Shaun Graham

Shaun Graham

Graphics Technical Artist and Software Engineer

Mid-level Software Engineer / Mid-level FX Animator / 12 yrs

Mapleton, Utah

Hire Me

Crowd Animator

Sonic Prime (2022)

Music Visual Effects

Lana Del Rey: Young and Beautiful (2013)

Effects Animator

Rise of the Guardians (2012)

Traffic

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012)

Visual Effects

Thriller Night (2011)

Megamind: The Button of Doom (2011)

Puss in Boots (2011)

Effects Animator

Megamind (2010)

Scared Shrekless (2010)

Visual Effects

Monsters vs Aliens Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space (2009)

Visual Effects

B.O.B.'s Big Break (2009)

Effects Artist

Turbo (2009)

Monsters vs Aliens Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space (2009)

Crowd Animator

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008)

Supervising Technical Director

Pajama Gladiator (2008)

Shading Artist

Ratatouille (2007)

Animator

Der Ostwind (2007)

Wide spectrum of technical and artistic experience. Passion for solving problems with code and belief in making machines do as much work as programatically feasible while allowing artists to do what machines can't. My aim is to get artists where they are comfortable faster. By making the tools and workflows simpler and faster. This way production costs can be reduced while quality is increased.
Work History

  • Sr. Content Creation Tools Software Engineer

    Aechelon Technology

    February 2015 - Present
    San Francisco, CA

  • Pipeline Software Engineer

    DreamWorks Animation

    September 2014 - January 2015
    Redwood City, CA

  • FX Animator

    DreamWorks Animation

    February 2008 - July 2014

    Created art-directed computer generated visual effects for feature animations such as sparks, smoke, fire, water, dust, snowball splats, and plant deformation, using tools and languages such as Houdini, Maya, Nuke, RealFlow, Python, MEL, C/C++, and proprietary scripting languages. During which, also solving technical problems and overcoming pipeline inefficiencies for department and studio, for example:

    - Wrote render-farm management UI using Python/PyQT which is now used studio wide.
    - Developed Python script for crowds department which was able to traverse complex road geometry for a large city and produce driving lanes for traffic AI, resulting in a savings of around 1.5 months.
    - Wrote Python script which brought expensive 7+ day render down to 2 hours by breaking up frames into tiles.
    - Updated popular studio command-line tool from C to C++ and added multithreading.
    - Collaborated on Python tool to ease workflow of adding effect assets to shots.
    - Added interpolation methods to Maya C plugin for reading baked-out models. Potentially improving sub-frame accuracy for simulations.
    - Discovered and fixed bug in core studio library code, written in C, where normals and velocities were not being transformed correctly.
    - Added ability to store a reference position attribute for tree geometry shader, written in C++. This addition allowed for "sticky" surfacing abilities such as snow on branches.

  • Supervising Technical Director (Pajama Gladiator)

    BYU Animation

    January 2006 - February 2008

  • Technical Director Intern

    Pixar

    July 2006 - December 2006

  • Technical Lead (Las Pinatas)

    BYU Animation

    June 2005 - May 2006

    Troubleshoot, pipeline work, write shaders...

  • Technical Artist Intern

    Electronic Arts

    April 2005 - July 2005
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Education

  • Brigham Young University

    2003 - 2007

  • Portland Community College

    2001 - 2003