Nicholas Burkard
Senior Character TD / 18 yrs
Los Angeles, CA
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Work History
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Technical Animation Supervisor
Walt Disney Animation Studios
November 2013 - July 2019Los Angeles, California, USTechnical animation supervisor
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Character TD Supervisor
Walt Disney Animation Studios
December 2014 - August 2015
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Character FX artist
DreamWorks Animation
February 2010 - February 2013Glendale, CAAs a Character FX artist, I've specialized in development of Houdini fur simulation and finaling workflows, hair simulation setups, cloth garment setups, mass crowd cloth setups, plant simulations and streamlining workflows for our department. I've also created tools used in our department across multiple shows and multiple DreamWorks locations. These tools include automated garment grading systems to adjust garments to differing generic character scales and proportions, Maya cloth simulation wedging and cache management interfaces, Houdini wire solver constraints to aid in the simulation of "clumped" styled hair and other pipeline based scripts that aid the artist in retrieving things from a convoluted pipeline.
My current leadership roles include the overview of Houdini software deployment in the CFX pipeline, communicating with SideFX developers, training my peers to use Houdini and testing new software/creating new worklflows and tools inside of the software.
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Technical Director
Rhythm & Hues Studios
July 2007 - November 2009Technical Animator responsible for hair,cloth simulation, and technical scripting on films such as:
"Alvin and the Chipmunks", "The Incredible Hulk", "The Mummy 3", "Cirque Du Freak", and "Night At The Museum 2"
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Education
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Columbus College of Art & Design
2003 - 2007