022 - Present
  • Pixar

    July 1999 - Present
  • R&D Global Head of Software

    Technicolor Creative Studios

    February 2022 - February 2023
    San Francisco Bay Area
  • Developer

    PopSockets

    June 2018 - June 2022
  • Production Supervisor, Effects Supervisor, Effects Artist, Developer

    Pixar

    February 2000 - February 2022
  • Software Developer

    PopSocket

    July 2018 - April 2020

    Developed their ios application that performs image manipulation and simulation on the GPU.

  • SW Engineer

    Alias|wavefront

    July 1997 - February 2000
  • Software Engineer

    Autodesk

    April 1996 - July 1999
    Seattle, WA
  • SW Engineer

    SGI

    June 1994 - July 1997
Education
  • BE Computer Engineering, Math

    Santa Clara Univeristy

    September 1992 - June 1996